We began this lesson with a quick physical warm up, as we were going to be working on James's scene which is very dance-based. We then got the sheet and put it up ready to try out the silhouettes for the first time. However, we had to do a little bit of experimenting to decide where it was best to position the sheet. We put the light at the very back of the room and attached one end of the sheet to the ceiling by lifting some of the ceiling panels and putting a little bit of the sheet underneath it. The sheet was perfect as you could see the shadows perfectly, however, we had positioned it in slightly the wrong place. We had to bring the sheet forward to leave more space behind the sheet for us to move properly (to form the silhouettes) and to ensure the shadows were the size we wanted them. We then ran this scene in its entirety, which actually went rather smoothly. The silhouettes were effective and what we wanted them to look like. However, we did change one section of the scene - instead of Rhiannon coming in front of the screen as the Snow Queen's first appearance, we decided she would be in silhouette to make her more mysterious. This also avoided the issue of having to lift the bottom of the sheet for her to enter.
Our next issue was how we were going to get the sheet on and off. We worked out that we could easily just pull the sheet down after the scene, but the problem was putting it up. We instantly realised that the sheet was going to have to be up and ready during the first scene - unfortunately, the first scene takes up a lot of space, and so we had to work out what we could do with the sheet. We spoke about having the bottom of the sheet elevated so we had more space, but the problem was how this would be done, as every time we thought we found a way, the weight of the sheet made the middle bow down. I then suggested that we attached a hook in the middle of the two corners at the bottom of the sheet. We could attach this centre hook with string to the pipe on the wall. One corner of the sheet could be attached to another pipe on the wall with string, whilst the other corner could be attached with string to the window handle. Therefore, by lifting the sheet like described, the sheet would be almost parallel to the ceiling and thus we would be able to work below the sheet and would have more space. To get the sheet ready for the second scene, we would just cut the strings.
After working on James's scene, we moved on to Robert's scene as we felt this scene was a little bit static. We choreographed the movement between Gerda and the crow a little bit so we knew where we should be during the scene, to make the scene more entertaining to watch and to give it a little more life. We went over all of the movements to ensure everyone knew what they were doing. We decided to cut Lewis's role of the lamp as (although he was doing a brilliant job and did exactly as Rob asked) he got in the way at times (due to him walking on his knees) and caused a bit of a barrier between the crow and Gerda. Having tidied the movements and setting some movement for Robert and I, we are all a lot happier with this scene and shall move on to a different scene next lesson.
