Over the edge

Here's the link to the scene: http://youtu.be/Q4T0lWOB1Ww
John, Lisa, and myself preformed the scene linked above, and oh boy was it interesting. There was a lot of mad libbing and forgotten lines, but I think in the end it turned out pretty well.
I thought that it would be easier to memorize because you were going off of what other people were saying, but it turned out that it was actually a lot harder! Instead of totally forgetting my line, I was occasionally waiting for a cue that never came because either I was waiting for a specific word and instead someone used a synonym, or someone took my line... Oops. I do think that some of our weknesses in the scene were over winging it. There was a point where it was hard for me as an actress to locate where in the development of the plot we were due to all of the added "stuff," which made the scene as great as it was. What I do think would have helped this would have been to mark down the extra things and make note of them in the script.
One of the strengths in our scene was definetly the portrayal of our characters. There is no doubt as to what (drunk) personality traits each character has, and that is what made the scene so fun. For instance, Lisa was constantly laughing, which made her seem even more intoxicated. John's costume made it impossible to take him seriously, which is very funny because he was the most serious character if all. He did a great job of portraying frustration without just continually yelling, which is what he was doing and struggled with during read throughs, so he definetly developed his character well. Personally, I do think that I could have done a less awkwardly acted portrayal of the character, however I am overall pretty pleased with my performance in this scene.
Another thing I disliked about the scene was the cheesieness of the beginning.  I thought at some points the intro, which was entirely improvised, was a bit weird an cheesy, and also didn't do the best job to set the scene. What we were trying to portray was very hard to without tons of props and a real cliff. Taking into consideration the fact that it was improv and what we had, I do think it was pretty good, I just wish we could've made it better.
Overall, I really liked doing this scene- it has probably been my favorite project so far in this class. I'm looking forwards to doing a scene with a more dramatic edge for the next project. Also- fun little thing to find in our video of me making a mistake (in true Alexis nature), we were jumping from one scene to another and I thought we were pushing the car over the edge, so I pretended to push the car. We weren't supposed to be pushing the car. Good luck finding this little hidden gem of an out of place struggling face in a scene...

Character and Scene Study

My character Brittany

Late 20's early 30's

Single 

Only child

Lives with friends

Works in retail

Was given a high education but mainly took it as a joke

New Jersey

Motivation- we are all drunk

Cedric was driving

Was the least drunk, but still very much 

Swerves and hits a hitchhiker 

Don't want to go to jail

"Jail doesn't have a nail salon"

With this scene, I am trying to portray a character similar to the type of person I never want to be- a grown up Regina George who is living off of daddy's money and looking to marry into more money, but other than that is going nowhere. I think this scene is very fun to preform and it is quite funny. 

Moving forward

I was worried about showing emotion and was confident about memorizing lines, which is quite ironic because I believe one of my strengths so far has been showing emotions and one of my weaknesses has definitely been memorizing lines. I think that this is because I was so relaxed about memorizing lines and now I know that the lines are what I need to focus on. With the next performance there are a lot of lines and I think that having other  actors to react with will be very helpful to me because in the monologues I struggled with feeding off of myself and my memory, which obviously didn’t go too well as the whole memorization part didn’t exactly work the majority of the takes. I do think one of the things that have helped me in this class is the great support from my fellow classmates whose experience and talent always amazes me, and there support is so immense that it has helped me to strive to be a better actress.

This class definitely helped me in preparation for the audition for the winter musical as I now fully know my strengths and weaknesses and can work to improve them in the second quarter. I definitely want to work on memorizing both actions and lines. I can do this by practicing more at home by running them and listening to them.  I hope to prepare for the audition this upcoming winter season and to know what to expect as I have never been in a real audition or performance other than sixth grade which I prefer not to count.  In summary of these I think I am going to resolve my goal to focus on the broader view in preforming as I tend to focus on miniscule details very often which I do think ultimately is my downfall.

I also hope to get a better understanding of what the acting industry is like. I hope to be able to understand more than just the acting portion of performances: such as behind the scenes with set design or hair and makeup. These are very important aspects of acting as without them productions just wouldn’t be the same.

I am very excited for moving forward and to see how the next few projects go. The next project I will be working with Lisa and John, both who are very talented, and we will be doing a scene called “Over the Edge” by David Dalton and Chad Schnackel. It is absolutely hilarious, and I cannot wait to see what both of my partners bring to the performance. Below I have put a link to the script. It needs a bit of editing, as john is a guy, not a girl, however that is a quick fix and we have pretty much decided to just change the name Cathy to Carl and go on with the script because Cathy was depicted in a more masculine manner anyhow. So here is the script we all agreed on!

http://hollywoodactingworkshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Over_the_Edge_-_3_women.pdf

-Alexis

Shhhhhh....... The film is about to start!

The silent movie film was certainly much easier than the projects previously done in terms of memorization as well as struggles with performance and takes. With previous assignments it was necessary to start over after every single mess-up and mistake even if it was just stuttering over a single word. With the silent movie however, it was just cutting a section out, for instance when I bent over to pick up the fake dentures and my wig came off and I sneezed, we just continued filming and were able to cut right back to where we needed to go- it also just so happened to allow a hilarious blooper reel. There was also no need to memorize lines, as the movies were silent. All that one needed to know was their actions in relation to the other actors and actresses, which made it easy because there were obvious cues, such as after Lisa throws her paper at me I lift the cane and try to hit her with it. I found this easier than monologues because there were other cues to reach off of other than the line that I had spoken before, and I look forward to seeing how this helps in the single scene with the feeding off of each other.

In this assignment I think one had to be very overdramatic with every single movement and every single look or emotion that crossed over their face, for instance in order to portray anger you could not just furrow your brow, you also had to raise your cheekbones, narrow your eyes, and scrunch up your nose or else the face is similar to confusion which can convey a totally different message. I think that Lisa did a very good job at this, using every single muscle in her face for each different reaction she had, remaining hunched over for each element of the movie, and also her movements were completely parallel to that of an elderly person. Abby was simply a grumpy old man and even without words was able to show character progression from the old grump to a cute old man in love with a woman who is inappropriately young for him. Dayna had a very soft-spoken role, yet she still was able to not be overlooked as a character. The person she was portraying seemed to be somewhat insignificant yet Dayna gave the character importance with each graceful movement.

I think that to make my performance better I could have acted better. I think that at one point I am standing up fully straight, which most old people are incapable of doing, my shaking looked awkward and faked, as well as my facial emotion was not to the level that I think it could be. Overall I think that the final product looks ok, but viewing it myself, I definitely see how when you watch yourself act you can pinpoint how you should have moved, which I think will help me in future acting performances.

Here is the movie!

https://www.youtu.be/qJYfdbPu9zl 

In Class Writing

I am not a huge fan of silent movies, however I did quite enjoy making one. The final outcome does seem a bit cheesy to me but I do recognize that that is what they have to be because there is no noise, so the actions have to be over dramatic and need to speak for themselves. I do not personally like it, but I do recognize the importance of it. In the movie produced by the boys as well as by the group I was in, I found that there we almost a comedic element tied in with the over dramatic movements such as when Duncan gets stabbed and dramatically drags himself over to the other side of the stage, or when the camera zooms in on me as I bite my thumb at Lisa's character. I find that this makes actions funny and gives a lighthearted approach to what is going on, like how with Duncan being stabbed it could have been much darker and more of a serious theme, but him making the movements that he did made it so that you could laugh at him being stabbed. I do think in my group there are points where there could have been more drama and more facial emotion. Lisa was exceptional at this however and legitimately looked like an old woman minus the wrinkles and other physical things that come with age. Dayna's character was probably the hardest to show emotions in and she did an amazing job showing a calm and happy persona. Abby was simply hilarious being an old grump.

Silent movie script

Beginning

elderly home

Middle

Smb claims to have bingo

Fights breaks out for the bingo

Alexis accidentally hits Abby's face with a cane

Abby's dentures fall out

Ending

Trying to pick them up

Movements

Alexis and Lisa are sitting making puzzles

Dayna is rolling Abby in and then she says: "Bingo time"

Everyone sits down and play bingo says" B 52"

Lisa and Alexis claim they have a bingo( stand up at same time. cards that says "bingo bingo!!!")

The fight starts:

Alexis bites her thumb at Lisa meanwhile, Abby is sitting with Dayna behind fight (

lisa throws bingo card at Shannok

Shanok SLOWLY moves Cane to hit Lisa

Lisa ducks

Cane hits Abby in face (close up shot)

Dentures fall out of Abby's mouth close up shot to where they fall on ground

Alexis and Lisa very slowly me in pain bend down to get dentures.

Eventually Dayna bends down

Zoom in to her hand only picking up dentures

Hands to Abby

Dayna sits in Abby's lap and they  wheels off, while the other two are left in pain

Heart that closes off scene

A whole speech in no words at all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLOMdSt5qCk




This link is to a silent movie titled "Magic." Compared to talking movies, this movie used a lot more facial expressions as well as actions and props. One example of this is when instead of the older boy saying out loud that he was pretending, he picked up a twig and wielded it as though it were a wand while both him and the younger girl expressed with their facial expressions how it was truly magical in their minds had the audience believe (along with the help of props) that there actually was some sort of magic that was going on in this film. The use of props was very helpful in this film to show the change from beginning to middle and on to the end. This happened because in the film, food appeared from the magic spells that the boy did, and after the children were seeming happy, the music changed and showed that the children were really just pretending by removing the props, however the facial expressions of the kids showed that they truly were pleased by the make believe food in their head. I think that my favorite part of this short film, however, was that since it was serious, it wrote a closing credit about supporting some foundation. I think that this could add some extra humor into the film my group will be preforming by adding a sarcastically themed closing credit that tells of the tragedy that the group we are portraying goes through, similar to that of the film except in a sarcastic way.