Wednesday, 11 December 2019
Tuesday, 10 December 2019
Smashing Stereotypes - Reflection
We chose to
Which professional media products inspired you and how?
The idea for our smashing stereotypes project was inspired by the 'Lynx Effect' advert. However, we decided to spin-off of this idea where a woman was the one spraying perfume and the men were attracted to it, although, in the end, the woman would walk away to show she doesn't need the men.
How well did you manage your time and resources throughout the planning, production and post-production phases?
I feel as if my group's time management could have been a lot better. We spent a normal amount of time on planning, yet we stalled on the actual production side of things because we couldn't find actors to be in our advert since they were all busy. This meant that we only had the last week of production to film the advert which had been changed drastically since the planning phase. Furthermore, due to our lack of initiative in the production stage, we only had two days to edit. This process wasn't at all helped by the lack of attendance of some of the group members throughout the project.
To be completely honest, I don't really feel like I've learned anything from this project. There weren't any advancements in techniques used in this project and we didn't expand into any new territory when it came to the production and post-production.
Friday, 6 December 2019
Brecht - Theories
Verfremdungseffekt:
The Verfremdungseffekt, more commonly known as the alienation (distancing) effect, is a technique used in theater and cinema that prevents the audience from losing itself completely in the narrative, instead of making it a consciously critical observer. The actor accomplishes this by directly addressing the audience, barring them from feeling empathy (film), interrupting the narrative (cinema), or drawing attention to the filmmaking or theatrical process.
Examples of such techniques include explanatory captions or illustrations projected on a screen; actors stepping out of character to lecture, summarize, or sing songs; and stage designs that do not represent any locality but that, by exposing the lights and ropes, keep the spectators aware of being in a theatre. The audience’s degree of identification with characters and events is presumably thus controlled, and it can more clearly perceive the “real” world reflected in the drama.
One current example of this technique in use would be the Deadpool film franchise. These films have the main character, Deadpool, who addresses the audience throughout the film for comedic effect. This distances the audience from the narrative of the film and gives the viewer.
Epic Theatre:
The epic style can be adapted to any form of theatre that puts a social or political message before the exploration of character. Once the character is less important than the message and the intricacies of human motiveless intriguing than storytelling and the exploration of the situation you have Brechtian theatre.
Narration is used to remind the audience that they are watching a story. Sometimes the narrator will tell the audience what is about to happen in the story before it happens, because if the audience knows the outcome then they may not get as emotionally involved.
This is where the wall between the audience and actors on stage is broken. Rather than allowing the audience to sit passively and get lost in the show, the actors will sometimes directly address the audience with a speech, comment or a question - breaking the fourth wall.
Actors will sometimes come out character, often at heightened moments of drama, to remind the audience that it is a piece of fiction that they are watching.
A placard or projection screen can be used to give the audience some extra factual information, for example, it might say how many people have died in a particular war. Placards can also be used to introduce characters in generic ways, e.g. ‘mum,’ or ‘dad.’ Placards are also used to introduce a new scene or to tell the audience when one has finished.
Although Bertolt Brecht's first plays were written in Germany during the 1920s, he was not widely known until much later. Eventually, his theories of stage presentation exerted more influence on the course of mid-century theatre in the West than did those of any other individual. This was mainly because he proposed the major alternative to the Stanislavsky-oriented realism that dominated acting and the "well-made play" construction that dominated playwriting.
Brecht's earliest work was heavily influenced by German Expressionism, but it was his preoccupation with Marxism and the idea that man and society could be intellectually analyzed that led him to develop his theory of "epic theatre." Brecht believed that theatre should appeal not to the spectator's feelings but to his reason. While still providing entertainment, it should be strongly didactic and capable of provoking social change. In the Realistic theatre of illusion, he argued, the spectator tended to identify with the characters on stage and become emotionally involved with them rather than being stirred to think about his own life. To encourage the audience to adopt a more critical attitude to what was happening on stage, Brecht developed his Verfremdungs-effekt ("alienation effect")--i.e., the use of anti-illusive techniques to remind the spectators that they are in a theatre watching an enactment of reality instead of reality itself. Such techniques included flooding the stage with harsh white light, regardless of where the action was taking place, and leaving the stage lamps in full view of the audience; making use of minimal props and "indicative" scenery; intentionally interrupting the action at key junctures with songs in order to drive home an important point or message; and projecting explanatory captions onto a screen or employing placards. From his actors, Brecht demanded not realism and identification with the role but an objective style of playing, to become in a sense detached observers.
Brecht's most important plays, which included Leben des Galilei (The Life of Galileo), Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children), and Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan (The Good Person of Szechwan, or The Good Woman of Setzwan), were written between 1937 and 1945 when he was in exile from the Nazi regime, first in Scandinavia and then in the United States. At the invitation of the newly formed East German government, he returned to found the Berliner Ensemble in 1949 with his wife, Helene Weigel, as the leading actress. It was only at this point, through his own productions of his plays, that Brecht earned his reputation as one of the most important figures of 20th-century theatre.
Certainly, Brecht's attack on the elusive theatre influenced, directly or indirectly, the theatre of every Western country. In Britain, the effect became evident in the work of such playwrights as John Arden and Edward Bond and in some of the bare-stage productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Western theatre in the 20th century, however, has proved to be a cross-fertilization of many styles (Brecht himself acknowledged a debt to traditional Oriental theatre), and by the 1950s other approaches were gaining influence.
The Verfremdungseffekt, more commonly known as the alienation (distancing) effect, is a technique used in theater and cinema that prevents the audience from losing itself completely in the narrative, instead of making it a consciously critical observer. The actor accomplishes this by directly addressing the audience, barring them from feeling empathy (film), interrupting the narrative (cinema), or drawing attention to the filmmaking or theatrical process.
Examples of such techniques include explanatory captions or illustrations projected on a screen; actors stepping out of character to lecture, summarize, or sing songs; and stage designs that do not represent any locality but that, by exposing the lights and ropes, keep the spectators aware of being in a theatre. The audience’s degree of identification with characters and events is presumably thus controlled, and it can more clearly perceive the “real” world reflected in the drama.
One current example of this technique in use would be the Deadpool film franchise. These films have the main character, Deadpool, who addresses the audience throughout the film for comedic effect. This distances the audience from the narrative of the film and gives the viewer.
Epic Theatre:
The epic style can be adapted to any form of theatre that puts a social or political message before the exploration of character. Once the character is less important than the message and the intricacies of human motiveless intriguing than storytelling and the exploration of the situation you have Brechtian theatre.
Narration is used to remind the audience that they are watching a story. Sometimes the narrator will tell the audience what is about to happen in the story before it happens, because if the audience knows the outcome then they may not get as emotionally involved.
This is where the wall between the audience and actors on stage is broken. Rather than allowing the audience to sit passively and get lost in the show, the actors will sometimes directly address the audience with a speech, comment or a question - breaking the fourth wall.
Actors will sometimes come out character, often at heightened moments of drama, to remind the audience that it is a piece of fiction that they are watching.
A placard or projection screen can be used to give the audience some extra factual information, for example, it might say how many people have died in a particular war. Placards can also be used to introduce characters in generic ways, e.g. ‘mum,’ or ‘dad.’ Placards are also used to introduce a new scene or to tell the audience when one has finished.
Although Bertolt Brecht's first plays were written in Germany during the 1920s, he was not widely known until much later. Eventually, his theories of stage presentation exerted more influence on the course of mid-century theatre in the West than did those of any other individual. This was mainly because he proposed the major alternative to the Stanislavsky-oriented realism that dominated acting and the "well-made play" construction that dominated playwriting.
Brecht's earliest work was heavily influenced by German Expressionism, but it was his preoccupation with Marxism and the idea that man and society could be intellectually analyzed that led him to develop his theory of "epic theatre." Brecht believed that theatre should appeal not to the spectator's feelings but to his reason. While still providing entertainment, it should be strongly didactic and capable of provoking social change. In the Realistic theatre of illusion, he argued, the spectator tended to identify with the characters on stage and become emotionally involved with them rather than being stirred to think about his own life. To encourage the audience to adopt a more critical attitude to what was happening on stage, Brecht developed his Verfremdungs-effekt ("alienation effect")--i.e., the use of anti-illusive techniques to remind the spectators that they are in a theatre watching an enactment of reality instead of reality itself. Such techniques included flooding the stage with harsh white light, regardless of where the action was taking place, and leaving the stage lamps in full view of the audience; making use of minimal props and "indicative" scenery; intentionally interrupting the action at key junctures with songs in order to drive home an important point or message; and projecting explanatory captions onto a screen or employing placards. From his actors, Brecht demanded not realism and identification with the role but an objective style of playing, to become in a sense detached observers.
Brecht's most important plays, which included Leben des Galilei (The Life of Galileo), Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children), and Der Gute Mensch von Sezuan (The Good Person of Szechwan, or The Good Woman of Setzwan), were written between 1937 and 1945 when he was in exile from the Nazi regime, first in Scandinavia and then in the United States. At the invitation of the newly formed East German government, he returned to found the Berliner Ensemble in 1949 with his wife, Helene Weigel, as the leading actress. It was only at this point, through his own productions of his plays, that Brecht earned his reputation as one of the most important figures of 20th-century theatre.
Certainly, Brecht's attack on the elusive theatre influenced, directly or indirectly, the theatre of every Western country. In Britain, the effect became evident in the work of such playwrights as John Arden and Edward Bond and in some of the bare-stage productions by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Western theatre in the 20th century, however, has proved to be a cross-fertilization of many styles (Brecht himself acknowledged a debt to traditional Oriental theatre), and by the 1950s other approaches were gaining influence.
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