Peoples shows

Today we went to see other people productions, it was a very interesting experience indeed. I personally went to see the 'show' titled "The life of Dame Laura Knight", unfortunately I did not have the pleasure to see others as I had a very important matter to attend to. What did I think of this play, well I will try analyze it as the lecturers would. Brutal honest truth which will not win me any friends, but it is important information to know for the future.

The advertising for this event was very well done for the time limit, the card displaying the location, time of the even and price was well constructed and to the point - I was also impressed the way the team sent the information to the VLP email addresses of all the people on our course. The location was well chosen and was relevant to Dame Laura Knight, the seating area was a bit cramped but acceptable. The charge was 50p to watch the 'show' which at first I thought was acceptable but was not handled in a professionals manner, also I did not receive a ticket which was a disappointment as I would have liked something to hold and remind me of the event.
The show itself was not very impressive, I did not feel as though the team had practiced beforehand as everything was read out from a piece of paper and where almost definitely just copied and pasted from a website of encyclopedia, there was no eye contact. I did not feel any passion in the words that where being read out which made the performance uninteresting. The team did however wear appropriate outfits but the times when people where supposed to come on did not seem properly queued and the actions of the characters again showed not much interest. However I understand the people involved are not drama students so I guess the performance was satisfactory. I still don't know who Dame Laura Knight accept that she was an artist, so henceforth I believe the information was not presented correctly and that the 'key' points where not highlighted. My advice for future productions would be to take the information and write a script from bullet points from the information attained from research, maybe spice it up by not reading from a piece of paper and presenting the information with more confidence.

I apologize for such a harsh review, at least the team did there's though which is more than I can say for myself, good job.

Harold Shipman Project

Ouch... Well this one did not turn out as planned, unfortunately we where not prepared enough to deal with this situation and ended up pulling out.

All was going well at first, We identified various peoples strengths and took advantage of that, we formulated a plan and story quite quickly out of such a sensitive subject. Rimante and myself wrote the script and did the theme, Gav was also quite useful in this area when we initially discussed what issues we where going to address and how and constantly tried to keep in touch with the rest of the group.

All went well up to this point - unfortunately we did not acquire our intended location (Old age home), this was due to the fact we where having problems getting through to the 'head' and arranging something, we had a backup plan to do it at a local hospital but that didn't surface either.
It was quite unfortunate because we had all our actors too who boldly volunteered for this task - Rob would play the role of the psychiatrist, Kamal would be the street-wise cop , I would play the role of the presenter , Rimante and Ben would play the role as the bodyguards and Gav was going to take care of the technical side of the show. Ben would also provide pictures for the slide-show.

I am quite sad it did not take place but there was not much chance it was going to happen. Again I blame it on the lack of communication. but I do think it was a better idea to pull out instead of trying to make a half-decent show that was not rehearsed properly or correctly set up.

I will however be looking forward to going and seeing other peoples shows, I am quite interested in seeing 'The life of Dame Laura Knight' - I am impressed with the advertising of this show, I mean why not use the VLP email system to get to everyone, its fast easy and effective... and its something we would all like to know about - very good job guys for seeing and using this system, you got a paying customer right here.

Group Movies

We went to watch the entire multimedia Narratives movies on a big screen!!! It was excellent to see our productions in all their glory with stereo sound, unfortunately there where some hitches an one group did not have this luxury.
I really enjoyed watching everyone else's movies, I am not critic but some I liked and some I didn't but it was still very interesting non the less.

The most memorable one (apart from the name that is) was the one where everything turned into a comic book, it was a good story and the technique was well thought out and displayed. I also think our production 'Mr Pickles and the lost coin' was a great success and had quite advanced techniques compared to others I viewed, also our story was easy to understand and comical - we received laughs from the audience at the intended points in the movie henceforth proving that our planning was accurate and most importantly 'Worked' it was very useful to get feedback from the audience in this way.

Blast from the past

My good friend Andrew Tomlins recently posted one of our old projects we did at College on Utube, it was fantastic to see after such a long time... I thought it was lost forever. he is also posting the DVD addition to me (apparently it 1.6 gig). Anyways enjoy.

Credits go to - Todd Gledhill - Directing & script
Andrew Tomlins - Editing & camera work
Ian Sanders - Acting
Katie Notley - Assistant director