The brief: Evaluating success

The show was a complete success. The actors all turned up on time and performed excellently. Anytime the actors or musicians could not attend rehearsal or were late, they would contact me usually about an hour before hand to let me know of their whereabouts. The actors didn't learn everything until about a week and a half before hand, but it was only minor lines and blocking. The musicians were fantastic, without them the show wouldn't have even been half of what it was, they knew half the songs before we even began rehearsing and helped the whole cast with singing and timing. Nothing to do with the cast, more the producer, was that we didn't get the props and plants until a week before the show, so we had very little time for the puppeteers to get the lip syncing right, due to this I had to call people in every night that week.

If I were to do another brief for a show I would have more detail in it so everyone knew exactly what they were doing and when they were doing it. The show itself might have been better if I was older with more experience and control, because of this I don't think I will direct a project this big for a few years. If I did, I would make sure I had a full cast and band months before rehearsing, and generally be more organised and prepared, that was my biggest downfall, organisation.

The Brief: Contract

"The Director, Sebastian White, is looking for enthusiastic actors/musicians to be lead players in

"LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS" and create an enjoyable show worthy of ticket prices. "

The contract below stipulates the expectations of Sebastian White while working on the fore-planned musical.  You are expected to show, at the very least, promptness and flexibility. Lateness and inability to attend rehearsals will not be tolerated. 

Please review the following - 

• Actors must be able to learn script and song(s) within six weeks.
•  Musicians must be able to read and play sheet music for rehearsals, and if needs be, help coach actors with singing.
• Trust the director and adhere to directors requests (within reason). 
•  Actors and musicians must be free for rehearsals at least twice a week between 20th of January to 3rd March and 4 evenings a week from 5th March untill opening night 15th March.
• Any unfair treatment towards co-workers WILL NOT be tolerated.

Failure to meet these demands will result in termination of contract.

As the director (Sebastian White) I will do my utmost to guide you through the rehearsal process and I will take on any ideas that you may have regarding the show to help create the best show possible. This is an AMATEUR production and you will not be paid for it. The show will be filmed on several performance nights and DVD's will be distributed to cast and crew, they will also be up for sale after show week.

By signing this contract you agree to all the terms and demands and also give permission to be filmed and showed for non profit, any money made by the show goes straight to Joseph Weinberg co. for use of rights anything extra goes to TFT for upkeep of the theatre.

Please sign, date and print if you agree to the terms.

-------------------/ ---------/ ----------------

------------------ Sebastian White

working to a brief

The brief

What is a brief?
A brief is a written document. In a learning environment it is a written document issued to learners at the start of the assessment process for any given unit so that they know what they are working towards and what to do. In the media industry a brief is a set of wants or needs a client would approach you with in the form of a contract in order to fulfil a work load, i.e. if you were free lance and a company approached you asking you to create an advert for them, they would ask for it to have certain key elements in which you would need to include.

Why is it important?
A brief is important because it guides us, without a brief before work we probably wouldn’t really know what our employer wants from us. It is a clear outline of what needs to be done and is a very useful thing to have to look back on. Without it there could be mixed messages between yourself and the employer of what they want from you and what you think they want from you.

What are the legal and ethical issues regarding a brief?
As there is often a contract that comes with the brief, you are legally obligated to finish it by the given deadline and to a certain level of professionalism, if you fail either or both of these, you could not be paid, the company won’t use you again and your reputation will be ruined and it will be extremely difficult to find work.

What key opportunities are present when you respond to a brief?
Most likely the opposite of the last question, you will be paid, the company will more than likely use you again if you do a good job your reputation will either stay the same or rise to say you have a standard of good quality work. It could open up other business opportunities for you, if the companies happy they will more than likely tell others about you, therefore expanding your business.

Multi-cam Memoirs

Multi-cam memoirs.

My first experience with the multi-cam project started last year when i was a contestant on a lot of the second years shows, I then went on to host a show. I had a lot of fun doing this and it got me excited for the next year when a group and I would be creating our own shows.

When it was time to pick groups i was straight in there to pluck my friends out from the crowd to create my own college themed “Avengers”. I was certain we were going to excel in this. With the driving creativity of the combined minds of Tim and myself mixed with the working force of Andrew and Kyle peppered with the good looks of Claudia and Georgie, I thought we’d be unstoppable.

The first idea we agreed upon was a chat show about 'Paranormal activity', we called it 'Paranormal Investigators'. Now at first Tim and I were against the idea and proposed a 'comedy' show primarily based on 'The Ricky Gervais show' where each episode Tim and I would interview some one we thought was a little odd and try and get a few laughs.  I say 'comedy' loosely, as it was only Tim and myself who thought it was funny. So we worked on this 'comedy' for a while, while the rest of the group suffered silently, two weeks before the show was meant to be filmed, we scrapped the idea and went back to the paranormal one.

'Paranormal Investigators' was a chat show with two guests and a VT. The VT was our group going out to a local haunted spot and doing some filming at night, hoping to run into a ghoul or at least Mr. Jenkins the janitor dressed as the swamp thing. Unfortunately we're not Mystery inc. so we didn't run into any denizens of the night. We staged a couple jumps to make it more interesting to watch, for example there's a bit in the VT where Tim's leaning against a fence talking and someone slams their hand against it to make him jump, but we weren't trying to make people think Zuul was chasing us, we made it obvious it was for a laugh and to make the video less boring. The first guest we had on the show was a psychic woman who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead, do palm readings and exorcisms. She was very interesting and had some good stories. We planned to have some sort of scientist as the second guest to create a debate on the show but as we left everything last minuet we didn't have a scientist, we had a boy. The boys name was Matt and he was a camera guy for our VT, he did a good job but he's no Noam Chomsky. Perhaps this will be a lesson to us for our next show.

For this show we decided that the loud and cocky guy should be the floor manager, as that's the job who talks to the audience, guests and keeps the floor in check. That guy happens to be me. "I got this in the bag" I thought, as I lay back sipping on a cocktail of arrogance and certainty. Claudia, bless her, was put as the director, and part of what entails with that job is to make sure everyone is on track, now I'm quite a handful at times so i fully appreciate why everyone became quickly aggravated with me, but she kept her cool, and kicking and screaming, she pulled the group through on the day of the shoot. I don't think i did a terrible job at floor managing, but i know i didn't do a great job either, I wasn't as attentive to the guests as i should have been and i wasn't as fun as i planned to be, when the time came to talk about health and safety with the audience, looking back it must have seemed like i couldn't wait to get out of there, not the case, i think i was just nervous. Perhaps next show i'll do a different job.

The next show was in about 5 weeks and like a group of professional matadors we were going to tackle the show by the horns and pull it down to submission. We wanted to push the boundaries on the conventions of a college show, every year some one does a show on ghosts, a film quiz, something about fear and frankly that's boring, people don't want recycled ideas (Hollywood take note) people want something fresh, so we decided to do the first improv show in fareham college media department history. OK so an improv show isn't original, but if you put it against everything else that's been done at college, it's the 'Citizen Kane' of multi-cam. Or so we thought.

The basic idea of the show was to have 3 improv artists and 4 different sets in the studio, each set would be a scenario that the artist would have no idea about, we would dress them up and throw them into a set each filled with slightly scripted actors who would guide the scene in a certain dirrection, for example the first scene was a doctors surgeory, the artist was dressed as a doctor trying to explain to two actors that their mother is fine, until half way through when another actor rushes in as a surgeon begging for help from the doctor panicking the other two actors. After each improv artist had a scenario, the fourth set would host a scenario for all of them to be together, giving the artists room for anarchy and competition. It would have been brilliant if it turned out how I imagined it.

We had so many meetings to discuss who was doing what and when, we kept changing roles, and nothing got done. I didn't help by messing about for ages and doing little to no work, but we were so sure of ourselves, by this point i was handing out more of the cocktail I had in the first show, we were off our tits with certainty. I got given the task of finding all the actors, shouldn't be difficult considering i did acting for two years and im part of a theatre. It turns out it was harder than I expected, people were either busy or just didn't answer their phone, seems like im being ignored. Finally some one answers and accepts, then another, now theres one more I would love to have as an improv guy, I need to get in contact with Dan Scott. So I call him, no answer, I leave a message on his facebook wall, no answer, so I assume he's not interested. A week before the show he's in the studio with another group, that cheeky S.O.B. So I go in there ask him and he says "Of coarse", well that turned out better than expected. We now have three improv guys, but before we claimed Dan I had an idea for how to make the set look fabulous. Theres a man I know who builds and paints sets for a living, I asked him to come in and paint the set, he seemed really up for it at first, then for what ever reasons he didn't answer his phone and we had to paint it ourselves. For our set I decided I would regain some masculinity by building a fire place. It turned out disastrously as I have the carpentry skills of a blind quadriplegic. The next day I made some adjustments to my creation and made it camera worthy, I also made a little fire out of tissue paper. Shortly after my masterpiece was finished I was in the company of two out of the three improv guys, wait, lets go back a couple days.

It's Sunday, we have a planned rehearsal with the improvs for Monday at 1300 hours, I contact the two we have planned Sam and Ben, Ben has a job interview and Sam has work, "that’s fine" I shrug it off "We'll do one Tuesday instead" they agree to this. I get a text Monday afternoon from Sam saying that he's got work all week and won't be able to make it, now that’s annoying but recoverable, we'll just find someone else. So that day we contact a couple of the first years, one of which seems very confident and keen, Matt. Not to mention out sound guy, Kyle hasn’t been in to college all week. So back to the present.

I’m in the company of Ben and Matt, an hour and a half before the show, sat in the corridor rewriting the script so out presenter, Neil, knows what to say and where to go. Andrew comes up to me and says "we've lost Dan, he's ill and can't make it in". What the balls are we meant to do now? Neil offers to fill the part and Steve jumps in to host, so now I’m RE-rewriting a script for a show that’s in an hour with three guests that don't really know what’s going on. If our group was ‘The Avengers’ Kyle would be Agent Coleson, a returning character who doesn’t really make a difference but everyone likes, and buggers off before the big fight scene. My motto seemed to be “everything’s going to be fine” that week, and by some luck and hard work with the rest of the group, it was. Everyone pulled together and Steve and Neil were a huge help for jumping in last minute. The show would have failed if it weren’t for them.

So all I can say now is that it was fun, most of it, I grew to hate it during the middle and really wanted to just give up, but we pulled it off and I’ve gained a lot of respect for the people in my group who I have the good pleasure of calling them ‘my friends’.

Video installation - Comparison of artists

Artist One: Bill Viola 
Bill Viola is one of the pioneers of Contemporary video art, most famous for his video installations such as the ones I will be looking at here. If you want to know more about him, here's a link to his website.
http://www.billviola.com/index.htm

Emergence (2002) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTPf6mHKYD0

Emergence is based on this painting by the 15th century Italian painter Masolino da Panicale. The video itself looks like a modern take on this painting, unfortunately I couldn't find the official version of the video, there was a poor recording off a TV and a slightly edited one with music, so I'm not sure what the sound is for the video, I think its a sound of a struggle underwater. The video is two woman sat near a cistern and a naked man emerges from it, spilling water onto the floor and is carried to the floor by the women. My interpretation of this video is a metaphor for birth, with one of the women possibly being the mother. I read somewhere that Bills main aim with the video was to emphasize emotional response and to provoke an emotional response from the audience.

To learn more about the video, here's a small behind the scenes making of documentary
-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx5Cu7U-Fkg



The Raft (2004)
The Raft is filmed with one shot, but seems to have three sections. The first section is a group of urban dwellers standing about, presumably waiting for a bus or a train, when suddenly the second section begins. A violent flood appears and starts to knock people over, it's chaos, there's people falling over, trying to stay upright, holding on to each other, by the time the flood finishes everyone's on the floor soaked to the bone. As an audience member i knew there was a metaphor behind this, but to be honest I don't really see what it is, perhaps it's just a demonstration of how people help each other when in need, that we put color and creed behind and just help people. Thats what I saw from it anyway.
Viola calls “The Raft” a metaphor for today’s world, but it also provides something of an antidote, countering the noisy spectacle of Hollywood disaster films with a focus on human psychology and a presentation largely stripped of particulars.

Viola says the work is “for cultivating knowledge of how to be in the world.”
Here's a small interview with Viola on The Raft - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwA2TrBzWWI

Artist Two: Sam Taylor-Wood
Sam Taylor wood is an English film maker, photographer and video artist. Started fine art in the 90's and won the Illy cafe' prize for most promising young artist in '97.

Still Life (2001)
Essentially this is just a video of fruit decomposing, sped up to 3 minuets, with a pen next to it. It's not pretty, but its very interesting to watch. I think what the metaphor for this one is meant to be the fruit is our body, its going to wither and die, but our work stays behind, almost immaculate, unscathed by time. Our work being represented by the pen. Unfortunatly i can't find anywhere on what she thinks of the video or what she was trying to show, but from what im reading in different articles, I'm pretty close already. Im reading the phrase "memento mori" a lot in the articles, which is a latin phrase for "remember your mortality" so i can't be too far off.

Hysteria (1997)
This is an 8 minuet video of a woman laughing angrily. At first I thought she was laughing then half way through I thought she was crying. But throughout the whole video your never too sure. I think she was trying to convey different emotions through one movement, the meaning of hysteria is excessive or uncontrollable emotion, usually fear or panic, so I'm guessing the video is more of a negative vibe. My personal opinion of Sam Taylor Wood is that she is probably one the most overrated "artists" of her time.

personal statement (Draft)

Sebastian White

The hour before a performance starts when I am preparing, I walk around the stage. This is the time when I feel the most comfortable, anxious and focused all at the same time.  I plan to enter the theatre industry and see this course as the logical next step. I have spent my time at college learning more about the industry and have taken on roles on stage and behind the scenes; I spend a lot of my spare time looking for more performance opportunities and relish the chance to work with a company to create something the audience will love. I am looking forward to the challenges that studying at the next level will bring and I feel I am ready to apply myself fully to the training ahead.

Alongside my studies I have spent the past two years working with a local theatre group called Titchfield Festival Theatre (TFT). This has been a great arena for me to experiment with what I have learnt; it has also challenged me to learn a role within a very short time scale. I have been lucky enough to be in demand with this group, and being almost 7 foot tall there are a lot of roles to which my height lends itself such as ‘The Creature’ in ‘Frankenstein’. I have also taken on roles such as; Borachio in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’, The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come in ‘A Christmas Carol’, Les in ‘Bouncers’, Timms in ‘History Boys’ and an array of characters in an original play by Stewart Trotter for TFT called ‘Our Cousin Will’, a play based on Shakespeare’s life. After that I went on to direct my first project for the company, ‘Little Shop of Horrors’. I also played the voice of Audrey II. ‘Little Shop…’ went on to be nominated for Best Amateur Musical for the Portsmouth Guide awards. Despite having had very little directing experience, I put together what little knowledge I had and pulled together a very enjoyable and engaging show. This was a great project that made me fully appreciate how much time and dedication is needed for even the smallest of details in making a production work.

I think the first flicker of inspiration I had was when I was younger -  I used to watch bloopers from films, mainly featuring Jim Carrey, such as The Mask and Liar Liar, and thought “That looks like fun, I want to do that!”.  I would watch his films and study the way he would deliver jokes; I’d then go into school the next day trying to mimic him or re-enact a scene to get a few laughs.  The other films that inspired me were the Lord of the Rings trilogy - I was obsessed with these films for years; in my opinion they’re the closest a film can get to perfect. Watching documentary footage of its making really inspired me to want to be an actor. For a few years screen acting was all I wanted to do, but being part of a theatre and seeing crowds laugh at a line I delivered or a physical gag showed me how amazing it can be on stage. My uncle is a young filmmaker and wherever we have the time we make short films together: Sometimes I’ll write and perform, sometimes I’ll just perform. After I finished my National Diploma in Performing Arts course I went on to complete a National Diploma in Creative Media Production, so I have had a valuable experience in the two fields of performing that I enjoy.

During my college course I have performed in productions that range from large scale musicals such as "Our House", "Crazy for you" and "The Producers" to small scale plays such as Peter Brook's "The man who" and some devised plays. My real enjoyment came from exploring texts such as Harold Pinter's "The Lover" and Martin McDonagh's "The Pillowman". I appreciate the dark and realistic writing styles of Pinter and McDonagh and found these more challenging, its something I would very much like to go onto do in the future, this is why I am ready to progress onto a Higher Education course, I  am looking forward to working in a more challenging environment with people who are equally driven. I will be able to devote all the time to training and developing in preparation to enter the industry.

music videos

1 - Watsky & Mody- Man of Constant Sorrow ft. Dylan Saunders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6Ocqp16Ldc&list=UULJcVCVvcD802r80B9oaM3A&index=14&feature=plcp

Directed by Jackson Adams

490,050 views on youtube

Synergy: The original song was featured in the film "O brother where art thou?" (2000), the film was based on Homers Odyssey, set in the 1930's about three "jail birds" who go on an adventure with the law behind them. This music video mimics the film, and does it so well.

2 - Electric 6 - gay bar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTN6Du3MCgI

directed by Tom Kuntz and Mike Maguire

24,074,570 views on youtube

Even though this video has nothing to do with the song, watching the video makes me think its a sly attack on the foundations of America, perhaps saying that the leaders of "this great nation" are actually gay warmongers.

3 - Cosmo jarvis - gay pirates

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dysG12QCdTA

Directed by Cosmo jarvis

1,216,446 views on youtube

In an interview with Cosmo Jarvis, he said that he wanted to do a song about equality but something thats not so cliché, he said he was thinking about a statistic, 1 in 10 men are gay, so 1 in 10 men must have been gay back in the day, therefore there must have been gay pirates. This is a love song, not a parody.

4 - Fatboy slim - Weapon of choice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCDIYvFmgW8

Directed by Spike Jonze

too many videos of it to get a deffinate view count, but the video views range from 700,000 to 2,000,000

Before Walken  was an actor he was trained as a musical theatre dancer, and as far as i know, he choreographed the dance himself. The "Weapon of Choice" video won six MTV awards in 2001. Walken was awarded one of MTV's "Moonmen" for Best Choreography. The clip was also ranked number one in a list of the top 100 videos of all time by VH1 in April 2002 that was compiled from a music industry survey.

5 - Gorillaz - Feel good inc. Ft. De la soul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pw8PpYBiDsc
9,637,757 views on youtube
Directed by Jamie Hewlett and Pete Candeland
This music video is supposed to be an escapist metaphor, if you imagine the the feel good inc. tower as a prisson of fame, greed and debauchery that the band have created around themselves. When the lead vocalist (2D. Thats his name) is walking around the tower with the megaphone, he's meant to be waking up the rest of the band, make them realise where they are and what they have become. The windmill is a place he would dream of when he was younger, his happy place.

6 - Red hot chili peppers - By the way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnfyjwChuNU

21,257,871 youtube views

Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

This video has nothing to do with the song or the lyrics, theres nostory behind it, i think they just thought it was funny. It's a story all on its own.
At the begining of the video Anthony is holding a book about a band called "the germs" a band that was discovered and produced by "mullen" same person who found and produced the chilis.

7 - David Bowie and Mick Jagger - Dancing in the streets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=7y-x2fWKbmo#!

1,259,485 youtube views

Directed by David Mallet.

I picked this last one, because its awful. Alot of sexual tension between these guys. Im not quite sure what the director was trying to do with this, or even why bowie and jagger thought it was a good idea to continue with it. Shortly after this video came out there were rumours that the two front men slept together. If you watch this you might see why the rumour appeared.