Pregnant and Depressed

    In our acting class, we have been asked to memorize and perform two scenes, focusing on our motivation and the emotion behind each and every line, along with the characters backstories.

    My first part is a girl by the name of Patti. She's in highschool, probably about 15, and very much an introvert, although she has a good amount of friends at school. However, none of her friends are really close enough so that she can tell them anything, that role had always been taken by Kenny, her older brother. She doesn't see a life without him, and even claims that "He was the only one who ever talked to her." Unfortunatly, a few days before this scene, Kenny is killed in a sitting car by carbon monoxide poisioning. At the time, he was on a date with Mary, the sister of Bo, the boy with Patti in this scene.

    This tragedy leaves Patti devestated. She keeps herself locked in her room, and refuses to eat anything or go to school, even though her mother won't stop nagging her about it. When Bo enters in the beginning, she's mad at him, thinking he's just another ploy by her mother who's trying to get her to eat. Patti doesn't want to look at him, or really even talk. To demonstrate this, I hide my head in my knees and refuse to look up at him. Bo, however, calmly talks her into letting him sit down next to her, and they bond over the definition of carbon monoxide - which, strangely Patti has memorized. She's punishing herself for being alive, for still living even though her brother is dead. To her, Kenny's death can be blamed on her - she didn't roll down the windows, and that damn carbon monoxide managed to cut off the oxygen of her brother and it killed him. As a result, she memorized the definition and she's torturing herself with it, and she turns to Bo for comfort. Alas, all Bo can say is some cliche line about how they are all trying to get through this.

    I also play a highschool girl Rosa. I picture Rosa as a preppy girl, popular, pretty, but nice too. She's dated a few guys, but never too serious about anything, until recently. Her boyfriend Johnny and her have been dating for a while, and felt that it was time to actually have sex. Unfortunately, they weren't careful and she ends up pregnant.

         I chose to portray Rosa as scared, but not willing to show it. In the beginning, she avoids the topic of her health and why she won't try out for cheerleading - proving how she doesn't want to talk about her pregnancy and her future. Further proving this point, she didn't think about how she might have to drop school when she starts to show, she hasn't even told Johnny - which brings us to her fear. Not only does her neglectance to inform the father of her future child show her avoidance of the topic, but also her fears toward to future. She doesn't want to tell him, and I can show that by saying the lines quickly and forcefully, as if I am denying the truth.

         Eventually, Rosa does tell Maria about the kid. This is a slightly difficult part to perform, since I have to show all these emotions at once. She's nervous, scared, depressed, confused, but also relieved. Now, she has somebody to talk to about it. I think her and her mom don't have a great relationship, and the baby isn't going to strengthen that, so she can't talk to her mom. Johnny might just get scared and leave - after all, he can, because he's not carrying the baby himself. He's not the one giving birth. Rosa turns to her best friend, who, of course, accepts her and even offers helps her through it, telling her how she'll bring her notes and such to her when she can't be there. It ends up okay.

         And so will this blog post - which has been really long. See you in... like... a week!

-SW

     

The Final Silent Movie

Our silent movie, in the end, can be described as... interesting, to say the least. In my personal opinion, we did well. That being said, there are some that beg to differ. Either way, we learned many new things that can relate to other parts of acting. Part of this involved the skill of body language, which is helpful when acting in anything. Although this particular body language was very much over exaggerated, the importance of it is clearly demonstrated. We managed to convey to an audience a plot line without any spoken lines, proving the power of our body language.

Furthermore, our facial and body expressions made the plot quite obvious, for it could be seen in our face. This worked to our advantage, because it made the movie easier to understand. The simple yet descriptive set also "set" the tone - it didn't look 100% real, but not 100% fake either. People could tell we were acting, which is partly the whole point of a silent movie.

In addition, the computer editing really helped. We were able to speed up the end, which made it funnier, and add music for effect. The music we chose was quite generic, but it worked for the specific plot line of our scene, that was not generic at all. We were also able to add "Three hours later" between two parts, helping to  show how time has passed.

I personally found my part to be mediocre. It really could have been better. Watching it over, I realized that many of my actions weren't even in the shot, which sort of defeated the idea of doing anything extra at all. Also, in the scene where I get mad, it almost looks like I'm dancing. My heads nodding and my arms are waving. We didn't have to make that part so sped up, because it just added to the problem.  

I definitely improved my facial expressions. Since I have always had to say lines, not act them it, I never really noticed how much that facial movements can really show emotion. I think this was true for everybody else, as well. When acting with lines you rely on the words and your delivery of them to show emotion, or to stir up a feeling in the audience. However, in a silent movie, we didn't have that advantage.

I had difficulty getting into character for this part, In previous performances, I've had the way the character talks, sarcasm or anything to determine what they were like. Here, I had to not only make it up myself but also guess what she was like. I think in the end it worked out pretty well, but for a while it was difficult to do.

We, as a group, need to work on our focusing skills. We can't do a scene without dying of laughter. While the video may have looked okay, what you don't see is us cracking up in the background because of somebody dancing or falling or something else stupid.

But we ended up okay, and that's all that counts

 Our Movie