Entry 7 (21.05.2022)
On Wednesday we spent the day rehearsing, making props and EQing our songs. Bluebell had told us she was going to be arriving late so Dan and I had to rehearse with just the two of us, which wasn't a huge issue as Bluebell only acts in the last two scenes briefly. Dan and I went through each scene one at a time, suggesting to each other changes and actions that could be made. We had also rehearsed the scene Denial with the changes we decided from last weeks feedback from our tutor, and thought it worked very well and broke up the scene and made it more entertaining but still stayed on theme. Once we had gotten through all the scenes once over we decided against videoing the scenes now and decided it would be better to record them after we made the props, so instead we had an early lunch so we could start making props when Bluebell arrived. After lunch and Bluebells arrival we started making our props, we first made some of the symbols used to offer to actor 2 in the bargaining scene. These symbols were meant to symbolise things that someone grieving feel they may want to offer so that they can get the person they're grieving back, and breathing again. Then we made the grave that will be stood at stage left. We didn't really have enough cardboard so we had to to tape bits together for this, I think in the future instead of using cardboard we use as home i'll ask college as they get lots of deliveries and the art class probably has lots.
After we made the props we rehearsed with them, the videos of that are on my instagram. Personally I'm still rather unsure during the anger scene so will be working on that over the next week to make sure I know it well for the show. We didn't have the biggest place to rehearse in Dans house, so with props our we had to scale down the stage which made acting hard as when walking to on place it would take less time than it would using the screen, so we had to walk very slowly and wait a little to mimic how long it would take to get from one place to another and how long an action would take. Finally we got a little bit of EQing done, Dan had to use headphones for this though so Bluebell and I got some other work done whilst he did that.
On Thursday Dan was out of college, so Bluebell and I spent the day doing some EQing, starting the programs and poster and writing up some work. We went against our timetable as the studio in college was being used, so we moved EQing to second period and decided to work on what the inside of the poster will look like along with what the poster will. Bluebell was already in contact with a college peer from the art department who said they would make the poster, she wanted more details so we sketched her out a general idea.
This was the sketch we came up with, we liked the idea of having a silhouette in the poster, we also wanted our project name, names, date, place and time on there. however We didn't yet know a time, other than knowing it was in the afternoon so we told the designer we'd tell her as soon as we knew. (When sketching I wrote production instead of performance as well, however we went the designer a text explaining that was a mistake.) Despite us making a sketch for the designer she ended up asking us later in the day if we had a photo she could use instead, we didn't but suggested we are doing rehearsals with the screen tomorrow we will take a photo for you then. For the inside of the programs we decided on having each stage on its own page, with a small synopsis on what the stage is and how a person may feel and then the lyrics to the song we allocated to that stage, and at the end we wanted to include some grief support hotlines and websites. I started making these, making the layout of the inside along with titles and started typing song lyrics into each stage. After a brief break to get some fresh air, Bluebell and I then went to the studio to EQ the rest of 'How You Remind Me' previously the guitars had been EQ'd but we still had bass and vocals to do so we got to work on that, I started with the bass, I added a gain, compressor and then channel Eq'd it, I used a template for bass EQ on Logic I found online and followed that, making any changes I found necessary. I then started to work on vocals, I wasn't very happy with the track as the guitar kept hitting the top of the volume and cutting out, which made for horrible 'crack' noises however I had tried to rectify this but hadn't had much luck. Whilst I was doing vocals, Zen, one of our peers poked his head in to say hi, he had recently been in a recording studio and the man he was working with showed him some techniques when mixing, so I asked Zen if he knew how to fix my problem. Zen tried a couple of things, most of which didn't do anything, until he tried the last thing he was going to try, what this did was allow us to turn down certain parts of the guitar tracks, if there was too many high range frequencies we could turn that down and turn mid range up. In this case we had to turn down everything, which helped bring down those 'crack' noises whilst also retaining the volume we needed during the chorus. We thanked Zen and then carried on with vocals, the vocals in 'How You Remind Me' are quite raw sounding so we used a preset vocal compressor called 'Natural voice', and I found an EQ template online again and used that to EQ the voice, and then we were done with this track!
On Friday, we spent most of the day rehearsing, we put our screen up and got our props out and started going through the scenes. Our tutor, Alex, came in to make sure we were on task and watched the scene 'Anger', he gave us some feedback on this scene as there was a space in the middle of the scene where there wasn't much happening, so he suggested that we add an extra part in there. We brainstormed and thought if I pulled Dan onto stage and then pushed him off aggressively it would be quite effective, we then developed that into me punching him as well. We also added a section where I pick up the flowers at the grave and throw them to the floor. We recorded parts of a few scenes and recorded the anger scene the whole way through and I posted these on my instagram. I think our primary focus on rehearsals today was a good use of our time as so far we hadn't had much rehearsal time and were getting a little worried we'd mess up the acting on our final show.
After rehearsals Dan went to continue mastering our songs whilst Bluebell and I went to make a larger grave, as Alex had suggested as well as some of the words on cards and some extra props.
We went down to the art department and asked if they had cardboard, they said they didn't but to ask the canteen, so we went to the canteen and asked and they had plenty of cardboard for us to use. We then signed into the art room and drew out our designs before cutting them out with scalpels. Bluebell and I didn't get all the words cut out but Bluebell said she had materials at home to finish them so she plans to do that over the weekend. Splitting up and doing different tasks was a huge time saving decision, it meant that we could both get closer to having all the songs mastered and have the props ready for the show.
Overall I think the penultimate week of our project was exactly what it needed to be, we managed to rehearse a lot, bring together props and have everything ready for the show, including poster, programs and more. We have set it up nicely that on Wednesday we won't have to do loads of work right before the show and can focus on tightening up little bits we needed to do so the shows perfect. In the future i'd like to have a similar penultimate week as I think it went well, however I would prefer to have more done by this point, so that it didn't feel somewhat like a rush to get the final big things done.
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