Day 7: Saturday is Skills Day!

Judging by how tired I was getting towards the end of the first week, I decided to nominate Saturday as a skills day - no new script work, allowing a little more time to focus on guitar practice, singing, talking to a camera, and so on.

I set my goal pretty high - I wanted to take a speech I know well, and then pretty much rip it apart.. on camera... "directors from hell" style. It turns out, I'm kind of terrified of talking to the camera. Acting like a tit on film? Not a problem... as long as I'm not paying attention to the camera. I love having my photo taken too. I've got plenty of songs up on Souncloud, available to the public, so it's clearly not a problem with being *heard* either. I have no idea why I'm so shy of actually putting my voice and image together. So that particular plan fell through. I did do some nattering on the camera, a sort of first draft of facing my various gremlins and then responding to them. I'll be going over that at some point and possibly patching it together into a video. If I do, I'll link it here, though it may be a while if I decide to redo it with a tighter script (and a bit more emoting when I'm being the gremlins!)

..And then there was the Doctor Who special. I remembered spotting a youtube video on developing emotional range which suggested watching films in a more open posture and really letting yourself feel everything. So while I was in the cinema rather than at home alone, I did just that - any time I was holding my breath, I tried to breathe, and as far as possible kept my arms out to my sides (premier seating for the win!) The result? Utterly vibrating with a lot of emotions I've not really felt in a while, and a few new favorite lines!

So all in all, I did spend a good chunk of the day feeling like I hadn't achieved much and that dispite being my own project, for which I make the rules, I was somehow cheating by giving myself a "day off". But the fact of it is, once I relaxed and let myself just absorb what opportunities were there, I found myself remembering, opening up, and learning. This is meant to be a journey and I don't need to be perfect all the time. As I get more secure in myself, this will all start to come more easily.

It's been a long time since I looked up at the stars, really properly. And all three of my favorite constellations are hanging up there tonight, the three my dad taught me to recognise when I was six. And I think I kinda felt like I was back there again.

Day 2: Dinosaurs, by Richard Nathan

This was a script I found while browsing titles on Simply Scripts (among other things, there are a large number of Shakespeare scripts linked from there, all links are to free online sites) described as "full length" and "scifi" and not much else. I decided to indulge my nerdy side and give it a go.. not realising yet that it was only a short sketch. There's very little character development and it's more of a protracted story-style joke than a dramatic piece, but this entire endeavour being about challenging myself in new ways, I was determined to find something to get out of it rather than dismiss it out of hand as "cheating". Thus, it being a short piece and having someone handy to read with me, decided to actually go through it aloud and acted rather than just reading it.

First impressions, it flows a lot better read outloud than it does on paper, something my friend agreed with right away. By the end of the first reading it was clear what the lesson was today - not corpsing at the punchline. Something very basic, but also something I've had a bit of a weakness with in certain circumstances. Enough so that I ran a workshop one week in my drama society at uni on the subject, and there's even now the memory of a single line I had to respond to in my largest role to date which was always delivered so well the only way to get through it on the night was to grit my teeth so hard on my response that projection became an issue.

However, the second run through I was getting off the page more, and that helped a lot, and was able to keep playing straight through by focussing on the next line - being dismissive rather than a particularly emotive line helps a lot as well. It's something I've noticed, thinking back, in gag reels it's often very contrasting emotions or ridiculous situations that lead to corpsing, and that dismissing the joke in character makes it easier to also dismiss the need to laugh at it.