Tough Stuff.

For the past couple of days, Anika and I have been experimenting with the stop motion portion of our video, and realized it's a lot harder than at least I thought. Some things we learned from experimenting with this is that 1.Consistent lighting and positioning is crucial, and the positioning is not going to be easy. I still need to learn a little more about that. 2. To make a stop motion, you need a lot of pictures. I mean A LOT, to make the film have some kind of flow. So we really have our work cut out for us, but I'm still pretty excited to keep working at this. Oh, and my mind is currently being blown by the wonderful Umberto Eco. I didn't realize what I was getting myself into. But that's okay, it makes me want to get through the not one, but the two of his books I've decided dive into. So far the history of beauty is packed full of ideas of what beauty truly is and I love reading up on this, no matter what. Tough stuff ain't always bad stuff.

Project Update #2: Time to be Frank.

I'm gonna be honest.

I got very little done today.

I watched the video Anika posted on her blog, about beauty from the victorian era onwards, and it gave me some ideas for the things I want to incorporate into this project, but that was about it. And I realized I really need a side project, but I'm not sure what I want to do at this point. Probably something with playwriting, I keep having ideas for scenes.

Project Update #1.

Today, Anika and I began finalize what we want our project for this quarter to be. It was a long evolution to finally get where we are now. First, we started with the idea of "pushing boundaries" through photography, such as putting out of the ordinary make  up styles on people and making it beautiful. Then, we got some sense knocked into by Luke, and ended up with the question "what is beauty?" We went through several ideas on that, but none we were entirely satisfied with until we hit the idea of evolution of beauty. I don't think we're entirely sure of the format, maybe stop motion, video, or maybe even just stills, but we want to show how the one image of beauty has evolved through time, how it's always just a fad, and that achieving this image that doesn't exist is impossible. So we'll get ahold of things such as corsets, waxing kits, and bandages for foot binding and show one of us trying to do to make ourselves "beautiful" by putting ourselves in/doing these things. But at the end of this video, we'll show how we're okay with ourselves the way we are, and that changing yourself is futile, because as cheesy as it sounds, everyone's beautiful the way they are. Truly. At least to me everyone is.

I'm excited to start working on this. Really Excited.

Side note: While doing Research, we were told to check out Umberto Eco, who wrote about the history of beauty in art, and also wrote about how we view ugliness. I'm not sure how much he still applies to this project, but what I found about out about these books seemed incredibly interesting, so I ordered both and cannot wait to read them.

STAC Intensive in Review.

The STAC playwriting intensive pushed me farther than I’ve ever been pushed to get good at something- and get good at it as quick as possible. Two weeks, to be exact. Now, I realize that at the end of these two weeks no one was expected to be a professional. However, by the time I was done, it was stunning to see the difference between my playwriting skills prior to the intensive and then afterwards; I am now a completely different playwright than before. And there a just a few key things that made that change possible.

            Playwriting, as I’ve come to learn, isn’t something that can truly be taught. You learn playwriting by simply writing plays. The one of the things a teacher can do with playwriting is to tell a student is to get it done. Start a scene and finish it. No if’s, and’s or but’s, sit down and bang a play out. This technique is without a doubt beneficial to me. Before, I could spend five hours writing a play and only have two pages of crap because I would sit around, thinking too hard about what decision a character should make, then second-guessing it, and having Armageddon in my head about whether or not the character should just take a sip of water. With the “get shit done” method, I went with whatever came to mind first and stuck with it until the script was done. Then, I would go back and reevaluate the decisions I’d made, but not as in depth as before. This technique was introduced to me the very first day of intensives, when we were told to bang out a fight scene, six pages in length. Then, take that scene and cut it down it three pages. Finally, take those three pages and cut it down to a single page. Due by the end of that period. At first, I was in a complete stupor in front of a computer for a good ten minutes. Then, I told myself just it get it done, and did. The writing gets all your thoughts out on the page, and then the cutting down helps you to realize what’s needed and what isn’t needed, which I find to be an extremely efficient method.

            Along with fights come apologies. After we finished our few fight scenes, we were assigned to write a couple different types of apologies. This is where the next method factored in; that with anything, you can approach it in a few different ways. We were assigned to write an apology in two different ways; one being a direct, complete apology that addresses all the problems within the fight, and the other way being an indirect apology, a way of apologizing where someone doesn’t come right out and say “I’m sorry,” but they might treat the other person involved in said fight nicer, or do something out of the ordinary for them. I found that this is also a way to approach writing an entire scene or script. You can either get straight to the point an address the conflicts outright, or you can beat around the bush and make the main conflicts not as obvious. We tried the “beating around the bush” method when the playwrights were assigned to copy Harold Pinter’s style of writing, who is the king of being indirect in his writing. Being indirect during scriptwriting is extremely challenging for me, and truthfully, it’s been unsuccessful so far. This was not helpful for me at all, and now I tend to try and stay away from it. But it’s good to know what’s good for you and what’s not though, so this experimentation with the style was not wasted time at all.

            One last piece of intensives that we learned was the most excruciating experience that I have ever been through. Having the scripts we’ve written read aloud. This was the absolute worst part of it all, and I despise having my script that’s absolutely perfect in my head be unknowingly massacred by innocent actors, also known as “deformed-baby syndrome”. Deformed-baby syndrome is when you’re hearing a play you’ve written read aloud for the first time, and your perfect gem of a baby turns into a creature with three arms and eight eyes, otherwise known as a deformed baby. The feeling of working hard on a play to make it just the way you want it, or just the way you thought you wanted it, only to have it butchered is extremely disheartening; but also extremely helpful. After hearing what you’ve written said by someone else, you realize what sounds good, what doesn’t sound good, what’s just plain awkward, and where there are gaps in what you’ve written. For me, this was like nails on a chalkboard every time we did this. I would even cringe a little bit at the beginning of each line, because I hate having anything I’ve written read aloud. Despite that, I was carefully listening to what the actors were saying, and how they interpreted what I’d written. I took this under consideration while revising, and found it to work in my favor. As much as I hate this process, there’s no denying that it’s the most helpful tactic that was presented to me during intensives.

            Much of playwriting is impossible to teach, it’s simply just something you’ve got to figure out yourself. But, the tools to help you figure out the mysteries of playwriting can be given to you, and that’s exactly what was given to me during intensives. All in all, the tactics and techniques helped me tremendously in becoming an exponentially better playwright in just a short amount of time.

Over scheduled.

I've recently come to realize that I'm overbooked, despite the fact that I have had friends try and convince of me this fact many times over. It had never gotten through my thick skull. "I can do it," I always repeat, "I've got everything under control," I'd say, yawning and putting my head down during class from lack of sleep the night before. But the truth?

My life is spinning out of control.

And that now makes sense to me. I get it. But more importantly, I don't understand why I do this to myself. Is there some explanation for this? Why can't I say "no"? Is this some odd case of gluttony? The worst thing about this is I can't actually muster up the courage to quit any of this. It would leave me feeling so much remorse, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night.

How do I fix this Mess I've gotten myself into? I guess for right now, I have to hold my head up high and bear through it. Bold Optimism.

Back to the Start.

Well, we're into our second week of intensives...
Is anyone else ridiculously tired, but kind of loving it? Just me? Okay.

Anyways, playwriting has both been a great deal of fun and a challenge for me. Mostly a challenge, now that I think about it. But a side effect of all this practicing is actually getting better.
...Or so I thought.
Having Luke tell us what to write about, and then giving us a few periods to bang it out is good. It's productive, and overall made for a good product. But as soon as my reigns were loosened, things are starting to fall apart. I'm feeling as if I've returned to square one, as if all that work that was completed last week has just gone down the drain.

I know I can do this.
I know I can get better.
There's no way in hell I'm letting these last two weeks go to waste.
It's time to really kick it into high gear.

Expressionism?

      Expressionism to me is the release of forbidden feelings. We, as people, keep dark, morbid, and depressing things to ourselves for the most part, and I think that expressionists use either painting, film, dance, theatre, etc. to lighten their souls. And truthfully, most anything that is expressionist looks like it came out the depths of hell. Expressionism is this dark and cruel experience that makes you feel things and emotions that you probably haven't felt, and definitely don't like. To be honest, this art movement does scare me a bit, but more than that, it intrigues me. I can't help but want to know more about it, to find more expressionist pieces from when the movement originated and modern examples. And as I was thinking about this, I remembered, Dana Schutz.

"Presentation" (one of my favorites of her work).

      A little while back, I went up to visit my brother at Purchase and decided to go visit the museum on campus, The Neuberger. Upon walking in, I found that the museum had a collection of her work on display. Trust me, seeing her work on display is enough to make anyone turn back around and leave immediately. And honestly, I almost did just that. But something about her sucked me in, to look at everything there. I did just that. All of her work has the same grotesque quality to it, and everything I saw was horrific. Stunningly morbid, depressing, and terrifying. Yet like anything that has these qualities, I just couldn't stop looking at these. I think that this piece, as with any by her is expressionist. She brings feelings of exposure and nakedness mixed with death into this and it's wild.

Expressionism is terrifying to me.

But I want to know everything about it.