Promenade theatre and chorus.

Today we were given the location at the school in which our scene will take place. We were given an outside site, this makes sense as our scene is Creon addressing the people of Thebes (chorus). We were given the courtyard and the fire exit balcony. I thought that this was fantastic as Creon will stand at the top of the balcony and address the chorus the same way as kings or queens used to do. It also would make the characters classes more distinct as Creon is of born of wealth, therefore he is higher up in the social hierarchy. Because of this, Creon would be placed on the balcony to symbolise his higher authority over the chorus, who are lower down the hierarchy and placed below him in the courtyard.

I don't particularly like the distance between the placement of Creon and the audience. The distance would be quiet significant meaning that it would be difficult for them to hear my lines. Mr Crowther said he would like me to use a megaphone to project my voice. This is a good idea as the audience would actually hear me. But, I would prefer to set up a microphone to some speakers as a megaphone would distort my voice and make my diction unclear. Although they would almost certainly hear me, the wouldn't understand me. So a microphone would make it louder and clearer. 

When multimedia comes into play, there isn't a lot we can work with because the performance will take place in spring time meaning daylight hours will be lengthening. This means we cannot use any lighting equipment such as mobile phones or torches as it would be too bright to use them. We also won't be able to use a projector in any form because of the same reason. We are very restricted with the use of multimedia even if we do have a lot of ideas. 

Live feed, music and mobile phones - multimedia lesson.

Live feed

We have learnt about several different ways to incorporate multimedia into our performances, one of which we learnt about is called 'live feed'. Mr Crowther gave us a demonstration of live feed in one of our lessons, in which he setup a handycam to a projector that was pointed at the wall. This sparked various ideas in my head. Can we use this to intimidate and make the audience feel uncomfortable? Maybe we could use this in a larger scale.

I find that live feed can be a powerful tool in terms of multimedia (although any multimedia can be powerful). It adds a unique and interesting finish to a scene which you couldn't get with live theatre. You feel as if you are watching a TV show or film being made right in front of you! 

One way we could incorporate live feed into our performance is by having a camera set up directly at Creons face whilst he says his speech and have it projected onto the large wall at the bottom of the stairs. This could give the impression of the people viewing his speech on TV or on the news. This could make the audience feel even more important to the scene as they feel like they are the people of Thebes watching the announcement for the first time, LIVE!

We could also have a live feed pointed towards our chorus and projected onto different areas. Maybe Michelle is projected onto one wall whilst Taffy and Alex are on another, making the audience intimidated as the chorus seem to be surrounding them from every angle. 

Using audio in Garage Band 

Ms Bailem taught us briefly how to use GarageBand and what the potential uses could be.

I thought that audio in our performance could make our scenes more atmospheric as we could create a piece of music which coincides with Creons evil nature and play it through some speakers. I personally think sound can stir up just as much emotions in someone than a performance can.

But there are less pros than cons when it comes to sound outside. 

It might be difficult as our scene is outside. This means we'd have to play the music louder to be able to hear it, which would drown out the sound of my voice. This would be bad as the audience must hear my speech to be able to understand why polynieces is not going to be buried. Also, to bring speakers outside you would need to have a cable extendor or adaptor. This would be complicated as you would have a long wire running through the school to the performance space. One way you could tackle this problem is by having Bluetooth wireless speakers that run on batteries. This way we could carry it around with us and save space because you don't have to use wires.

Mobile phones

By adding mobile phones to the performance you unlock a huge variety of choices. You could use photos and videos to display something. You could even download the mobile version of GarageBand and play the audio for your scene from your phone. We used our mobile phone lights in the ensemble choral scene in the play. We used to phones lights to illuminate the room as it was dimly light. This made the scene rather eerie and creepy.