Session 5 - 03-02-2011

The session today started with a meeting. The main purposes were to address the issues regarding distribution of roles, to read through the parts of the script that I had completed to date, and most importantly to allow the group to express their views on my strengths and weaknesses in my role as a teacher.

This proved to be a useful process. The group were generally very positive about my skills in my teaching role, yet we also picked up a few issues that I need to address in the near future. This will hopefully allow me to improve my skills as the process continues!

After the meeting, Colette took over to do some work on characterisation, which I felt linked very well with the work we started last week.

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After a break for lunch, we had a chance to use the recording equipment. As the whole cast was not present, we worked with the voices that we had. We played around with the parts to give everyone a chance to do some recordings. As part of the testing, we looked at factors such as background noise, distance from microphones, breathing whilst recording etc.



We found that the microphones cancelled out much of the background hum in the room, making recordings feasible. We also highlighted issues with the deeper male voices with regards to the distance at which they should talk into the microphones. We also took a brief look at some of the effects that you could put on voices to change pitch and tune, which may be useful to turn a female voice into a more convincing male voice.



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To end the session, we had a brief meeting to decide provisional castings. Most people seemed to have a good idea about what part they would like to try. This made the process of assigning parts very simple. We may still have to change some parts if we have problems with illness or attendance etc.

With the parts assigned, we took a look at the narrative paths and locations that we tested on Sunday 30th Jan. I explained to the group about the options available to participants with regards to the routes they could choose. I showed them marked on a map as well as how they appear on a flowchart. By planning each route with specific directions, we found that all the routes were entirely possible!

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This session was very productive. I gained some great feedback on both myself and the script. Colette's session about characterisation fitted in very well to get the students thinking about how to give personalities and back stories to the characters in our piece. The session in the afternoon with the recording

All in all, a very good session! Back to writing the script then...