Acting Profile

 Before this script is complete it will probably be changed and changed again. It will be written over and over again, many times until everyone is satisfied with it. Also as we work with the script it is subject to change as we add lib and find better ways of doing and saying things. It is the process of getting a script to the standard it needs to be, to be performed.

Tom. We’re gong win this there’s nobody else who has the same act as us.

Elaine. This is a highly specialised act.

Chrissy. You got a stage name?

Tom.Two Timer’s

Chrissy. Would you mind telling us how you came up with that name?

Mel. I named it after my ex.

Chrissy. So he two timed you?

Mel. Yeah with this really ugly blonde bimbo. I was so humiliated. I mean how are you supposed to forgive something like that? I got revenge though.

Chrissy. Oh, how was that?

Mel. I took a photo of him naked and sent it to his work. Then I phoned all his mates to tell them what a loser he is and how he two timed me. I wouldn’t care but, he was so boring.

Chrissy. O.k well I think we’re ready to see your act now.

Mel.(whispers to Tom) I can’t do this. Forget it.

(Mel runs off)

Tom. Well mum and dad I can’t do the act now Mel’s gone.

Elaine. (To Chrissy) Can we have a few minutes please?

Chrissy. Sure, I’ll be back in 5.

Elaine. We didn’t come all this way to quit now.

Tom. Well what are you going to do?

Anthony. We’ve always put our kids needs first, but secretly all this time we wanted to perform. (To Elaine) Let’s grasp this opportunity.

Tom. Are you out of your minds? You haven’t been taking pills again have you?

Elaine. Only my water pills.

Anthony. Well?
Elaine. Sure, I’m up for it.

Tom. Do you have any idea how embarrassing this will be for us? You must be out of your minds.

Elaine. Well actually no we’re not out of our minds we’ll do it.

(Chrissy enters with a microphone looking for people to interview)

Chrissy: Madam, are you here to audition?

Mel. Why? What’s it to you?

Chrissy. We’re looking for people to interview.

Tom: Will we be on telly?

Mel. Will we get paid?

Chrissy. We don’t have enough money and even if we did we wouldn’t have enough money to pay the people we interview.

Tom. It’s the credit crunch again!

Mel: More like they need the money to pay Simon Cowell.

Tom. What about we give you the interview and you take us straight to the judges?

Chrissy. Follow me.

(The family follow Chrissy to a small room)

Chrissy. So what made you come here today?

Elaine We’ve put up with a lot of abuse in our lives. People have given us a lot of abuse for our talent.

Anthony. They’re jealous that’s all it is. But, when you insult my family you go too far.

Elaine. We’re no quitter’s and we’ve worked to get to the stage where we’re at now.

Mel. One guy told me he was an agent. He made my family work for him all summer then I found out he’d tricked us. He took advantage of me, but I know my family are better than that.

 Here is some more of the script. I am trying to make it comical also so it has a bit of everything in it.

Lights fade they come back up to reveal the Britian’s Got Talent Building.

Mel: Is this it? I thought you said that Simon Cowell would be here.

Tom: It must be the credit crunch. They can’t afford The Hilton.

Anthony: How else would you explain the fact that Pierce Morgan is one of the judges?

Tom: Hmmm you’ve got a point. (Thinks for a second.) Pierce Morgan, hey? Amazing! This could be fun!

Mel: This could be embarrassing, you mean. I’m not too sure that this is a good idea. What if my mates see?

Tom: It’s easy You can’t go wrong-footed. (Goes over to Mel to demonstrate the moves) Start on the right… and it’s step, step, ball-change, step! Got it?

Mel: Sorry. (Does a few practice moves, copying Tom.)

Tom: (To Mel) Let’s try it from the top again.

Mel: Sure thing. (Counts and claps in time to the beat of the song) Five— , six— , five, six, seven, eight.

Track of ‘Locomotion’ starts to play.

Mel: (Singing and dancing) Everybody’s doin’ a brand new dance now.

Elaine and Tony: (Singing and dancing) Come on baby, do the locomotion.

Mel: (Singing and dancing) I know you’re gonna like it if you give it a chance now.

Tom: (Singing and dancing) Come on baby, do the locomotion.

 Opening Scene – On a train going to audition for Britain’s Got Talent. The present.

There is a voice over announcing the trains soon arrival in London.

When the lights come up the family are sat together on the train Mel is admiring her nails that she has just painted and Tom is brushing his hair.

Chrissy enters wearing a waitress outfit. She is bringing a trolley of drinks through.

Chrissy. Morning, Sir would you like any drinks?

Tom. I’ll have a vodka and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps

Chrissy passes a bag with the refreshments in it.

Elaine. Bit of a chill in the air this morning.

Anthony. You’re telling me.

Mel. (Stands up and does a twirl) Does my bum look big in this?

Tom. (coughs) I’ll have to take this vodka more slowly.

Elaine turns her attention to Mel’s mini skirt.

Elaine. We never wore them in my day. Wouldn’t have been seen out of the house in them.

Anthony. Why don’t you wear something else till this afternoon?

Mel. Don’t you like it?

Tom. I don’t mind, but it’s a bit chilly this morning.

Mel. I just want to look my best.

Pause.

Elaine. There’s a spot o’ porridge on it. I’m sure of it.

This is the start of a script that I am writing for my performing arts course. Over the next week I will post more of the script and you can see how a script develops to the point of performance.

Well.. For the last couple of weeks I have focussed on talking about set design and lighting so I thought it was time for a change. I am going to be discussing character building within acting and focussing on this subject for a few weeks.

What we have to remember when acting is that the character has to be realistic for the audience to believe in the character. To get the character up to this point certain work needs to be done in order for the character to have real substance. We have to look at people in real life and what their character is made up of. One of the things we can be certain of is that nobody is perfect, everyone has their faults. Some more than others. Your character may be made up from a person you know and have observed for some time or they may be invented. You might want to exaggerate a particular trait in someone that you know. If I was making a character up from someone that I know she would be really nosy and question every person she met. She would also be rude, bossy and demanding. This particular individual I am thinking of was a control freak. With this description you could have a quite funny character.

Even if you have a character that is more perfect than others or at least thinks he is there will be some faults somewhere along the line. Maybe he is nervous or shy or is frightened of something. Many people have shades of grey even if you have someone that is downright evil they will have their good points. For example, look at Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Everyone is different and it is building those differences into characters that will make your performance realistic and worthy of praise.

The flood is the most basic type of lantern that is made up of a lamp in a reflector box with no lens. There is no control when focussing a flood all you need to concentrate on is the direction. This would probably be ideal for our production as it is so basic and easy to use. However on the down side the flood produces a lot of colour though the shutters can be closed or open accordingly you do have to be careful not to get too much light from the flood.

The Fresnel is a soft edged spotlight that gives more control over beam angle compared to the flood. The Fresnel is a good light to use in conjunction with some other lighting. We want warm social ambience effects in our production we could achieve this by using a warm red/orange colour gel. We want a range of different colours in our production, but mostly warm colours like orange and red’s will look good for what we want to achieve. Certain areas of the stage will need more colour than others we can achieve this by fading in and out. We do not want any part of the production at any time to go to black. When the scene has come to an end fading can be used to light another area where the scene continues. For example we will be going back and forth from interviewer to contestant.

Over the last week or so I have shown how lighting design is especially important when putting on a theatrical performance. Having the ability to be flexible and play around with colours and gobos provides a wide range of choices throughout the production. It is better to have more options than not. High side or high front/side lighting position will give a good degree of modelling that is right for a small production. The full power of the colour/gobo is still reflected for the audience and director to see.

Back light can be used for the scenes back stage. For a great look we could light the stage by parallel beams. This would direct the light onto one side of the stage. This may not be possible for all the production, but certainly part of it like the room where the television is. To create sunlight we can create two spots on one side with the other two left for reserve or filling using a contrasting colour.

The weather is sunny and the time of the day is in the afternoon. We want the lighting to be quite bright. We need the light to follow the actors as they enter and exit though some lighting on the stage will need to be fixed.

 Being a lighting designer is a fantastic career and one that is very rewarding. On the other hand it can be truly annoying and testing at times. As a lighting designer your study will never be complete there is always something new to learn because lighting is always changing. Each production differs and as a lighting designer you will make many errors on the way but, this is a learning curb. Mistakes should be looked at as an opportunity to learn and with every production new mistakes will be made.

Be careful when showing the actor’s face during the production. Our production needs to show as much light on the actor’s face as possible so instead of increasing the light which would look unnatural we need someone to direct the actor so the light falls correctly or reduce the lighting contrast around the actor.

Play around with the contrast, size, colour and movement so you get the best possible visibility. We would like the stage to be highly realistic it would be good if we could go for a lighting effect of sunlight that way it will be more realistic. We want to go for naturalistic, realistic, minimalistic and modern if we can play around with these then that would be good.

We want the lighting to portray a mood that is a mixture of happy, excited, nervous and humour at times.

 
There is no rule to theatrical lighting yet there are many ways of lighting the stage. Every performance has different requirements and you would not light a production of Wicked in the same way you would light Britain’s Got Talent. By giving simple instructions about what type of lighting needs the production has the lighting designer can then go away and design a lighting plan. That is why it is so important to give accurate and detailed lighting instructions.

We want the lighting to project the mood of the production. Be careful when focussing on mood that visibility is not lost. There may be times during the production where we want the mood to interfere with the visibility, but we still need to be able to see faces and body language on the stage. Projections will be needed as will moving effects such as when the character walks across the stage. By using the automated lighting fixture we can cut through the mood lighting effects and add better managed, detailed lighting to actors anywhere on the set.

We need to look at a combination of several different lighting methods we do not want one single source to light the whole stage although this would be possible it doesn’t suit our production. There is a separate room on the set with a television in it and we need the light to be low in this room. It would be good if we could have the light only from the television so that it would be very naturalistic.

A series of isolated down lights or a single diagonal backlight, against an illuminated cyclorama would work excellently for when the contestant comes on stage to do their performance. This would make it more interesting and different. It is also quite different.

As you can see from reading this lighting the stage can be done in many different ways and there are no set rules that govern you to doing lighting in one set way.

When planing to put a production on certain aspects must be considered. What type of lighting is needed, sound effects, props and costumes to name, but a few. There are many different lighting fixtures including lanterns and lights they can also then be put into 4 categories including; wash lights, spot lights, beam lights and flood lights. For our production we need a mixture of natural types of lighting. Wash lights are very good at creating a natural feeling and can be adjusted to get the desired effect. The wash lights we need to use are Fresnel and maybe some prism convex.

The spot light is good because it allows flexibility creating either a soft edge or a hard edge. We don’t want anything too harsh though apart from maybe when the contestant is auditioning. Gobos would be useful so we can insert them into the spot light this will help to break up the light so it is not too harsh. We could also use Gobos to create a variety of shapes and special effects.

We need to try to stay away from beam lights like the Parcan as they just create too harsh a light and although they are good for rock concerts this is not the look that we are aiming for. They provide too intense a light and we want to go for a more natural light also there is no control in this light.

The flood light would only be used to illuminate the backdrop we will not have any other use for it as again this is a very harsh light, but we will need to use it for the backdrop.