Entry 2 (08/04/2022)

07/04/2022

Today we spoke to Dan Fox the theatre technician at our college about our project and how we’d go about constructing the shadow screen. We had a conversation about how it can be held taught, lighting from behind and where to get fabric from. We also realised we would need to experiment with the fabric and light to find out where wed need to stand to ensure good clarity on the shadows, so we decided on April 29th so we had time to source the fabric. Dan also suggested we rehearse Thursday & Friday in the dance studio in college as it is free so we will look into booking that. We all thought this was a very useful meeting and made notes throughout which I will add to my research part of my website. We concluded that it would be beneficial to get the fabric during the Easter holidays and play around with lighting and getting it right the week after Easter holidays. This would give us plenty of time to adapt our plan if the screen wasn’t working as we had hoped it to. Giving ourselves time to adapt our plan and create backups is essential when tackling a project like this and I will be implementing this further into my project and in my further projects.

08/04/2022

Today we spoke to the textiles department (Nancy Nicklin and Becky Roberts), we looked around the department at different fabrics and I put my phone torch behind the fabrics with my hand to see if shadows would project through, we looked at some free options but after looking at all the options we felt like cotton or poly-cotton would be the best choice. We then talked about size, we wanted 8ft by 12ft (2.3m by 3.7m) and upon looking at their options they had cut all the cotton and poly cotton shorter, which was a little discouraging, however, they said they could order more in when they did their next order, which they planned to do second week of half term. After further questioned we found out that it takes 3 weeks to be delivered which was too long for us as we had planned with Dan Fox to do experiments with the fabric on the 29th of April. We than spoke to them about alternative places and mentioned “Doughtys” a fabric shop in Hereford Dan Fox had mentioned, Becky then called the shop to enquire about types of fabric they had for us. We found out that a poly-cotton sheet 4m by 2.5m would be perfect for our project and only cost £6 per metre. We also had a look at the website the tutors use to order in the fabric to see if we could get quicker shipping, we could but it would still take too long so we decided going down to Doughtys would be the best way to get the fabric. I think talking to the textiles department was very useful and helped us get a real idea of what we needed which will help us when going to the fabric shop and knowing what to ask for.