SWIFT- Performing arts fairy tale performances

Today we saw the the performing arts group perform their own interpretations of modern fairy tails. The first performance was of the Golden Goose story. It had a wealthy man and a wife with 3 sons and there was a strange old man. The third and youngest son was disliked by his family because he is the youngest.
William came across the weird old man in the forest when he was chopping down wood. He let him have some cake and water. As a reward for letting him have some cake he gave William a scarf. When people saw the scarf they all fell in love with it. The scarf brings him good luck. He manages to make a princess laugh, so that meant he could marry her. They all acted very well, especial Ryan as he did a really good job of his part and he played out the creepy man really well.

The second performance was of Hansel and Gretel. They were in court with judge judy. They were in court for vandalism for eating her house. Hansel and Gretel were portrayed as chavs. This was my favourite performance as it was really funny. The people who played Hansel and Gretel performed their parts extremely well but the person playing their defence didn't  project her voice very well but the performance in general were really good.

The last performance was of Cinderella. They didn't change much of the plot but they changed the Prince and the Fairy God Mother's character. They could have done more to change it more as the last 2 performances were a lot different to the original fairy tale. I liked the Princes character, she was my favourite character in the performance even though she didn't say much.

Casino Royale Variety Performance

Today at college we had the privilege of viewing a fantastic variety performance from the cast of the up and coming performance of Casino Royale (not the James Bond film).  The stage was set as a casino, where in the middle of the stage the was a roulette wheel where the man with the light would spin it around and it would land on a number where there would be a performance completely different from the last. There was singing and dancing and a few random sketches. The performances were really camp: It was like Fame and Pineapple dance studios put together. Plus Wagbo!!!!!!
Performances:
The camp lion taming sketch was hilarious. There were 2 lion tamers called Hansel and Grettle who were insanely camp and absolutely hilarious. They were like Bruno and Louis Spence. There was so many innuendos it was totally hilarious; I was in stitches.
The performance of 'Big spender' was extremely saucy ;) There was lots of girls dancing wearing very little. They did a tribute to Abba by singing Money,money,money which was dressed down (or dressed up compared to other performances) with the most fantastic harmonies.
There was a man who pretended to be Mr. Bean. He didn't look much like him but he copied Rowan Atkinson's expressions really well and started to do his Mr. Boombastic dance which was fantastic.
There was tap and indian dancing. They were very good dancers but the noises of the tapping and jingly things totally did my head in!
I recommend that go and see the show because you will be amazed and in stitches. It's brilliant!!

Evaluation of Culture show.

We recently made a small installment of the BBC's Culture Show. In our programme we had to talk about the college before we would interview another student participating in our Creative and Media course. When editing our short film we used Final Cut Pro, Motion and Soundtrack Pro and Filmed it with Sony A1E cameras.

The SonyA1E cameras were brilliant. We were really lucky to use the cameras because they are fantastic quality and really expensive so i decided to present our piece instead of being the clumsy camera man and drop it. We found out about that the white balance would change if you filmed out of a window it would change to blue, we found this out when editing our video.

This is what we found out about filming: Composition is the placement of objects in the frame. The rule of thirds or 'center of intrest' is when you place your film into a 3x3 grid. The looking space is the place where the presenter is looking: this makes the picture less constricted and give the audience an awarness of the space and whats going on around them. Horizontal lines create stabillity and Verticals create strengh while Diagonal lines create a sense of drama. Lastly, Motion space is the empty space on the side where the subjects is walking, which heightens the feeling of emotion. 

When editing the vidoe we used final cut pro. I found this hardest part of the project and needed help from John. I reallly liked using Motion and Soundtrack. In motion we made a cool title for our show and took it a step up but making the soundtrack was my faourite part. I'm really intrested in  making music so I was really kean to contribute to the soundtrack. At first found it a sruggle to find a relevant tune to match the programme but I'm really pleased with the soundtrack.

We have uploaded our video on to youtube and I am very excited to see our project on their but I'm not too keen on people seeing my terrible side parting at one point in the video. Here is our completed project.

Tour of Stratford

Recently we went on a tour of Stratford on a bus and we visited Shakespeare's birthplace.
On the bus journey we learnt and found out a lot of things. We saw a flat top tree that had been around for a five hundred years. The tree was quite impressive but if i was making one of those audio guides for the bus I wouldn’t include this as it is just a tree. We learned that Shakespeare’s birthplace was sold a few hundred years ago for £3K. I found this fact quite interesting as it may not sound like a lot now but was insane amounts for back then. A man from Stratford came up with the idea to put frog saliva down throats if it was saw or they had a cold, this is where the phrase 'a frog in your throat' comes from and that some people slept on beds made from rope which is where the phrase 'good night, sleep tight' comes from were 2 more things that we found out. Kids had tilly willy ale and grown men had 8 pints of ale back in the day, salary is Latin for salt and people use to get paid in salt and that’s why we use salary now as a common substitution for wages were EVEN MORE interesting facts we found out.
On the tour we found out a lot of facts that were totally irrelevant to Stratford itself and found out little about Shakespeare, which is what most people would like to find out about when on a trip to Stratford.
When we arrived at the birthplace we watched some screens about Shakespeare himself for a while, this gave us a good introduction into his life and his plays. After this we moved on to the house itself. In the house we discovered that William's father was a glove maker and we found out about gloves and how gloves were made back then, I found this quite interesting purely because of the weird man who was giving the talk on them. Next we saw a timeline of Shakespeare and the entered the bedroom. In the bedroom we found out where the phrase ‘good night, sleep tight’ again… this made me quite disappointed as i was hoping to find out some more stuff about what it was like living back then, she also said something about it being important what colour your bed sheets were as they would keep spirits away but I didn't hear it properly as I was taking in the scenery of the room. We then moved on to the court yard where we saw a random performance of a drunken man taking a rollicking from his wife. The performance was well set out and funny, cheering me up from what hadn't been an exactly spectacular tour.
Overall I found the Birthplace better because I found the Bus journey a bit tedious. The bus journey gave you a good idea of what it was like in medieval times but I wasn’t in the mood for a boring history lesson with the woman with the most boring voice in the world so found it hard not to change languages to cheer myself up and I was also pondering the question of why do you have an open top bus if you could get whacked in the face by a tree where as the Birthplace you could be told it to your face and made it easier and a more enjoyable experience of learning about medieval times.

The Culture Show- Music

I watched Lauren Leverne Interviewing the band 'Arctic Monkeys' which can be found here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cultureshow/videos/2009/08/s6_e5_arctic/index.shtml

Mise en Scene
The interview was set in a small studio with a stage. This was a very low key interview as Alex Turner and Matt Helders from the band werent dressed up for the occasion at all. At the end of the interview they gave a good performance of their single crying lightning.

Sound
The interview contained a lot of non-diegetic sound as it was just Lauren Leverne and the band members chatting. At some points in the video there was some Diegetic souns as she would chat about the band while the a song from the Arctic monkyes was playing.

Lighting
During the Interview the lighting was low key and dark, which made it quite intimate. The lighting in the performance of Crying lightning was very low key as you could just about make out their bodies as they turned off all the lights and just had random pictures of eyes in the background of the stage.

Camera + Editing
Most of the interview was close-ups. The low key lighting with the close ups made it very intimate as it made you feel as if you were next to them.
The cutting rate was slow as it is an interview and they only cut to the next person when they started so it was quite boring really but the interview and performance was good.

Ikon/Eastside projects Birmingham

Ikon and Eastside projects are art galleies in Birmingham.

Eastside projects had an exhibition called local myths. This had some fantastic pieces of modern art, sculptures, photography and pottery.
The artist Jennifer Tee managed to accumulate some insane pieces, no matter how odd they looked, a personal favourite of mine was the massive hand in the middle of a field which really creeped me out as it popped of the picture. Her symbolic pieces lie, hang and stand around the space and gives you the impression that you are in the unique mind of a genius.

At the Ikon Gallery was something a little bit different to most art exhibitions. The exhibition wsa called the Hitchcock Hallway, in honour of Hitchcock film Rope (1948) eventhough it was slightly misentpreted by AVPD, the artists.
The exhibition was something that will certainly stick in the memory for a while.It was a series of rooms that were all whit and all 1m by 2m. Once you entered one room you would discover a room mimicing the room you have just left, this went on for a while and manager to give you claustraphobia, live a nightmare ande make you think that you were in a horror film at the same time, amazing. The ultimate simple yet genuis idea managed to mesmorise the mind as you went on a journey to discover your ultimate nightmare.

Cultural Cafe Performance- Yao Culture

Stratford College today celebrated the culture of Yao, which is a traditional culture from China, through a performance in Costa's Cultural cafe including singing, dancing, fancy costumes and a 'pull of war' wrestle which a couple of boys from the audience participating in their cultural celebration. They performed to promote and celebrate their culture and their oncoming performance in the college as it is their first time here. The majority of the audience seemed to respond well and enjoy the unique experience of the Yao performers even though they probably weren't sure of what was going on. The audience seemed to really enjoy the other couple members of the audience having a go at the wrestling with the pole and member of the Yao choir. I was pesonally unamused and unsure of what was going on at times as its especially hard to know what they were saying because the were singing in their native language, which made it hard to enjoy the performance. It was a good taster of things to come but its certainly not for me.