Week 9 - Performance

This the YouTube link for the video of our performance 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g7hNbiA6J4&feature=youtu.be

Final End of Project Reflection 

This day was one of the most chaotic days ever in school because it was running around, fixing puppets, checking sound effects, instruments and volume of keyboards, sending videos at last minute etc. but I must say it was worth it in the end because our performance was amazing (in my opinion). i feel like all of our efforts and work that we have been doing for the past 9 weeks paid off in those very short 3 minutes of performance but I enjoyed every second of that. It was amazing how the sound effects came together with the music and the video with the puppets and the narration with the movement of the characters it was amazing. We did have a few issues on the day right before we performed. The first issue that came up was that another puppet was lost but fortunately we found it before the lesson started because obviously we came in first break to set up all the instruments as well to change into our black shirt, which by the way looked amazing and we really did look like a very professional team. Another dilemma was that we were meant to go first but the Jackson had the video on his iPad and the cable to connect the iPad to the projector was too big so he had to send it to Ms, Cross but that took very long so instead of going first, we ended up going third - but we still managed to solve all the dilemmas before our performance.

During our performance we figured something out that we hadn't notice in class and that was that in the beginning scene the picture on the video played for a short amount of time so Jackson who was in-charge of the video had to stop it and wait for me to have finished the part and then continue playing the video. However even though we encountered that problem we didn't stop the performance, we just continued like nothing happened and I'm very glad we did because it turned out really well. Also at the part where James is dead but he sees the light again, I liked how we came up with the idea of covering the projector so that the audience is in pitch black and when Mario took the paper away from the projector it really seemed like James was  adjusting to the bright light because the screen kind of goes all blurry and that is exactly what happens in the story, so I think it gave a really good effect.

Mario did an excellent job with the audience, because he told us after the performance that they got really scared when he was crawling through them. Maria did fantastic at playing the music because during music lessons when we were rehearsing together, she kept messing up the part of the rain and the introduction but during the performance she played beautifully and I was very proud of her. Yasmeen did a great job at decreasing the volume at the correct time and she was always on time when she had to change the numbers on the keyboards (She even memorized the numbers!) and she was excellent when she banged the drum really loud exactly when I asked her to do it. Jackson thought in a very intelligent manner and knew when to stop the video when we encountered that dilemma of the picture playing for to little time. Last but not least Aria and Rana did a marvelous job and handling all the puppets, making the move at the correct time, making them face the right direction and changing puppet/ putting them down/switching places during the right moments in the story. I don't actually think there was a time where we messed up during the performance other than the video part.

I learnt a lot from this experience and project, I made new friends and worked with people I wouldn't normally work with. I also improved my time management skills and organization skills but the skill I really think I improved on what reflecting. I feel like this year, I have really put in a lot of effort with my reflections, I not only have improved writing wise but also at converting videos and uploading images/videos. If I had to do this project again, I would create a shorter story but have more puppets and instead of having one narrator, we would have different people being a character each. Also I would use more instruments like try using the triangle or the xylophone. Finishing off this reflection, I have truly enjoyed this term and this project because it pays off in the end, all the breaks you have sacrificed and all the emails and Whatsapp messages to reply to so everyone has all the materials. It's worth it in the end.

Peer Evaluation 

Group Evaluated: Arnima, Maya, Famke, William, Nehal, Rawan, Joseph, Evita, Ashna
Story: Cinderella

I remember that this group really caught my attention because their performance was synchronized and well told, the music was suitable to the story as well as the target audience. It was really nice because even though they used an already existing story, they made up some parts such as the bloody shoe which related to horror and phantasmagoria. Another unique addition which they had was that on top of the music, they had some singing. I thought that was an interesting and creative touch as no other group had thought of that before. I really liked their puppets especially the princess and the prince. You could see they had put time and thought into making them. However they did stop sometimes during the performance and got stuck because people didn't know what to say but they didn't let themselves down and continued like nothing happened which I found really nice. They could improve on the sound effects because even if they did have a few, they were quite limited and could add some more, especially during the part where Cinderella was running. Another thing they could improve on was the variety of backgrounds they had because again they were quite limited and could've added more in the part where the prince came to Cinderella's house (they kept the same background for 3 different scenes). Lastly, I think as a group needed to improve collaboration skills because I remember in the lessons, they were mostly arguing and fighting with Art and Music and didn't know what each member had to do. Overall I did enjoy their performance a lot.



Group Evaluated: Tereza, Rozita, Kalyani, ATM, Amirreza, Daniyal, Aman and Zainab
Story: Maritopia

I enjoyed their performance from the first second to the last, even though I found it quite short and maybe the ending could've been more developed. I know that this group had many problems with the Art side because at week 7, they only had 2 puppets done and Tereza was going mad. She even had to take some home and create them from scratch even though she was in the music side. I must say that I really enjoyed the sound effects and the musical touches. I especially liked the bird sounds and whirling sound effect (when she was taken to Maritopia). The story was suitable for the target audience because it included princesses, a bad guy and castles. The slides on the PowerPoint also matched with the story and the quality of the pictures was good. Overall they had a good idea and I could see what they originally planned to do. However a very big problem that this group had was collaboration and organization skills. They couldn't communicate properly without arguing with each other and were always behind with the puppets. Though the music was finished on time. They didn't really listen to the group leader, and weren't organized. I would've liked to see more music, instead of sound effects, for example Tereza or Rozita could've been playing the piano or the xylophone to build up more tension in certain parts. When this group started performing, the messed up several times and had to restart. Zainab didn't know when to say what and the wrong puppets were held up at the wrong times. But I must say that when they did start again, they performed really well and it was really interesting to watch.

Week 8 - Rehearsing the Performance

This week was a complete nightmare simply because the Art students from our group hadn't YET finished their puppets nor the video meaning that we couldn't rehearse anything. On top of that, they didn't have enough puppets for the whole story. I found it really unfair how music had finished everything on time and art hadn't and the art group even consisted of more people than music which was only Maria and I. Also one of the art students thought to have lost one of the main character puppets so we couldn't even rehearse the main scenes because they had to go search for the puppet which fortunately though they eventually found. Meanwhile some of the group went to try and find the puppet Maria practiced and Yasmeen did the narration instead of, so I could help Jackson with the video and tell him where each sound effect should go, even though there was a picture of the script with highlighted parts where to add the sound effects. I also had to tell the Art students what puppets to add and make in time for next week or else we wouldn't have had enough. Having said all that, I did really like the puppets that they had made and I could see they spent time and effort into making them even though we still needed more. In my opinion those two lessons were wasted this week, trying to find puppets, creating the video which was supposed to be created and making enough puppets for the show. We did rehearse the performance twice but we did it with missing puppets and without the music because since the art students had to fix their puppets we had to stay in the Art room, so we only had 10 minutes in music. I just really hope that they manage to finish creating all the puppets on time as well as the video. One thing that was positive this week is that we agreed on wearing black shirts during our performance so we blend in and make it seem very professional and nice altogether. Also we wrote down each person's job during the performance:
Federica: Narrator
Yasmeen: Changes the numbers on the keyboard/decreases and increases music/plays the loud boom at the end
Rana: Controls the puppets
Aria: Controls the puppets
Jackson: In charge of the video
Maria: Plays the music
Mario: Spraying the audience with water/walking through the audience in the alleyway part/ covering the projector when James dies


Here is the YouTube link to the video which will be playing during the performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feauture=youtu.be&v=jjKgFauzVmo

Week 7 - Recording our Song

As I said in my last blog post that my goal this week was to complete and have the song finished and sounding good. I can proudly say that Maria and I have achieved this goal! Not only have we achieved this goal but we have solved our two dilemmas that we had last week. On top of finishing the composition of the song, I have worked out and planned when each part needs to start playing and stops playing. Below is pictures of the story with the planned times of when to play what: 

Half way through the lesson, we had finished planning, playing and had even practiced playing the song with the narration, so at this point we thought we had completely finished everything related to the music part of our performance. So we called Ms, Cross to show her our song and see if she liked it or not. When Maria had finished playing, Ms. Cross had the greatest idea ever which completely changed our whole song in a very positive way. On the keyboard you could change the sound/ melody it played so for example you could have the drum sound when you were playing or the flute etc. So she showed us a bunch of different sounds that we could use to make our song fit better with the story and would really give a nice and realistic effect to our performance. We spent the rest of the lesson trying out different sounds while still playing the same notes to see which ones suited the part of the story the best. I am really glad, Ms. Cross showed us this because this helped us improve the whole musical piece so much and at the end, Maria and I were really proud with what we had accomplished in that lesson. 

These are the names of the melodies which we will be using when playing each part

In the second lesson of the week, the original plan was to show the rest of the group which were doing art, what we had done and the finished piece of music and then in return the art students would've shown us their completed puppets and the phantasmagoria video that was going to play as the background with the sound effects we had created two weeks ago. We only managed to do half of what we had originally planned. The art students came up in the music room and we showed them the song, so Maria played and I read the story as well as changed the numbers to change the melody/type of music. The art students really liked the song and said that it fitted the story perfectly so Maria and I were really proud. However when we asked them to show us their puppets and the video, they said they hadn't yet finished them. I was really disappointed and a little bit angry because if we had to rehearse next week then when did they think they were going to show us what they had done. Their excuse for the puppets were that Ms. Turner was absent so they couldn't assemble the puppets, as well some of the puppets weren't finished yet and Jackson was supposed to do the video but she hadn't even started even though I had reminded him of it on the Whatsapp group. I really hope they manage to finish all of the puppets, in time for our rehearsal. 

Here is the whole finished song without narration 

Week 6 - Composing the Song

During this weeks lessons, Maria and I started composing and jotting ideas down for the song which will be played throughout the whole performance. As I said in my previous blog post we researched some already existing pieces of music, listened to some horror related songs and even took ideas from the songs that we composed last year for the Me,Myself and I project and I must say that composing a song is extremely hard! On top of that we were only two doing the music part, so we really had to have put our thinking caps on for these lessons. However, we have managed to compose the whole song that Maria will be playing while I will be narrating the story.  We are thinking to add some other instruments on top so the music doesn't sound monotone, like the triangle at the end (candy land = happy) and the drums (alleyway = scary and spooky). We decided that during the introduction, the song which is going to be played, we wanted to give the affect of it fading away so when Maria is playing I will be decreasing the volume of the keyboard to give the effect of the music vanishing. Even though we have completed the whole musical piece, we still have doubts on some of the parts because the alleyway part (scary) of the song is completely different to the candy land part which is happy and joyful and also if the music is playing then the boom wont have the same effect on the audience. Maria and I were trying to solve these dilemmas and came up with a few solutions like decreasing the volume of the keyboard when the 'boom' part happens or completely stop playing when I will be reading that part. For the other dilemma of joining each parts to create a complete, fluent song, Maria thought of creating other parts to the song but we wouldn't have enough time during the performance for that and it didn't really sound good. So next lesson our goal is to have a finished amazing musical composition ready for the rehearsal we should be having in two weeks.


Below is the video of Maria playing the introduction