Friday, 11 March 2011

SWIFT - Performing Arts

Today at college (11/3/11), we went to watch the SWIFT Performing Arts group to watch them perform their first assessment based on fairytales. The produced 3 sketches.

  The first one was based on the golden goose fairytale. It was about a wealthy man with a wife and three kids. The youngest of which was named William. William is a young boy who is treated like dirt by his family because he was the last born.  One day, William goes into the forest to chop some wood and bumps into an old, homeless man. The man asks William if he can have some of his food and water as his other two brothers did not let him. William lets him have some and the old man rewards him by granting him a scarf. This scarf then brings William good luck and gets married to the beautiful princess and live happily ever after. I think this sketch was good because they acted out there roles well and this helped me paint a picture in my mind out the fairytale.

  The next sketch was a spoof of Hansel and Gretel. This was about two yobs called Hansel and Gretel who were causing trouble at the witches house. She then took them to Judge Judy's court because of their vandalism. This sketch was my favourite because it was very funny and entertaining. The students played there roles well and even involved the audience when we all had to stand up for the judge as if we were a jury.

  The final sketch was Cinderella. It was a typical copy of the Cinderella storyline. There is not much really i could say about this appart from the actors played their roles well and were good characters for the role.


:)

 

Thursday, 2 December 2010

Casino Royale

This morning at college, the Creative and Media Diploma group went to see a performance from the Musical Theatre group. it was called Casino Royale. The show was a variety of music, dancing, comedy and circus sketches. Each sketch was chosen by a large roulette wheel on the floor.

  The first of the sketches was a singing and dancing performance based in a casino. It started off with singing and dancing with many young women acting as waitresses in a casino restaurant. Then it turned into a fight between the waiters over the girls.
 
  We then got introduced to the presenter. He was very good because he involved the audience very much and he explained what each sketch was about. He came back onto the spotlight in between each sketch.
 
  The second sketch was a comedy performance called Mr. Bean. A student at college played the role of the clumsy roan Atkinson character. It was a classic Mr. Bean sketch based in a casino. He won some money in a gambling machine and then many flirty girls came and took off his jacket, shirt, t-shirt and eventually ripped off his trousers, leaving only his socks, shoes, pants and vest! It was very amusing.
 
  The third sketch was yet another comedy sketch called Hansel and Grettle. Hansel and Grettle was played by two male students as a very gay austrian couple. They were rubbish yet very cocky magicians and were very funny!

  Next was the cancan girls! They were very good and very entertaining (especially for the lads!). They were played by the women of the group and were very much in time with each other and the music.

  Then there was illusion. this was two unidentified people who did an amazing dance in the dark with only neon lights and sound effects. They were wearing only black suits and two white masks. One on the back of their head and one on the front. They then swung some multi-coloured balls around in a clear sack.

  They then performed a sketch of the famous ABBA song money, money, money. This was performed by the boys in the group. Half of the boys were young men who were rich. The other half were very ugly women! The ugly women were flirting with the rich men and it was quite funny. The singing and dancing on the other hand was brilliant!

  Next was the Bollywood babes. The women of the group performed a traditional belly dance to indian music. It was very entertaining.

 

  To me, these were the highlights of the show but I did like the other acts. These just stood out to me theist.

A fantastic performance and showed great potential.

:)

Friday, 19 November 2010

Youtube video - Culture Show: S-U-A College

Recently at college, we created our own versions of the popular TV show The Culture Show.  We interviewed some of the students and  they gave us feedback about their opinion of the college.  Although we had not a lot of footage, we ended up creating a good piece of work thanks to the editor Daedyn.

Friday, 12 November 2010

The Culture Show - Evaluation

Over The Culture Show period, i have learned:


COMPOSITION:
Composition is the placement of objects in the frame. This allows the Mise-en-Scene to be composed.

RULE OF THRIDS:
Rule of thirds is placing it along one of the four equally spaced intersecting lines. It is referred to as "the centre of interest".

LINES:
Horizontal lines: Stability
Vertical lines: Strength
Diagonal lines: Sense of Drama.

 LOOKING SPACE:
Looking space is an empty space where the subject is looking/facing/talking. It is less constricted and is very important for giving the audience an awareness of space.

MOTION SPACE:
Motion space is an empty space on the side where the subject is moving or walking. (eg: height is the feeling of motion).

  We have been using SONY A1 cameras with an XLR to film our culture show footage. We learned how to change the white balance. You do it by pressing P-Menu, Menu, Camera Set, White Balance then One Push. After, you press P-Menu, Menu, Assign Button, One push White Balance then Assign. Once we had filmed the footage we had time for, we edited it on Final Cut Pro. Final Cut Pro is an editing software which you can add voice overs, cut scenes, add effects and much more! When then made a beat for a backing track using Soundtrack Pro. Soundtrack Pro is the software we used  to create the backing track for our video. We then used a program called motion to create effects for credits and the intro. Once we saved and finished off the video, we "attempted" to upload them onto YouTube.

  The whole experience was great and i enjoyed it very much :)

Thursday, 4 November 2010

A Day Out In Stratford upon Avon - Friday 22nd October 2010

Stratford upon Avon sight seeing bus:

On our tour of Stratford we stopped at many stops. The main of which were:

Halls croft, Shakespeare's birthplace ,Anne Hathaway's cottage and the new Stratford armouries.
We also went through the whole of Stratford town and as we were going round, we were listening to a woman who was telling us alot of useful information to help us know what we are looking at, where we are and many facts about the attritions and the town.
I think that the tour guide was very good because I learnt alot and found out many facts. It was also very good because the language could be changed to many different languages such as English, Italian, French, Spanish, Chinese, japanese, german and many more!
This attraction was very good in my opinion and I recromend it.


Shakespeare's birthplace:

The second attraction we went to was Shakespeare's birthplace. This half-timbered building in Henley Street, with its extensive ground to the rear, was bought by Shakespeare's father, John, probably in two stages (in 1556 and 1575): there is good evidence, though, that he was a tenant of one part, if not both, from at least 1552. This is the house where Shakespeare and his brothers and sisters were born and brought up.
We walked around the house an spoke to many of the staff dotted around the house who of which told us about each room the were in and what the Shakespeare family would do un there.
I think that the tourism was also very good and again I learned a lot from this trip. The tourism was also very good on this trip because the staff were dressed up in shakespearian style clothing. This helped the tourists come alive and got me very interested. This made me paint a picture in my mind of what it would be like in them times.

In my opinion, I think that the both of the attractions were very good but if I had to pick a favourite it would be the tour bus. This is because it was a good, fun and interesting experience. I also did like the Shakespeare's birthplace but I had never been on an open top bus before and the birthplace I had been to many things similar to the birthplace.
Overall, the day was a great day out and I enjoyed it a lot. Hopefully we can do something like it again.

:)
:)

Monday, 11 October 2010

The Other Guys

The Other Guys is a film rated 12A and is in the cinemas in the U.K now. It is about two completely missed matched detectives who both have always dreamed of being New York City's top cops to follow in their idols's footsteps. Although that did not quite go to plan.
The-Other-Guys.jpeg

 This movie reminded me of another movie called Starsky and Hutch which is also about two police officers who want to be the best cops in all of the force but are the worst in the history of the entire force but end up sealing up a drug deal and become very popular with completing this mission with only one lifeline left.

Ballard of Easy Rider - The Culture Show

Mise en Scene

There was three musicians playing the guitar, Kathryn Williams, John Head and Romeo Stoddard all of The Magic Numbers who got together and performed "The Byrds" track Ballard of Easy Rider at the Port Elliot festival. They performed on the side of a river.

 Sound

All of the sound was diegetic because they were singing and playing the guitar to an audience at a festival.

Lighting

When the camera was facing the audience, I noticed that the lighting was a spotlight high key light.

Camera Work

Many of the compositions were mid-shot with a few close-ups. This is to show the emotions of the musicains. There was one shot where the angle of the camera was tilted up the guitar to make a good affect. The camera was also panning from left to right and right to left to show all of the guitar players's facial expressions.


Editing

There was no cutting rate because there was no tension needed to be built. There was aboloutly no cutting rate at all and the transitions either had been no need for because of the panning of the camera and the camera switch for a different angle.