The Awkward

I have to say that it seems so unreal that Abi and I never work in a scene together before, and we have taken acting class twice together. So, when we decided to work together for this project I am too excited to wait. However, our first try was not as good as I thought it could be. Even though we all have so many acting experience, we still could not create that awkward scene. I consider that the reasons we failed because we are too comfortable around each other which cause that we never felt awkward before. Anyway, the point of this class is trying to make our skills better, so I have been thinking how I can make this works out.

The first thing I tought is the character development which I use a lot when I get lost in acting. I found out that this character actually has crush on the girl, and this girl also has crush on the boy, so I assume that the cause of this awkward is they are too shy too tell their feelings and they do not want each other know. By the way, I suposed to be in a box with my head out. To be honest, let a girl see me in this situation will make me feel super awkward. Maybe I knew it was acting so I was so calm. Now I think it again, If it was in real life I would just put my head in the box and pretend no one is there. I also have to say that I can feel any awkward around Abi even though others would think it was the most awkward moment, so I guess that I have to remind myself to be awkward around Abi more (Just kidding).

After all I think the project is going well, and I cannot wait to see the final production. We might need to think more about our character and work more on creating the awkward, but over all we are getting closer to the scene. I do feel awkward when I am writing this. I wish everyone will have a wonderful spring break and study their lines for fun!!!

Listen carefully and view fully

https://youtu.be/0mqTaxK64x0

We have been working on this group scene work for three weeks which is longer than it supposed be. However, I don't think we did as well as we could with this much time, and I think there are three main reasons which cause this. First we are not using class time well, second we didn't pay our attention on the performance and background and third we did take other people’s advices seriously. Because of these three reason, I think we didn't give the best performance we can. Anyway, we need to learn from this project, and we should remind our self when we next time do any other group project.

    I have to say it again that time is the most important thing in a group project because how to use the time can make a huge difference when you have the final production. For example, when we are doing researching and reading through, it is so important that everyone is in the same page. Then we can make sure which scene we use and which character we are interested in. However, my group was a little bit slower because we changed our idea twice. After we dicide the script, we started to work on the memorization and blocking. However, my group didn't do well on working the pacing and staging because we were just working on our own lines. I remember when the first time we actually perform on stage we messed our pacing and blocking because we don't know how long others go and where they move. So in the future I will communicate more with my group mates to make sure we are on the same page!

    Next problem we had was we didn't pay much attention to the performance and background, and this directly caused our final production looked a little emotionless. For example, when we first time ran our scene Angel, William and me were so calm that made the whole story didn't  make any sense because the background should be that I am a people try to scam a old lady while her only family member which is her nephew caught me. William played as the nephew and Angel was the old lady. However, we were all acting so calm and deliver lines as if we are reading a boring story, so audience were so confused. Then we studied each character and we put more emotion in it. Finally we finished our scene. I consider that if we could study characters earlier, we would not be so unprepared when we act out the scene.

    The last problem is we didn't take each other’s advices seriously, and this is a the problem can cause some bigger issues. For example, I remember that I was told to be more angry many times, and I didn't do much until everyone told me to do so.Then I found out that it did helped the whole scene. I have to say that there is no perfect actor, so we always need other people’s opinion because the point of acting is make audience believe not actor believe. I also realized that actors don't listen to other people’s advices not only because they don't want to, but also they can't view their work as others can. I suggest that we should take multiple videos before we actually do our final production because view as an audience can help you understand more.

    This was the best of my work that I can do, but it always worth it to learn from it. I will focus more in the future about the group work, so we can do better on the performance instead of wasting time on other things. We also need to be more focusing on the background information and how to make audience believe. The last one is that we should always listen to other’s advises because there is no perfect actor! 

    

We Tell The Story

“Two different worlds, never meant to meet!” I still cannot believe that this show is over. “Once On This Island” is the first musical play I ever did, and I still don't believe I did. Since I have memories about my singing, my mom has been telling how bad I am at singing because I always get the wrong note. However, I truly enjoyed every singing and dancing rehearsals, and I love all the people in this play. I learned so many things on singing and got to know so many people after we tell the story! Anyway, I'm so glad that I improved a lot through this play and I will keep working hard in the future. Now let me tell the story!

Once there is a boy called John, and he is really scared to sing, so he decided to do wrestling for his winter afternoon activity. However, there was some God’s power guided this boy into the theater by cancling the wrestling program in the winter. The story began in the music room. This was the first time this boy went to the music room, and he did terrible on his first singing rehearsal, but he didn't felt bad and he laughed because it was too funny that seeing James’s suffered face. His long journey began, his singing improved a lot because Ms. DiGiacomo and Mr. Trier asked him to go to CATS, then James’s “torture” began. However, after two weeks this James, Ryan and this boy started to have their own karaoke in VdP. Later and later he was getting better. 

Except the singing rehearsal, the dancing rehearsal is also very interesting because I never danced before, so when the first time we ran the whole “We Dance” I felt so happy because I could actually dance while I'm singing on stage. And I feel much easier when I memorize the lines in the musical play than straight play even though it seemed hard to memorize all the dance movements and songs, but it actually helps you do better because it makes a string connection between songs and dances. However, there is another problem I relarized in the play that it is so hard to put our emotion in the musical play than the straight play because when we focusing on the rhythm, lyrics and movements it feels extremely hard to show our emotion to the audience. For example, I always sing “Pray” in a very nice way in the rehearsal, but I should do it with a very intense emotion. I am glad I didn't have to do it in the actual play because until now I still sing “Now the sky is turing dark” as it is a beautiful scene. 

After all, I want to say that musical play is such a new and special experience and feeling for me, and I like it because now I cannot stop singing now! I am looking forward to work on more next year. At the end I want to thank all the cast and crew members who gave this great show, and I also want to thank teachers who didn't give up on me even I was doing wrong in almost every single rehearsal. Of cause, I want to thank Ms. Guarino who guided me in this world I enjoy. We Tell The Story!!!

Script

http://hollywoodactingworkshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Taking_Advantage_-_2_men_1_woman_70s.pdf

It must be three

We finally get this monologue project done after we had a super long weekend. To be honest, being a director is a old and new experience to me in this class. I am very happy and excited because we have so many talented and creative students in this semester. By coaching and watching all of their great performances, I have seen things which I ignored or could not completely understand. The first thing I learned is about the line which is the most basic and important thing in a monologue. Another thing I noticed is the pacing and the pauses which make the performance even better.

It must be confusing that I learned about lines because I didn't even do any monologue. However, when I  am watching and coaching others I found out that most of them have problems on transition from one line to another. For example, Cade always forget the line when the hands line is coming. I feel like that he is always worried about the hands line, so he couldn't remember the order of lines. So I suggest that we can memorize important lines with the line before or after. It can help actors to remember the order, and they will be more relax when they're performing. Another example is when Josh messes his pop corn line, and it happened multiple times. I don't think that he doesn't remember the line because he goes smoothly with that line, then I found out that he does that because it is easier for him to say, and it gives the exact meaning. I used to focus on the exact words in script, but I find out that it works better if you can add some personal speaking habits which can make the monologue yours. I am very glad that I watched all of their works, so I can learn the lines. 

Second thing I noticed is that they always go too fast, and they all triedto go slower and slower overtimes. For example, Angel went super fast in her first draft, but I showed her the video of I Have A Dream and Jayden found a music for her. I told Angel how to pause in at some strong line or words to make it even stronger. Another thing I like so much is the dramatic pause; for example, Ryan paused a long time in his first video take. Even though plaguing long time is not good, but when he put a back ground music and emotion changed from one line to another line it was too good to believe that he accidently forgot the line. I'm impressed that Jayden and Ryan came up with perfect musics for their monologue which I have never done before in my past monologues. I have to confess that musics do make the scene looks better and easier to understand the emotion and meaning.

At the last, I want to congrat everyone who has shown us all these great performances, and I hope they all learned, and use them to make next project even better. I will always see my future works from three perspectives which are actors’, directors’ and audiences’. I believe a great performance must be correct by these three different people because a show can not go on without anyone of them. 

Monologue

So far I have seen Jack and Cade's first monologue and both of them are great monologue. For Cade's monologue he can do either angry and aggressive or comedic, so I will aks him to try both ways and see which one he likes better. For Jack I think the monologue will be focusing on pacing, so the audience will truly believe that he is talking to someone on the phone. I read Jack's blog about the background and character, and I want to see how he shows us the awkwardness. And I am looking forward working with them. 

Different Perspective!

This is the third time I take this class, so I have done so many works about silent movie. However, this time is so different than others because I am a director instead of an actor. To be honest, director is much harder than I thought, and it is also much more interesting than I except it would be.  I especially enjoyed three parts of this group project, and they are staging, costuming and video editing. As a director, I could see the show in the audience position, so I can make the change to make it better as soon as I find out there is a problem. And I couldn't do it before as an actor which is helping me more with my staging skills. I also need to find the costume for all the actors which is a pretty fun process because as an actor I might feel uncomfortable or shy to try costumes that I never tried before, but as a director I always have some crazy costumes for them because I know better how they looks when I see them for the audience’s perspective. The last thing is video editing, and I am trying to make it better and better than before.

I used to work as an actor with other classmates, so when we are working together we normally stage it naturally with our own understanding of our characters, so sometimes it looks not so good from audience side. And this is also why we need to video our work and watch it, or we will not know what we do wrong and what we need to work on more. However, I can now see the staging all the time, so I can make all the change i need immediately. For example, in this silent movie, Jaden and Jack kept blocking each other, but they didn't realize because they were focusing on the fighting scene with William. If I was not watching this scene, I would not notice this problem which can cause confusion. I am very happy that I can be a director because I will be more careful in the future acting.

The other thing I really enjoy is costuming, and this is the greatest part of this silent movie project. At the beginning, everyone in my group wants a girl character in the movie, so it wil make it more funny. Then I had the idea of dressing a boy up as a girl, and I was impressed that Cade is a such talented actor who is so brave to try a girl’s dress and make it even more hilarious than my expectation. To be honest, I was not thinking that Cade would wear that pink dress, but as an actor he showed his great ability to handle things that people cannot handle in daily life. Other actors also showed their abilities to make a amazing ninja silent movie.For example, I enjoyed the chemistry between students and master, and they made their props which are swords and cane be one of their best tool  to make the scene such a pleasure.

The last thing and the most important thing is the production which is the video. I used to use only one music for my first silent movie and then I used four different music for my my second silent movie. But this time I used not only musics but also so many sound effects in the movie. For example, I put cheering sound when the master catch the paper flight. I honestly enjoyed the process of editing videos because every time I see people love my videos I feel so happy. And thought this processes I learned more and more so I can make my videos better and better and make audiences enjoy more.

I want to thank everyone who helps me to make this super successful silent movie, and I am looking forward to work more with all of my classmates. Different perspective gives me all new ideas of staging, costuming and video editing, and these ideas are helping me to improve all my skills. So far I'm enjoying all the directing work and I hop it can help me to improve myself and make me a better actor. Hope we will all enjoy this class even more.