AAS (32) - CIDNT - Dialogue & Movement

In this lesson we decided to do a rough recording of the lines we wanted to record. This was so we could start working on our movement, knowing how long we would have, without having to worry about reading our scripts at the same time. Although we were intending to do a rough recording, as we were planning on recording it properly in the recording studio at another point, we did quite a lot of work on voice this lesson too:

• Page 54 ~~ Christopher's lines:   Ollie was feeling anxious about his character voice for Christopher, therefore he asked us for our opinions and guidance. The advice we gave him was to really articulate every word - in Ollie's case, especially his "t's". Our other piece of advice was to slow down slightly. Ollie tends to rush his dialogue when there isn't any punctuation, therefore, Kat highlighted his script where she would take a pause, in an attempt to slow him down a bit.
• Page 54 - 56, 61 & 62 ~~ Voices:   With the "voice" lines, we wanted these to overlap slightly. This is to create a busy atmosphere. We also wanted to ensure that every line sounded a bit different - it's the typical thing in Musical Theatre where each time you repeat the same line, it has to have a slightly different intention so it isn't boring (e.g. "I love him, I love him, I love him" in "On My Own" from "Les Mis"). 

As a group, we really like Frantic Assembly and so will be including a lot of their techniques - this is also useful as they are the company that created the movement for "Curious Incident". We will come back to the beginning of our scene, but we wanted to start work on the first section of "Voice" dialogue. We wanted to have convincing characters based off of typical people you would find in London (I am a busy business woman walking around on my phone). We wanted to create a variety of movements that all merge together or overlap to form a frantic atmosphere. We also wanted to involve different dynamics and speeds to create an atmosphere that would disorientate Christopher. My first movement is an interaction with Ollie, where I walk over to him and push his shoulder, causing him to turn round 360 degrees as I continue walking round whilst pushing him. As soon as we finish this movement, Kat moves in for her movement with Ollie. We have included a back to back lean (where Ollie M is leaning on Ollie K's back as he lunges forward). This lean is done in slow motion - whilst this happens, the rest of us move about in slow motion too.

We have also worked on a lift. This lift involves Ollie M being lifted and me as the "rock". This lift was demonstrated in the Frantic Assembly video: "Learning to Fly". Ollie M has to put his hands on my shoulders and put his weight through his locked arms on to my shoulders and I take it through my skeleton. Meanwhile, Ollie K and Kat lift Ollie's core and hips, whilst James just lifts his legs. It took a while to get this lift right, but once we managed it static, we learned how to turn it. It was essential for me to lead the turn as a lot of Ollie's weight is going through me. To get out of this lift, Ollie lets go of me and is put down by the other three. Whilst being put down, I moved round to his back and bent my knees. He then was bending his knees by the time I got to the right place. Ollie and I ended up doing a support lean with our backs touching and knees bent to make it look like we were sitting on a bench.