January 13, 2021

 Today we finally started filming! We began the day by blocking and filming some smaller scenes. We worked on finessing the character details in these scenes and solidifying lines. Unfortunately, we were missing a cast member so this limited what we were able to record, but overall we got quite a bit done. While Mr. Lowery and Ms. Bowman were off teaching their classes at the middle school we blocked one of the larger and more complicated scenes. After lunch, when the teachers had returned, we showed them our work and with the help of a few notes completed the blocking for the scene. We then worked on recording the opening and finale songs. We also finalized the choreography for the finale number. After taking several takes of the finale song and running over the finale choreography multiple times we were all exhausted. We decided to end the work for the day there and sat down to watch another musical. Although many of us requested to watch Mamma Mia! and Barbie: The Princess and the Pauper (both wonderful musicals might I add) we finally settled on watching Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. The 1997 version of this musical contains an amazing cast including Bernadette Peters, Whitney Houston, Whoopi Goldberg, Victor Garber, and many more. We analyzed the songs, using the categories we had learned earlier in the course. All of us loved the set and costumes as they were whimsical and very much displayed a fairytale aesthetic. Overall, we had a productive and fun day.

- Sabrina

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

January 7, 2021

  We started off the day strong- watching the musical movie, Dreamgirls (2006 ), featuring famous actors such as Beyoncé Knowles, Jennifer Hudson, Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy.  This film followed three young girls, Effie White, Deena Jones and Lorrell Robinson. Together they make up the Dreamgirls. In the first scene, they enter and perform in a talent singing show,  singing a song that Effie’s brother wrote, and although they lose, they meet Curtis Taylor, a car salesman who becomes their manager. He gets the girls their first job- singing backup for the famous singer James Early. Following there, we watch as the girls’ careers progress, how they grow individually and how they handle every conflict and problem that life throws their ways. It was a great movie, although, we agreed, it contained a bit too many montages. We enjoyed it nonetheless.  From there, we went to lunch, and from there we began to write the songs for our own mini-musical. We had already decided the plot for o
Read more

January 14, 2021

  Thursday, January 14th. One of the last days of our musical theatre J-Term, and definitely the busiest one. For a day full of recording, re-recording, and re-re-recording, there is surprisingly not too much to talk about without repeating myself a couple times.  Because Patricia wasn’t available for filming on Wednesday, and Jack wouldn’t be available for filming on Friday, we needed to film 8 out of the 10 scenes and re-record 1 song over the course of Thursday. Despite being a Thursday, we walked into the classroom like it was a Friday and we had a half day- completely unfocused and not ready to work. Unfortunately for Ms. Bowman and Mr. Lowery, it took all morning to rally us and finish filming scene 8. Mr. Lowery, with smart thinking, wrote down a listed plan of our day on the board to keep us on track. I’m personally a very big fan of lists, plans, and listed plans, so this helped me out a lot. Finishing that first task gave everyone in the room a sense of satisfaction that we w
Read more

January 12, 2021

Today the troupe of actors in the musical theater J-term started by working on vocals with Ms. Watson. We warmed up and ran through the three songs (right next-door to the commons was full of students who heard undoubtedly heard our beautiful voices). After Ms. Watson left, we ran through the choreography for the opening number and then began to work on choreographing the remaining two numbers, which were the comedy villain number and the finale. It’s hard to describe exactly what is going on in these scenes without spoiling the show, but let’s just say it was a very interesting and (of course) fun process. Ms. Bowman and Mr. Lowery first gave us a designated amount of time (an hour or so) to put together blocking and choreography for the villain number. During this time, we put our heads together and constructed the scene, focusing on theatrical elements like dancing, props, and performance as well as technical things like where and when to enter and exit and all that jazz. It was rea
Read more