Double Performing Arts Lesson (27th January 2016)

Last lesson we we asked to research a famous narrator. We started this lesson by discussing the narrator we chose to research and why we liked the way they narrate. I decided to research Brian Blessed as my narrator. I chose him because he is very unorthodox. His voice is boomy and recognisable. Other members of the group (like James) chose to take the more obvious approach with Morgan Freeman.

We discussed using our chosen narrators, what makes a good narrator, so Miss Cordell suggested we watch the 'Reduced Shakespeare Company'. This company tells the entire works of Shakespeare in an easy to understand and more engaging way. As a group we agreed that we liked the way the narrator sat on the stage with a literal book but had other actors to help him tell the story. The other actors were key to the performance because they added movement to the piece and make it more interesting to watch.

(The video we watched)                                

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XR1qWLaagU

After this we moved back onto 'The Snow Queen'. We read through Ollie's scene and discussed what techniques he wanted to use. As Ollie's script  is spoken rather than recorded, he decided he wanted to use  the same techniques used in the video we watched and read his script out of a book aswell. He thought as his scene was the last one in our story he would end the entire production with him closing his book, as if it was a story inside a story. 

We were given jobs to do for the next lesson, I volunteered to create the 'Mise en Scene' for the performance to go towards my film studies work, so I agreed to go home and create a layout for how and where I believed the lights should be placed.