The video below shows our final lighting design:
Scene 1 - lighting
Stage left side light 1: 7
Stage left side light 2: 5
Stage left side light 3: 5
With our scene 1 lighting, we wanted to go for a more artificial look. Using the white side lights made it thus. Moreover, having the lights focused on Stage left allowed for almost a split stage between Evie and Kate on the risers at the beginning of the piece.
Scene 2 - lighting
Stage left side light 1: 7
Lighting desk: 5 (halfway); 6 (fully up)
With our scene 2 lighting, we wanted to have a much softer look as though Phil and Leah are looking at a sunset. The light shouldn't be as wide as the one in Scene 3 in order to make the scene appear cosier and inviting. We were initially going to have birds tweeting in te background but we feared that this would distract from the performance slightly - I still would've liked to have tried it.
Transition - lighting
Stage right side light 3: 10 (with red gel)
Lighting desk: 16 (fully up)
We decided to use a red gel in the side lights on stage right in order to portray a more sinister feel. Moreover, it created a nice column of light for Tom to walk down on as John-Tate during the transition. We initially wanted a cacophony of sound but Imogen didn't feel confident in working the lights and sound. I suggested the night before the performance that we could have had the characters shouting some of their lines to create a cacophony in this sequence, having Phil and John-Tate remain quiet, however, it was too late to make such a large change.
Scene 3 - lighting
Stage left side light 1: 7
Stage left side light 2: 5
Stage left side light: 5
Lighting desk: 14 (fully up)
With Scene 3 we wanted to have a larger light space in order to have all characters lit. The use of only one side light in this scene would be slightly detrimental as it may block Ollie. We also wanted to have a dappled effect through the use of a gobo, however, with the resources we have at school this was impossible - however, the shadows created from the leaves as shown in the video provide a similar effect. Initially, we were going to have the sound of wind.
Scene 4 - lighting
Scene 4 is very similar to Scene 2 in terms of lighting and sound. The only difference made is that when Leah begins to talk about how the group are in lots of trouble, Imogen dims her light first to suggest some darker elements creeping in. I slowly dim my light afterwards to enhance this effect.
We found that our cast was not taking the rehearsal process as seriously as we would want them to be as they kept talking over us or laughing when we were trying to work on Leah's bonobo monologue. It was imperative that they understood that we needed them to be completely invested and to stop talking over us thus we got Chipp involved and asked him to look over the piece and to intimidate the cast a little bit so that they would take it seriously. There were a couple of things that Chipp noticed in the piece, the majority of which we had picked up on before and told our cast members to do, but I think with Chipp's assistance the specifics were really ingrained into the memory of the cast and thus would be done in future. These included:
- Reacting to what Ollie and Megan are saying in their duologue - this was vitally important because it would lift the scene a bit more and stop the audience from becoming bored with the constant talking. Moreover, it would engage cast members a lot more. Thus, we decided to have certain moments be enhanced by the use of myself and Grace chiming in with certain points within Scene 3 to engage the audience a lot more than we had been doing previously.
- During Leah's monologues, her facial expressions were lost quite a few times because she kept turning round to look at Phil. I had originally directed Evie to turn to Phil completely at certain points but these were the points where what she was saying wasn't as important or where Leah was trailing off in her sentence.
- Everyone needs to slow down in certain points to emphasise climatic moments.
- Tom needed to vary his vocal tone a lot more than he had been doing and to show a higher level of anxiety and stress. We had been saying this to Tom for quite a while and especially worked on the variations within his vocal tone. Chipp suggested charting and pinpointing the moments of acute stress which would have been useful to do at the start of the rehearsal process with every character.
- Ollie's monologue in Scene 3 should seem as though Mark is going on a journey. Moreover, he should put off being serious for as long as he can. I can't say much about this monologue because Imogen had worked on this with Ollie and especially with his vocal tone - I am in no place to talk about the process with Ollie here.
- Evie needs to have much more clarity in her sentence shifts. This is something that I tried to do with her by marking out different sections within the monologues especially in the first one. Moreover, I did try and direct Evie to have varying shifts in her tone when saying certain lines as Leah does tend to move on from topic to topic quite fast.
After this intervention from Chipp, I found it much easier to direct the cast and found that they did listen a lot more to both Imogen and myself. We ran through Scene 3; every time someone made a mistake we would start the scene again. Imogen led the run through whilst I sat, watched, and made notes on certain parts of the performance which I would like to see improved. These are as follows and are in the order that I wrote them down in which doesn't necessarily follow the time structure of Scene 3 due to the nature of how we ran the scene:
The video below shows the changes made as mentioned above:- When Ollie says "Rachel, maybe" the line should be louder so the audience can hear it despite Tom being loud in his line; despite this, the interjection and continuation of the sentence by Tom was great and exactly what we need to do on other aspects of the piece.
- Tom's line "I mean, I'm not boasting but who made that happen?" needs to be much more boastful as though the answer to the question that John-Tate is asking is quite obvious.
- Interruptions need to be quicker throughout.
- Tom's change in tone needs to be quite different when bringing Rachel into the conversation.
- Ollie needs to have his tone so that the sentence he's saying appears as though it's continuing despite the line actually ending in the script; again interruptions are key here.
- Pause after "This is different" just before "Mark, are you scared of anyone in this school?"; here, John-Tate is asserting his dominance and is trying to regain the violent nature that he seems to have had before the play began.
- Grace needs to slow down at her "You shouldn't threaten me" paragraph, especially at the start; she needs to build up the tension in her vocal tone in order for it to be effective and for Mark to be 'scared' of her as he admits previously.
- There needs to be a pause before and after Ollie's "It's Adam" in order to have tension. This should be reflected in body language and facial expressions. Additionally, Ollie needs to really slow down what he's saying in order for the monologue to be effective.
- We made a slight change in blocking at the line "And someone... pegs a stone at him". Here, Ollie turns towards Cathy (myself) during the ellipses in the aforementioned sentence. Cathy stands from her seat and glares. This implies to the audience that Cathy started throwing the stones; this relates to her later character development where she becomes the leader of the group and when Brian says "She loves violence now" later in the play. It emphasises Cathy's violent nature and thus wouldn't come as a surprise when she actually murders Adam with a plastic bag - foreshadowing at play here.
- KATE NEEDS TO MOVE DOWNSTAGE! I tell her this every time we go through her monologue!!
- Rachel needs to interrupt in between what Phil is saying; Grace needs to be quicker and have enlarged facial expressions to show her disgust towards Brian.
- Kate needs to pause at the ellipses in the following sentence: "And he'll tell them ... a man showed him his willy in the woods". This needs to be here to show the audience that Phil is literally making up the plan to frame someone else as he goes along.
- The lines about the Asda need to be much quicker - this is mostly directed at myself!
- The line "All go home..." needs to be said to everyone and needs to be much louder. Kate should leave a pause between the previous line and this one to make the distinction between who she is talking to, much easier to spot for an audience member.
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