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Week Beginning the 28th October

On Monday as part on Unit 3 we talked as a class about the bad things that happen in horror films e.g.
An example of a Ouija board
  1. Car breaks down
  2. Going into basements
  3. Always going to find out what is happening
  4. People dying
  5. Ouija board
We then had to get into the group we were in last term that we did the haunted house performances. A new student called Louis was put in our group, we told him what our performance was about, and he thought it was very good. We had to make certain changes such as Mark would only be the fortune teller and Louis would be our friend instead of Mark being the friend and the fortune teller.

 We had to add some of the ideas about the bad things happens in horror films. 
We picked:
  1. Car breaks down
  2. Ouija board
We then went over our performance with the new ideas. We had to talk about where we would add them so the Ouija board would be at the beginning of the performance and the car breaking down would be at the end. We were only able to do half of the performance as we were forgetting things and we had to go through it for Louis.

 We then had to do a performance and ending it with the line “you’ll never know”. My performance with my partner was about me kidnapping the others son. After I had enough of her talking, I killed her and said “you’ll never know “
We were then allowed to perform this and watch everyone else’s Ideas. We then did another performance with the line “doubt it” my idea was to steal the Crown Jewels, but my partner had to leave early so I didn’t perform this, instead I did a different performance with Rob.  

 It was about my character being powerful and Rob was my assistant. I was sitting down reading a plan for something and Rob gave me a drink nervously. He would look at the plan over my shoulder when I wasn’t looking and I would quickly look over to see what he’s doing and he would quickly look away or smile awkwardly. He then asked “is it going to work?” And I replied, “doubt it” Working with Rob was a lot of fun and he was good to work with.

 On Tuesday for Unit 3 we watched two clips of silent films:

 1. Charlie Chaplin - The Cure 
2. Nosferatu 

We then got into a circle and we had to mime: 
Putting a coat on and pouring tea.

 We then had to think of our own mime and show it to everyone else, they would have to guess what it was. My mime was acting as if I was getting ready to take my dog out for a walk. It was fun to watch as some were very funny. We then got into pairs and had to do a performance about painting a wall or putting up new wallpaper. One of us had to be a serious person and the other would be funny. I was partnered up with Henok. I played the serious character and he played the goofy and funny one. After I painted some of the wall I allowed Henok to take over. When he started to paint the wall he started to mess around and he splashed me with paint and then poured the whole tub of paint on me. This made me get really angry and I chased him out of the room. I used a lot of face expressions especially with my eyes. I widened my eyes when Henok poured paint on me. 
Skills on Silent Movie Project
Rob then showed this board to us. This was about how we are going to learn how to do a short silent film and what we would learn from doing this experience. Such as: 
  1. Working as a team
  2. Building mime skills 
  3. Developing piece for a wider audience 
  4. Communication skills 

Tech work Unit 4 - We got into our groups for the haunted house silent Movie and we planned the costumes, props, set-sound and lighting. This was an interesting class because in my group we were able to listen to each other’s ideas and see if we could use them. The only trouble was we didn’t know where we were going to do the Ouija board and where the haunted house is going to be. 
Ideas for group Silent Film
On Tuesday 31st October Rob told us about how we were going to show our silent Movie.  We would show our silent Movie on a screen and afterwards we would perform it live which would convey the difference between films and theatre. We then got into our silent film groups and we went over our performance and tried to make sure we knew everything. Whilst rehearsing we made some changes:
 1. in the haunted house we find out the fortune teller had  Ashleigh’s soul because her mum did something bad to him. But when we had ideas of what she did they didn’t sound scary and evil enough. So we decided that we wouldn’t mention what happened. We then showed our performances to the class whilst Rob filmed us. We were proud of what we did but we knew we had to work on:

1. What lines we say 
2. Stage space 
3. What happens after a scene 

 This is our performance:


What I need to work on:

 1. After playing with the Ouija board, I get scared, to show this I could move my hand away from the board put it close to my chest.
2. When we got to the haunted house we walled through a door and had to take a step as if there are stairs. But when it came to me I walked through the steps which didn't look great. Over all, I should of see what the others are doing and copy them because then the performance would look more professional.


History of silent films

Rudolph Valentino as the Sheik
Silent Movies were popular from 1894 to 1929. A silent movie is a film with no sound being recorded. The first silent film was called “Roundhay Garden Scene” it was made in 1888 and was a short silent film. Live music would be played along side the film to give excitement, drama and emotion. People watching a silent movie was magic. Seeing trains coming towards the screen audience would think it was a real train coming towards them. It made stars of the actors. One actor that became a huge star was Rudolph Valentino. He was a heartthrob with the ladies. He was known as the Latin lover. His sudden death age the age of 31 sent his fans crazy. Around 100,000 people stood in the streets to pay their respects on the day of his funeral. Suicides were also reported by female fans that could handle the news of the actors death.

Some of the famous silent movie actors from that era were:

Comedy Actors:
  • Charlie Chaplin
  • Buster Keaton
  • Harold Lloyd
Action actors:
  • Douglas Fairbanks
  • Rudolph Valentino
Silent movie directors:
  • D.W. Griffith
  • Cecil B. DeMille
  • Charlie Chaplin
  • Buster Keaton
  • John Ford
On October 6th, 1927 the first movie with talking was shown, It was called “The Jazz Singer” starring Al Jolson. It was the start of the end of silent movies as “Talkies” became fashionable.

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