Devising: Day 4

Today was a rather difficult day as one of our members was not present, so we couldn't actually do any run throughs or create new scenes. Instead, we created and set the dance that Finn and Tess do when they meet. Personally, I found this very difficult as it was the first time I had ever danced a more ballroom style, to be honest I do not really dance at all so I need to put some practice in and seek guidance from Dan Mckay, who is in a dance company and choreographed our little movement piece. I found the dance awkward at the beginning as I need to show how much my character loves Tess, but at the same time have my reasons for why I found it difficult that I will not mention. Eventually, we managed to run through the dance all the way. There were problems in my movement, as I know I am quite rigid, but as time goes on I will loosen up and work on the dance to make it look a lot more natural .

The music we chose to accompany our dance is called "Sentimental Mood" by Duke Ellington, we did spend a good half an hour or so trying to choose music as we needed to build our piece around the music, so we waited until we found the perfect piece. Unfortunately, after looking through the Great Gatsby sound tracks, we couldn't find anything better than what we already had, so settled with "Sentimental Mood". We chose this as it is from the 1930's which fits the time period perfectly and because it is rather relaxed, allowing us to move freely. However, as it has no particular rhythm, creating our movements were hard at first, so we just improvised at first and managed to pick out bits we liked before converting them into our piece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR13ECD71xU

In the piece, our characters need to make sure that we really portray the fact that we love each other. If not, it will look awkward and forced, essentially an obvious piece of trying to act. We haven't got as far as lighting or where on the stage we do this, at the moment, we should try and get a whole storyboard finished and set before we focus on lighting, as ideas will spring to us as we continue to think. The progress we have made so far is very good, we have a good block to build upon, but for the next lesson, we have to make sure that we plough onwards and get an idea of how we want the story to progress, where we go from here? What happens next? How are we going to end it? These issues need to be addressed.