Monday - First day back, put to some manual labour, carrying wood around. I enjoyed that a lot actually, we should do that more often, makes me feel quite useful, and I’m not required to attempt to socialise because it’s just carrying stuff in solitude. :p
Tuesday - EXCURSION… Well, not much to say, I had fun. Watching the play itself was actually relieving. I could sit myself down, be completely selfless and just let myself be consumed by it. Very entertaining. And I liked how a lot of elderly people were there, I had a bit of chitchat with an Old English man next to me, it was almost enlightening.
Wednesday - REHEARSIIIING… I was really not in the mood for rehearsing, and rehearsing a scene without a script of which I didn’t know the lines for was a bit annoying.
Thursday - Nothing theatre….
Friday - Took the day off.
Saturday - Okay, no one told me that we could get a lift with Cooper. I was never informed about that. But, umm, meh, I don’t feel that I missed much.
Publicity - Gonna contact the Age in the next couple weeks regarding an advertisement…
Ketu - Learning lines, trying to master movement, not much else to say really.
General - Really been tempted to drop out lately, school life shouldn’t feel so uncomfortable at year 12. I’m tempted but I won’t. My career plan is to pass VCE so despite being stressed out, I’m not gonna drop out. Even if I WERE to drop out, I’d still do 100. So nothing to worry about.

Cooper, if you’re reading this, resize the final design on the poster on one of your pages, it looks stretched and dodgy.

Happy birthday to me…:’(
lol
I don’t wanna grow up.

Acting

Regardless of a majority of this week being revolved around acting, I’ve done crap-all work on Ketu, but the journey begins for me next week. I think that because I performed with a script that it pissed off a lot of people, but umm, meh.

Publicity

Yeah my poster friggin owns.
Now all I gotta do is, first week back, hang them up around a lot of places and then make an ad in the Age and the Herald Sun.
So right now I’m entering the transition from my focus on publicity to my focus on acting, and I plan to do just as good a job.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS/LAST TERM 1 EVER!

Publicity

Hmmmm…
Erika and I are still planning to book a time to see Cooper some time early next week to FINALISE our publicity budget.

Like I’ve said before, we still have plenty of time to get publicity stuff organised and we’ve already done most of the work.

So I’m thinking on my part:
Officeworks - 40 A3 Colour - $128
5 Insertions of 1 module for Hume Leader - $190 per week for 5 weeks = $950 ($760 for 4 weeks)
F**K THE AGE, too small an advertisement for too high a price.

Poster- Things still need to be added to it but this is the draft so far:

L-L-L-LET’S TRY SOMETHING ELSE…

Acting

One more week and then I have to start memorising lines :p ON MY DAMN BIRTHDAY. lol
Not much to say on Ketu at this point. I think I’ll keep this blog short for this week…

I haven’t gotten around to those vocal exercises, but I will.
I’m happy with my costume, it motivates me to train harder and diet better for the performances as I’d like to look in my prime while performing, so I’m gonna cut my bodyfat percentage from 13% to 8-10% in just under 10 weeks, if that means anything to any of you. :p
Character-wise, I’m sufficiently satisfied with the blocking we’ve done.
I think I need to work on the scene where Ketu hangs himself most, I need to work on really grasping the emotion that Ketu would feel; the feeling of being outcast from your own kin for your beliefs, I need to picture that and BECOME Ketu.
But I think I’ll do that more when I begin to memorise lines the day after my birthday.
This whole thing’s been a journey and I’m about to enter the difficult part of it, I’ve been through exploring the character and soon I’ll have to work on the character transformation.

Publicity

This is the fun part…
I called the Age and Hume Leader and got this from them:

THE AGE
$7.51 per line
Heading - $15 per line
Package - 30% off for every ad that goes over 7 days.
whowell@theage.com.au

HUME LEADER
1 module, high or wide 9×6.3cm
2 module, high or wide, 9×13cm/13×9cm
Running ads over the weekend costs more so I’m thinking scratch that.

5 insertions = 5 weeks - For $350 per insertion for 2 module
5 insertions = 5 weeks - For $190 per insertion for 1 module

Ruth took my name and gave me her email.
burgessr@ldr.newsltd.com.au

I found The Age system a bit confusing but the Hume Leader was very straightforward which makes things easier.
I’m required to send in ads at least 3 days before the date we want it to be in the paper for, this applies for both agencies.

I am yet to call Officeworks but will edit this blog tomorrow once I have their prices on the posters.

JUST ADDED>>>OFFICEWORKS
A3 Colour posters cost $3.20 per poster.
So if we were to print 40 posters then that’d be $128 out of our budget.

AND NOW FOR SOME DESIGNS…
My Farmhouse Productions logo -

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/1118/farmhousehx1.png for full-sized image.
Our “TEMPORARY AD” which was put into the Aitken paper a few weeks ago -

http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/7163/adsj4.png for full-sized image.

I have no idea what’s going on with the FAME program.

As an update of last week’s little reminders list:

-Call Officeworks on Monday.
-Confirm Farmhouse Productions logo in class.
-Taking photos on Tuesday, making poster design by the end of the week.
-GO TO OFFICEWORKS AND PRINT POSTERS and hang them up around or by the end of the month.
-Ads sent in to newspapers by the 5^th-12^th of April (Depending on which week we want it in by)

There’s plenty of work to get done but I’m not stressing, we have plenty of time on our hands.
Erika and I need to see Coops sometime during the week to discuss our budget.

The whole week was based around rehearsals…Except Monday when almost everyone had a Psych SAC, that lesson was surprisingly fun for a bludge.
Tuesday, Gemma was surprisingly happy and talkative which was entertaining.
The beginning of the week revolved around Ketu’s memory, I realised that there are a lot more transitions and a lot more movement involved in this scene than any other scene which I think works really well.
I don’t think I have much to say on the Ketu scene breakdown, it was enjoyable and I have to work on grasping the character more.
I’M NOT HAPPY WITH MY VOICE SO I WANNA START DOING VOICE EXERCISES!!!!

Publicity

First Audit was a good talk about my character, my organisation skills and how Erika and I are off doing our own little thing with promotion, everything Cooper said I agree with. :p
So I made the effort to organise a time when Erika and I are both free so we can finalise dates and stuff together as publicity leaders, and she even proposed to me about getting together in our Friday study period to talk about it.
And I go to the study room on Friday…She’s not there.
I went all around the school for 40 minutes looking for her and couldn’t find her, the other 20 minutes I spent watching a year 7-8 seminar, seminars are awesome.
Looking back on it she was probably having her audit but ya know, a little warning would be nice. :p
But ah well.

Anywho…what I was gonna discuss with Erika is this:

-Talk to newspapers ASAP
-Call Officeworks over the weekend
-10-13th MARCH - Farmhouse production logo rough designs, worry about FAME program now.
-12-19th MARCH - Ads/poster work
-GO TO OFFICEWORKS AND PRINT POSTERS and hang them up - 24th March
-Ads sent in to newspapers by the 30th

I hope she reads this to see the ideas I have in mind.

This week I became aware of how far we’re going out of our way to advertise the performances, seems very professional and I like seeing effort being put towards it.

On the Tuesday lessons I designed a very temporary ad and wrote a summary for 100 to submit to the Aitken Newspaper… Except in that rush I forgot to add in the dates of the venue, but not to worry, in less than a month there’ll be posters all around the school with all the information they’ll need.

Erika and I are sharing the load for the ads in papers.

The Leader and the Age - I plan to call them some time in the next couple of weeks to find out prices and dates we’d have to get ads into them by, if possible get them to email me ALL the details.
S Press and Herald Sun - Erika

I haven’t talked with Erika about this yet but we need to discuss:
-Bulletin boards
-The Ad in the ‘Fame’ program (I’m considering using the temporary one in this that we put into the College Newspaper)
-Publicity/Promotion in other schools
-When we’d go to school assemblies/chapel to talk about it

Erika’s mother kindly made the offer of designing the FARMHOUSE PRODUCTIONS logo which I appreciate as it saves me the effort, not that I would’ve minded it.

At this moment in time I’m going to draw multiple rough draft designs of potential poster and advertisement ideas and then make a decision with Erika on what should be the final one, or final couple.
Following this if there are actors involved in the poster/s, I’d like to organise a time for the actors to get into costumes or blacks and take individual photos to put in the poster/s.
I would enjoy creating the poster/s with my own skills rather than leaving it all to Erika’s mother, but this is still to be debated, perhaps we could even it out, get her to craft one and get me to craft one.

Within the next couple of weeks, ideally, we SHOULD have a final ad and poster designs.
In the next few days I’d like to make a call to Officeworks and ask how much it’d cost to print 50 A3 posters, also I’m required to get permission to hang them up in local shopping centres.
Depending on the prices of the ads in the papers and the posters and whatnot, we might have to make budget cuts.
Now for Ketu…
I pretty much have the character set out, I picture him to be courageous, wild with simplistic ideals and a wide imagination.
I think I’ll get more focused on developing Ketu’s character more towards the end of this term than right now, and personally I think I’m doing a decent job of acting him right now.

It’s harder to act more professionally with the blocking as we’re stopped every other second to run over ideas.
I know that I’d be more in-character if we began with a rhythm and kept it flowing as we plan to in the performance.

I also noticed that Ketu’s memory begins with a big combination of transitions, I applaud Lisa’s efforts because I think that scene is broken down really well and am more than satisfied with it.

WISH ME LUCK… Week 4 down.

First lesson is a blur to me, I can’t remember what happened after the toe thing, I recall us wanting to block out a scene but we never got around to it.
Then throughout the rest of the week we blocked scenes, we got as far as Sophie’s memory.
I was intrigued by some ideas but there are a few recommended ones that I just don’t think my character works well with, such as in the ‘God? Are you God?’ scene where Ketu questions the Guide, he’s meant to slowly rise and then drop when she yells back at him but instead of just dropping to my knees I think I’ll incorporate Ketu dropping onto the floor in a startled manner and then crawling away from the scene to rise again, to symbolise his great anxiety towards the Guide.

One thing about the week that annoyed me a bit was the unexpected lunchtime class, I had a media class to work on stuff for media, to shortly be sent down to the theatre rooms.
I mean I don’t really mind but a bit of warning would be nice ya know? Not too fussed about it though.

Acting is fun, except I feel like I’m expected to learn the lines at this point, I’m not, and I personally think it’s a dumb idea to start learning lines so easy on.
Once I would know them then I’d have to keep them in my head for what, 2 months? That’d bug the hell out of me.
I don’t want people looking at me funny for seeming out of place when I’m the only holding a script for the introduction, that’d make me feel pretty uncomfortable.
I’ve already got a plan to memorise my lines well, the same thing I’ve been doing for 2 years; at a certain calculated point, 3 lines per day for however long it takes until it’s all in my head, and I’ll have a couple of weeks before the performance nights to master it fluently, so I think I’ll be fine thanks.

As for publicity though, I think it might be a bitch. The summary and the ad are not much of a problem but contacting The Age and organising stuff makes me a little paranoid, there’s probably a small chance of failure but I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing and am a bit confused by that. Ah well, things’ll work out.

Another week down…

I had no idea we were meant to bring blacks on the Thursday (Was it Thursday?…meh).
We started blocking scenes after many days of class discussions, this was enjoyable except I felt more awkward acting in front of the newcomers, well at first I did anyway.
The lesson we had on Friday was fun because I slightly overcame the thought of holding myself back from performing, and all of a sudden the class had improved. I’d almost forgotten my passion for acting.

I’m going to enjoy performing as Ketu…hehehehe… :p

The next few lessons went by smoothly, I was happy that 100 was chosen for our senior performance as all of the other texts didn’t seem as interesting, I can easily bet that I was hoping to get 100 chosen the most out of the class.
The whole class read 100 together and that was rather enjoyable, I was chosen for the role of Ketu which I’m also content with, I reckon I can get used to the character and perform him well.
I’m not looking forward to Fame as my participation in that would most likely interfere with the rest of my studies, that and I’m not particularly fond of musicals.

Later on in the week we had a class in IT4 where we were educated in the art of the vineblogs. Not that it’s that hard to learn anyway but a little tutorial can still give you a shove in the right direction.

I feel as though theatre this year will take some getting used to, I would be much happier with the class if I had closer peers in the class but beggars can’t be choosers so what can ya do………1 WEEK DOWN!

- Bukuru.