LIEF EVE MACIAS- response to questions.

Final Major Project- Log- On performance and process.

From the first day of our final major project rehearsals, we managed to fulfil every rehearsal with learning text, actions and gestures and camera work. The rehearsals were never easy, a lot of the time they were intense, stressful and were very much in need of patience. I feel like we managed all of these elements with intelligence in finding ways to work around shots, and finding the best ways in making them as close to “The Shining” as possible. I found myself and the group feeling surprised at how compatible we were with the characters from the film. Therefore the hard work was completed very early on, although the stress of having complications, mistakes, technical problems never managed to fade away. Yet this is something we realised that we needed to accept and keep as a part of the performance and the main key point.

We progressed slowly at first, as it was difficult in not having everyone present within the group and rehearsals. Therefore many people lost the clarity and memory in many of their queues, which meant us having to recap over certain elements, Yet when finally knowing everything off by heart such as remembering the ordering of scenes etc., the progress got much faster.

The performance became more professional with our choreography as the crew and camera people; in making sure we place props and walk across the space with reasoning and looking as if we know exactly what we are going to do and when.

I feel like some of our rehearsals became flat, our acting was lacking, emotional connection, projection in our vocals were weak and too quiet, reasoning and meaning behind our actions needed more belief and thought and the professionalism. Perhaps due to the amount of times we had rehearsed the performance, I feel like sometimes people as well as myself, lacked in having energy in what we were doing. Yet when it came to our performance and our nerves and excitement kicked in, I feel like this brought us all together even more as a group, the emotions and feelings became one and we all found that large amount of energy running through our bodies. What our tutor Ash and we as individuals and a group were hoping that all the faults and elements that needed work would suddenly come together and have life to them, the emotions would become real; the vocals would be larger than they ever have been. I think that many of us had doubts about how well the performance would go, whether the feedback from the audience would be good, and whether the type of performance that we were performing, that was very different and unique and not our usual type of style would be successful.

Thankfully the performance had an energy to it from the beginning, as we often had trouble during rehearsals in making sure the first few scenes didn’t drag to much or feel slightly flat, as they were also very important, but because of the energy and pressure we were feeling from having an audience, this made it feel very fluid and had a great tempo and atmosphere to it, which was a relief especially as it was giving the important story and facts to the film and performance that the audience would need to know to understand.

The last sequence of the scene was the best it had ever been, as it looks very chaotic yet the operating and camera shots were very clear, and we were more accurate in what we were doing and where to move within the space. I felt out of breath, tired and had butterflies throughout, which id never really felt before which I felt was a great help in proving to myself that I worked harder than usual with my vocals and physicality.

The response from the audience was amazing, to be able to see people sat on the edge of their seats, to hear laughter in the more dramatic elements of the performance is something I wasn’t expecting as much of, although it was nice as it showed how our they enjoyed our interoperation of the images actions and scenes- e.g.- when Chris is frozen Jack at the end of the performance- this gained much laughter on the evening performance. A lot of the response from the audience was how they felt a mixture of emotions and enjoyed our directions too one another and how there were mistakes and it was as if they were able to see from the backstage point of view. Rather than the perfect completed performance on stage.