Wednesday 24th February

Today we finally started to create our props. Miss Hoad had all of our orders in their boxes on the table and, as the first job of the day we unpacked the boxes and ticked off what we had received on the order sheet. Unfortunately, the felt did not come in the order (as they did not have the colours we needed) so we'll have to wait until next week until we can begin to use it.

After unpacking everything we set up our tables where we would work and began to fix up some paper mache. We put half into each of the two buckets and set one on our table and the second bucket on the main table. We blew up balloons for the bases of our masks and began to shred newspaper to put in the paste. We began to layer our balloons with the newspaper and once we were happy with our base layers we hung them from the ceiling on string and put sheets of paper between each balloon, to stop them from sticking together.

Once the balloons were finished with I went with Ben to the Technology block in school to cut the large dowel stick into small 24cm sections. Once they were cut we went back to E1 and cut out cardboard stars to stick on our smaller dowel sticks. We cut them with a scalpel, from Graphics, and stapled each corner together so the dowel stick wouldn't move in between the two cardboard stars. Once it was stapled I coated the cardboard with paper mache until it was fully covered and strengthened. Unfortunately the dowel stick kept falling out of in between the cardboard so I had to cover it with super glue (twice!) and hold it down to make sure it stuck. Once it was glued down I took it to the girls' bathroom to dry it under the hand dryer. Once it was dry I took it back to the classroom to paint it with gold paint. Whilst the paint was still wet I put a lot of gold glitter all over it, to cover the hold star on the wand. Once I shook off the excess glitter and pored it back into the tub I took the wand over to the heater and placed it there to dry the paint (we'd cover it with watered-down PVA glue to make sure that the glitter would not fall on the floor when used by classes in the future.

That was all that we could make today so instead of beginning to make something I got on with my blog.

Wednesday 10th February

Today we met with Tina Gardiner, the Head of Design at the Guildford School of Acting (GSA) to have a design workshop. She and the students from Brookfield were late so we didn't properly start until 10.ooam, half an hour later than we had originally wanted to start (at 9.30).

To start off the day we took part in some drama warm up exercises where we had to stand in a circle and move around to get us away from our friends and out of our comfort zones. Once we'd finished that game we played another which was called 'Zip, Zap, Boing, Pow' where we had to point left, and say 'zip', point right, and say 'zap', when you 'boing' it bounces back the 'zip' or 'zap' and when you say 'pow' you point at someone across the circle.

After finishing these games we moved onto our workshop and sat around in a horseshoe and watched Tina show us how acting is not particularly important when trying to set a feeling and to get the audience to feel something or find out where it was set and when. She did this by taking Jacob Rogers and a girl from Brookfield, sat them next to each other and played some music which made us think that they were in Italy, at night riding down the canals romantically, possibly? Tina showed us various different scenes, changing a slight thing every few scenes to see what was different to us and what it made us feel.

Tina thought that we should have a go at it ourselves by using the props she'd brought with her we were to create two scene, in groups of four, and get the audience to comment on what they thought had happened. I was in a group with Ben Knight, Sophie Foster and Nikki Mattravers and we created one romantic scene, with two lovers having dinner at home, our second scene showed the female lying dead on the floor and the man holding the candle stick, that had previously been on the coffee table with their dinner, in his hand and looking shocked. To create these scenes we used the following props:

- Coffee table

- Dress

- Two bowls filled with spaghetti and two spoons

- Candle

- Sofa

- Two champagne glasses

We also used music to set the scene and create an overall atmosphere about the scenes. For the romantic scene we used the song 'Cosmic Love' by Florence and the Machine, and for the death scene we used the song 'Blinding', which is also by Florence and the Machine.

Once each group had shown their two scenes Tina got out a set model, which was a 1:25 scale model of the stage that they have at GSA. She told us about most of the roles that take part in the theatre (director, stage manager, deputy stage manager, designer...) and talked about her role as a designer. She showed us the props that she had designed for the scale model and put them on the miniature stage. She explained everything thoroughly.

She also showed us lighting and one of her filters, a red one which would be placed over the light to show that a murder had taken place, or some other form of bloodshed (such as a war).

Overall the meeting we had with Tina was very inspirational and very enjoyable. Once it had finished we made our way back down to our Diploma room (E1) and wrote our blogs about last week and the morning we had just had. Once we had finished our blogs we were to move onto continuing our mood boards (which are still far from complete!!).

Wednesday 3rd February

Today we had two hours to get our presentations ready, even though they should have been finished last wednesday. After break we had to present our projects to our client, Miss Page (Deputy Head in English) who came to our Diploma room so that each group could present their project and what they had done to complete their research.

Most groups were ready on time, ours on the other hand was battled against the clock. All of the groups needed to rehearse because most things went wrong, but ours seemed to go pretty smoothly. I think we all learnt something about how to present projects in a mature, professional way.

Once the presentations were over and it was decided that our presentation was the best overall (A Midsummer Night's Dream) we spent the the following three hours planning our props and creating mood boards

...

Next week we, and the students from Brookfield, are meeting with Tina Gardiner, the Head of Design at the Guildford School of Acting. Looking forward to hearing some great stuff from her and finally finding out what the whole meet-up is about (we've only been told that we need a blackout room, or something along those lines. So it's all a mystery).

Wednesday 27th January

Today we had to prepare for our presentations for next week. We were to research information on the play, what we were making and how, researching about props and how they are used.

I made a list of the props that we needed to make and printed off three copies (one for everyone in our group) and began to help Ben Knight write out a list of materials that we would need to order to make our props.

Once we finished making the list of materials we moved on to creating our presentation on powerpoint. We decided that we would talk about the key themes in the play, what we planned to make, and how. We thought that this would help our client - Miss Page - understand the basics of our project and have a thorough insight into what we were planning to do so she could question anything that she thought was bad or needed to be changed or altered.

At lunch 5 of the boys left for a rugby match against a school from Isle of Wight, causing Miss Hoad's plans to get slightly altered.

Whilst we were all getting on with our presentations Cloudia Belcher booked the group (except from Ben Knight and me) to see 'Traces', a modern acrobatics circus infused with dance, which is showing at The Mayflower Theatre. She called the box office and had a nice long chat with the woman on the phone. She arrange the seats, completed the risk assessment, the off-site activities form, researched the travel options and emailed the letter to the main office to be printed on headed paper. Everyone's looking forward to seeing it (: