As our devised piece is set in the 1930's we need to research the hair styles from that time period.
Men- As you can see from the photos below the hair style back in the 1930's is a very simple yet a very smart slicked back to one side style. This look will be easily achieved, no matter what length your hair it will probably be very possible that you would be able to get this look and I know for sure my other group members will be able to achieve this look. The second photo shows some facial hair, obviously he only has a moustache and the is clean shaven on the rest of the face, this looks could easily be achieved with make up if needed or a fake moustache as no one in my group would be able to grow this moustache.
Women- Even though the majority of the research I did showed that the style for 1930's women was short and either curly or finger waved the girl in my group does not have short hair so I tried to find some photos with long haired hair styles, clearly these photos weren't taken in the 1930's they were probably people creating 1930's inspired hair styles, this is helpful as it still is quite clear what time period its from but it allows our female to have long hair. The first photo is something I hope we could achieve with our girl but none of us are hair stylists so it may be difficult, the main thing we want is for her to have her hair off her face so we can clearly see any facial expressions during the performance, we may decide to have her hair in a simple pony tail but we do need to have her hair free at the back as in one scene she gets dragged across the floor by her hair. The second photo looks very similar to the first photo but the first photo seems to have a finger waved front where as the second photo seems to have a very small victory roll front, both styles show the hair going backwards off the face.
Another thing about these photos we can gather about 1930's style is the make up, very simple yet elegant and beautiful, something I'm sure our girl could achieve.
As our devised piece is set in 1930's a lot of research needed to be collected on the sorts of clothes people wore back then.
Men - As you can see below that suits were quite popular back in the 1930's. It is also very clear that there are no skinny or tight fitting suits, all the trousers are pleated and quite baggy and straight, even though two of these photos aren't in colour it almost seems the suited are a navy blue or beige colour.
Another thing about the fashion is the how you can work with it, for our devised piece the gang members can all have similar suits but how they wear them is personal, some could have the jacket on or off, with a waistcoat or without and they could also have braces, this created quite a few looks just from one style of suit, this could also help the fact that we have a years time lapse during the performance so the story doesn't seem like one week, having a suit and being able to deconstruct certain elements of it will almost create a whole new looks. the men's fashion will be a lot easier to source as there are loads of suits around, the only issue will be finding suits that aren't slim fitting as this is the current fashion for the present year.
Women- Below I have three photos of different styles of clothing our girl can wear. one issue we have with the our female character is she works in a speakeasy bar as a waitress but when she meets Fin, they have a dance that involves a lot of lifts, she would need to wear something easy to move in but also in keeping with the 1930's style, I feel if she wore something like the first photo it would be very easy for her to move and yet still looks feminine and elegant. In the story we have a years time lapse, this means we may need various costumes and hair styles for each of our characters.
One problem with the women's fashion of the 1930's is then trying to source is and put it together.
As you can see just like the men the trousers the woman is wearing isn't tight fitting at all and is extremely flared, the blouse is also quite baggy and free flowing giving the look a very soft look. The last two photos are more girly outfits as they are dresses which is what we want our female character to be, the last photo is something I feel the character would wear as its quite simple and I don't think it would be that hard to source or even make from scratch, the second photo however seems a very complex design and maybe more hard to source but is probably something out character wouldn't really wear if she was only a waitress.
Yesterday I was working on a lighting plan for our devised piece. I already knew where we would have our lights and how many lights we would have, I then knew from what scenes we had already finished what set is being used and where it is on stage, from this I was able to create a birds eye view of the stage with the lights and what colours they will be.
The different colours represent various things, the grey squares represent where lights are but they'll be off, the different colours represent what colour the light will be as we are using LED lights. The brown shows where the audience will be and the black shows what set is where.
This plan was created before I got a chance to work with the lights, when I got to school today I worked with the lights to only find out that I can only have the LED'S the same colour at one time, which wasn't a problem as this is a compromise which wasn't a big deal. for the opening all the LED'S will be green, the speak easy will be all blue. I think this is a good thing as it makes it very clear when there is a complete scene chance and we are in a different location. through out every scene we have around 6/7 par can lights to give us enough natural light to be scene, we also adjust the brightness of these to give more effect and more clear transitions between each scene.
Today we worked on the attack scene again, this scene includes the characters, The Boss, Tess and Stan. even though three of us today weren't acting we were all directly involved with coming up with ideas for this scene to make it work and we also came up with a rough set design and lighting to really set the mood for this piece, I think the lighting we did for this scene really suited it and just gave it more dimension and also brought the scene to life. This scene is set in a warehouse where the Gang operate, we wanted the lighting to be quite natural so we tried using the normal ceiling lights we had in the studio but they were too bright, we then decided to use basic cans that gave us a very natural light but we were able to dim these lights giving it quite a dark and eyrie effect. We then added some more depth by using our LED lights and we had the majority of them red as this scene is full of aggression and violence. we had two of them in one corner of the room facing up so the red was bleeding up the white curtains and this gave a really nice effect, in this corner we also kill Tess so it is quite clear that in that corner something bad is going to happen.
Another thing we did today was try to get our heads around the three endings we have to this story, we are almost finished with the second ending but are yet to come on to the first and third ending, the third ending was very dramatic so today we were trying to figure out what techniques we could use but also try and keep it quite serious and not over dramatic, our aim is to have a real affect on the audience and not have anyone laugh or find something funny.
Today we mainly focused on an attack scene with the characters Tess, The Boss and Stan. this scene is the second out of three endings to the story, the scene include a violent and cruel attack on Tess who just came looking for Fin (her lover) but the Gang Fin is involved with don't like Tess, so the Boss decides he will wipe out Tess so he can keep Fin focused on the Gang.
This scene starts with just the Boss, he throws Tess around a little but doesn't beat her up much, then Stan gets involved and they collectively start beating up Tess being more violent this time. I think this is effective as it shows how the Boss is enjoying beating up Tess so he continues but is more violent this time, also now because there are two Gang members against one girl its clear Tess might not make it out alive.
At the end of this scene we decided to have Tess be pushed behind something so only her legs are sticking out on the floor, then the Boss would start punching her ferociously until he kills her, behind this bit of scenery the Boss can then get some fake blood on his hands for audience effect, when he makes his hands visible to the audience we want it to be clear that he doesn't feel bad or guilty for killing this girl so he smirks, then pulls out a cloth and wipes his hands. We then thought we could either go straight to black out or perhaps have that the Boss drags Tess's body out from the behind the scenery so the audience can see she is dead, we would have fake blood on her face as well as the Boss's hands, we may do this as it will have a real serious affect on the audience and make the Gang look more aggressive and powerful.
I think if we can get this scene perfected, it could be the best scene of the whole performance as it will look extremely real as we have already worked on the stage combat and other techniques to make this look realistic but with some movement thrown into it so we are using more then one technique.
