Devising (2) - Pictures

We began this lesson by experimenting with the lighting to see how we would do the snapchat trick. We would project a (supposedly) "live" snapchat feed on to the wall, whilst Ollie would do whatever is on the video live on stage. In the video, the lights would go off and I would appear in the video (on the projection) as a silhouette and "magically" disappear again. This would happen a few times on the video but not in the actual room. The first way we tried this was by having a spot light behind me and come on, but this wouldn't make sense as why would there be a random light source coming from behind Ollie. Therefore, we tried this again, but with a spotlight from in front of Ollie (as this made sense to have a light source in front of him). This actually looked really good so we would like to use this sort of trick at some point during our piece, but we are going off our idea of snapchat. We like the idea of social media (as it is very current and makes our piece modern) but we don't feel like we would be able to make a whole story out of it. Therefore, we decided to think of themes and questions to help us get back on track and to form a discussion:

• Themes - death // myths // beliefs
• Do you believe in ghosts?
• What would be considered "proof" for the existence of ghosts?
• Believe so much you "see" / "feel" ghosts - i.e. the placebo effect
• Ghosts have personalities?

Whilst discussing these points, Lewis came up with a little story. He told us that it wasn't going to be brilliant, it was just to get us thinking and to give us ideas for what we could do. His story was set in a school and involved the main character believing in ghosts whilst no one else does. The boy then gets possessed by this ghost and he attacks the bullies. Although not a brilliant story, it was original and did make us consider locations. As we were still struggling with coming up with an idea, we all sat down and made some mind maps based on certain words and pictures. Below is what we came up with:

• "Ghost":   Possessions // Possessive // Rain // Storms // Spirits // Orbs // Murder // Story-telling // Hunting // Suicide // Antagonist // Protagonist // Death // Children // Mirror // Dark // Fear // Belief // Haunted houses // Homes // Graveyards // School // Abandoned building // Hospital // Mental health institution
• "Mental Health":   Hospitals // Visions // Unpredictable // Child-like behaviour // Against the norm // Social outcast // Quiet // Needing help // Mute // Bi-polar // Schizophrenic // Psychopath
• Image 1:   Smoke // Danger // Cigarettes // Never-ending // Trapped // Fire // Spirals // Lungs // Disease // Death // Quiet // Drugs // Mist // Cold // Weather // Cancer // After-effects
• Image 2:   Old // Decay // Power // Lights // Needing help // Abandoned // Isolated // Depression // Smog // Supressed // Encased // Darkness // Eerie
• Image 3:   Death // Lack of identity // Trapped // Fear // Beyond the grave // Lungs // Encased // Isolated // Psycho // Suffocated // Surgery // Grim reaper // Heaven // Hell
• Image 4:   Religion // Belief // Superstition // Light // Empty // Distortion // Hell // God // Candles // Controversy // Safe // Hope
• Image 5:   Church // Religion // Beauty // Nature // Honesty // Life // Clean spirit // Peace
• Image 6:   Fog // Church // Supressed // Power // Authority // Dark // Mist // Lack of vision // Dagger // Power // Fantasy
• Image 7:   Lack of identity // Busy // Airport // Drunk // Lack of vision // Purgatory // Blur // Shadows // Mystery // Unknown // Bombs // Silhouettes

By making the above notes was how we finished this lesson. I found that this activity really helped us as it made us think of ideas we wouldn't have done from just the stimulus title - by finding images and then labelling them, helped us envision what we could achieve. So far we are particularly liking the ideas of having a modern setting and the idea of mental health and visions.