Tuesday 30th September 2014 - movement and music quad jumps

Tuesday 30th september 2014

Keywords

Blocking - Deciding where the characters are going to be on stage.
Characterisation - Voice and movement.
Spatial awareness - There needs to be spacial awareness between the actors and the set/props, actors and the audience and actors and the other actors.

We looked at different pieces of film that had specific types of movements. We recognised movements from each piece.

Harold Lloyd's "Safety last"

• Hurried movements/rushing around 
• Tripping over himself
• Swinging by his hands and then by a rope
• Being saved by the lady and then eventually hugging her

This is halloween - Nightmare before christmas

• Vivid facial expressions
• All movements flow from one to there are barely any staccato actions
• Some of the animations looked as if they were being carried by the wind, the ghosts are a good example of this.

Moulin Rouge (Can Can)

• Fast movements by everyone in the scene
• Dancing around ( kicks and splits)
• Using costume to create movement - lifting up their dresses whilst moving and dancing around

The animals and children took to the streets

• Fast moving animations, the humans move considerably slower than the animations this creates contrast between whats fake and whats reality
• The backgrounds were moving aswell as the characters

Using these movements we created short motifs from the different pieces of film. We choreographed this to the "Fat Sam's grand slam" theme tune.

Our final choreography worked because we used a mix of cannon and unison movements. We did this to create contrast and so that it was unpredictable and the audience did not get bored as we were doing different things with the developed movements that we had. For example when we did the "can can" we were in unison, this is so that it had more of an impact and looked bolder as we were doing exactly the same thing all together at the same time. On the other hand we used canon when completing hand gestures, this looked effective as it looked as though the movements were rolling off of each other. This is because we were standing in a straight line nest to each other. We also used a mixture of different levels, this was also to add interest to the choreography. Although we were standing for the majority of the time we did use the floor in the "can can " section when we all did the splits. We also used different levels in the section when we were doing specific facial expressions that were shown in "this is halloween" when we were alternately up then down. We wanted some part to be comical so that the audience were continually being drawn in. Our musicality was good throughout, our timing with the music and with each other was good. This is important because it looks as though the choreography and the music fit together well.

If we had more time we would finish it so that we didnt need to improvise the ending, we should have repeated different sections to be able to fit the length of the music. We would also add more transitions that would have used more space. This is because for most of the choreography we were standing together in the same place. We did use space in two sections of the piece, these worked because we worked our transitions into the movement that we were already doing, this is important so that we didnt come out of character whilst moving to the next motif. As well as this we would have made it more energetic, this would have helped with our characterisation as the character we were portraying would have been over the top. This would have made it more believable to the audience so that they could clearly see who we were supposed to be. 

Our facial expressions were good throughout the parts of the choreography when we were supposed to be doing specific facial expressions. Particularly when we were swapping levels with facial expressions and hand gestures taken from "this is halloween". However throughout other movements our facial expressions slipped slightly, if we had had more time we would have worked on this to make sure that we always looked as though we were in character.