7 Daffodils;

So now, it’s all over. All the text analysis, choreographing, all the you-know.

Creative processes? What can I talk about here. It’s the evaluation of the piece itself. Lets touch on my favourite topic first – sounds.
My failure to explain (and justify) why did I switch from the initial one-genre idea to multi-genre arrangement was because firstly, the use of Plastic Flower wasn’t my idea. And so why did I approve to it? It’ve caused too many bloodshed within the group, I want no more.

What genre is that piece? Hard rock. How do I justify? I don’t know, seriously.

The rest of my explanations were crap. Literally. My bad. All my bad. I’m going to go through the whole thing in sequence again and hopefully the group may understand.

Scene two A – Irish folk.
Brings out intended awkwardness in the slow pulse of the piece. Calmness brings out solemnity within characters. Scene transits.
Scene two B – Anime.
Brings out the playfulness nature of the Friend 1 character. Together with the game played with the Child, the piece weaves into a very animated scene that portrays the positive part of life in the Child’s life.
Scene two C – Expressionistic (Post modern)
Brings out awkwardness. Uneven accented beats were used chosen as the key factor of the piece that will bring out the unevenness and rigidness of the Friend 2 character.

Scene three – Anime.
Brings out the accented ups-and-downs of Sibling and provided the necessary build-up for the scene that gradually brings the scene to its intended violent nature.

Scene four – (Orchestra [classic] + Rock) + Anime.
The background orchestral piece brought about the needed build-up for the piece before breaking down with the thematic music that was used to symbolize the Sibling’s bipolar disorder.

Scene five – Irish folk + Classical + Expressionistic + Anime.
In order of sequences, the Irish folk entry with the subsequent ringing of the bells offer the scene as a form of introduction. The aria then came in with the intended motive of bringing about a quiet theme that will gradually build-up to an explosive ending. Combining it with Expressionistic, it explodes into an unexpected form, causing irritations within the audiences and thus, creating the necessary effect of a climax within the piece. The piece then fades out with a scream, symbolizing the end of a chapter as depicted as a form of realization or the cutting away of strings in the scene. The illusionistic nature of the anime piece fades in with the intended nature to symbolize the break-away of the characters and also the realization of the child.

Frankly, till now, I’ve still got no idea why we’ve chosen the genre of hard rock for Scene one A. I guess it offers as a build-up to a certain plateau in the tension level of the piece. But that’s it.

All-in-all, the discussion marked a grey area in our conclusions when it comes to song choices. There were just too much tears shed just because they liked that piece. I don’t know. I generally don’t like the use of actual songs (those with people singing lyrics) to be used in such theatre. Well, at least based on concepts and the exposures I’ve had. So far, no.

Lighting design was supposedly simple. Based on the use of colours; following the footsteps of Jennifer Tipton who based her works on the uses of colours, I pieced this piece together with just simple colour coding themes. I used mainly side-lights to create the atmosphere; top (and front) lights to illuminate dark spots after finding some scenes too dark. Given the lack of space and also the need to share the lighting grid with other groups; I kept my use of lightings to the minimum. Must I elaborate more on it? Most of my designs were based on colour codings or colour themes.

My understanding of expressionism needs to be changed. Yes. After the course of my past 2 years studying expressionistic art pieces in general (and music that’s slightly more in-detail), I’ve came to this conclusion about expressionistic pieces being a form of art that one uses to express oneself in any given theme (or subject). Well, viva proved me wrong.

THIS ONE WAS A MAJOR CHANGE I MUST MENTION BECAUSE IT MARKS THE END OF ALL PROBLEMS THE GROUP IS (AND HAVE BEEN) CURRENTLY FACING.

At about 2010h this evening; in the dance studio.
This statement was made, “Lets scrape the multimedia.” Why? “Because the J3s and the 15 year-olds CAN UNDERSTAND!!!”
To what extent is this true? I’ve no idea. To what extent am I gonna follow? 100%. I’m not going to fight to keep this multimedia projection. Why? We’ve scraped the idea and we’re going to use lights and sounds anyway. Aren’t we? Okay yes, although the projection actually means a lot to the initial idea (it represents the biggest and the most impactful element in the plot) – the Society. We can’t do much with its existence. And besides, it clashes with the set design and as well as the movement of Scene 5 (aka Scene 6 or Last Scene).

Technically, it’ve brought by so much hindrance to the group’s progress; but frankly speaking, it means a lot. Without the Society, the plot wouldn’t have even progressed this way. Okay, maybe lets just hope that those who are actually going to watch them (during Humanities week) are able to understand… The Sudden emotional change of the Parent.

So, multimedia’s down. We’re basing it all on lights and sounds; solely on these. With the lack of BlackBox’s booking and me still sick, we’ve not been able to do them up for the techs. I swear I’ll get this done once I’ve the blackbox again. =(

Will edit again. =)

FiveMinusOne maynotbe Four.

And so, the clock ticks and the calendar show August 8, 2009. WoW! We’ve a lot of comments from the previous showcase just a few days ago. What’s needed for the group to progress?

• More air-time for Hamid and I.
• More build-up.
• Correct Stephanie’s weird Scene 4 entrance.
• Shorten the piece.
• Too dark! (I don’t think so; it’s considered bright for our piece already).
• Create a dilemma for RuiShan (Child)

What we’ve agreed to do was to combine scene 2 and 3, giving the two friends (Hamid and I) a proper introduction. Also at the same time, increase both of our air-time! As for scene 1, we’ve lengthen it to give it a gradual build-up. To safe trouble, we’ve decided to stick to and lengthen Lena Park – Plastic Flower; choosing and cutting the interludes that’d bring up the tension of the piece and thus, ending it with the usual impactful Narvas.
At the moment, we’ve completed the movements and the lengthening of tracks for both scenes, cutting a total of one minute from Scene 2 and 3, but adding an additional 45 seconds to scene 1. Okay, that means that there aren’t many changes done. The time is tight and we have to rush. JIAYOUs no-strings!!

Skill-wise, we’ve decided to cut down from multi-media to the simpler lights and sounds. We can’t decide on either one of those because they’re both of equal significance. But nothing was changed that drastically (so much that we remove the whole section of the piece) at the moment. We’re retaining the section of the projections, because it represents the influences that the society imposes on the family - it represents media.

Removing that particular section means changing the whole storyline and we cannot afford that to happen. Script-wise, many things were done and most of them affect the sound design. Everything comes with strings. As for lightings, nothing needs to be changed – at the moment.

Four Hours Gone; Still Procrastinating.

Lights are more or less fixed. Just that it still needs the director’s green lights. Angling still has to be made to fit the choreographies. Yeapp! Touching up on the sound and light cues! It’s finishing!
The soundtrack for Scene 6 is done!

It is purposely created with an overall tension level of low-buildup-climax-break-low.
Playing around with the lighting designs set on Friday, I’ve pieced out one rather, cool, arrangement. Maybe bound for some negative comments but alas, we’ll see.

Here’s the arrangement:

· Horror 2
to set the scene.

· La Coimhthioch Fan Dtuach
to re-introduce the child; and re-introduce the relations of other characters to her.

· Recuerdos De La Alhambra
to set the scene in a low mood first with a very gradual build-up.

· There are some remedies worse.
Climax! The explosion!

· Illusions II
Resolution after the “break”. Realization of the child.

From here, it’s easy to explain the lighting design set for scene 6.
With the main theme of blue, it compromises the “sad realization” noticed by the child. Making it sounds / looks normal, rather than forced.

Here’s the arrangement:

· Blue backlights.

· Introduction of white and red side lights.

· Introduction of centre spot light;

· Dimming of centre spot; introducing of more surround lights, focusing the centre of action;

· Introducing of more blue side lights (intelligent lights);

· Black out with music;

· Blue back and sidelights, with a little interruption of the white sides.

· Fade out; scene ends.

I’ve tried my best to incorporate the song “dong1 tian1 lai2 le4” into the piece but the intro stretches too long. It acts as a build up and in my opinion; the vocal portion destroys the effect I want to portray. Well, at least I’ve tried. Now I’ve replaced it with Recuerdos De La Alhambra for a similar intention. That piece can be easily cut and arranged into different segments the way I want (it’ve more phrasings).

Yeapp. And I’m very sorry if I’ve angered anyone of you guys (group members) in my 2 previous posts). I know I’ve been really emotional. Haven’t recovered from the blow I’ve got from not just the results but the in-class discriminations by my GP tutor for being a TSD student.