Another idea for a showcase could possibly be a good old vampire story. was watching some vampire investigation thing on Nat Geo so I thought a story of 16th century vampire hunters could be confronted by a vampire digging up a grave but never really get enough evidence and are cast out as mad men. Just a little something !!!

Showcase Ideas

My first idea is one similar to what my group performed on Thursday. The story where the alcoholic re tells his story to a councelling group and the story is acted out by other actors. I feel that if we could make it a bit deeper, realistic and a lot less violent this piece would be reasonably successful. It used a range of techniques such as monologues, slow motion, physical theatre and maybe we could incorporate some sort of freeze frame. Ideally I would like to use lighting and music to really create a depressing atmosphere. Possibly Things We Lost in the Fire, referring to the death of the alcoholics brother, being killed by a gun fire. Alternatively we could use Winter, by Daughter as the harssh atmosphere really portrays a harsh winters evening.

In fact, we could just remake Avatar!

Positive Influence

I believe that all professional actors have the ability to influence me positively as they all have a wide range of skills and are all of a high enough standard to be able to act for a living. I personally believe that I can learn a lot from all professional actors.

However, one particular actor, who I feel has influenced me greatest is Benedict Cumberbatch. I feel his quirky twist on BBC’s Sherlock is utterly fantastic. He has an incredible ability to play such an intelligent, stubborn and comical character and to recall information like we all expect Sherlock to be able to do, but convince us that he is Sherlock Holmes and a legendary detective. The way he struts around, oozing confidence and charisma with every gesture, witty comments and sarcastic poses make him look completely at home in his role, which I admire. Not to mention the fact that he shoots a scene naked, this indicates to me that he has no fear and is prepared to do anything for the love of acting. This forced me to respect him as I could never picture myself doing such a thing in front of a whole crew.

My admiration of Benedict Cumberbatch further increased when I saw him play roles in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and War Horse, where he drops his quirky, charismatic Sherlock act and evolves into two far more mature and serious characters with much more grief stricken looks, where emotion seeps out of every line in his face. Incredibly, he also managed to provide the motion capture for Necromancer, a goblin, in The Hobbit plus the movement of Smaug the Dragon. This, I felt gave him an edge of quirkiness, by playing the role of an animal and not a human. In Star Trek Into Darkness he drops his charming and endearing characters for a far more nasty, sophisticated villain. Cumberbatch also holds a rich theatre career, most notably starring in Danny Boyles Frankenstein at the Royal National Theatre.  Overall he is a very versatile and incredible actor, able to play many characters with what seems like ease. 

I believe I can use these skills Cumberbatch has shown for my performance of Lord of the Flies. By watching his every single gesture and action he has more than certainly helped me understand that by being so confident and by having absolute faith in your abilities and character portrayal, that you can completely lose yourself and act without any pressure as you are no longer yourself, merely portraying a character. I want to be able to portray a variety of characters with ease, but realise an incredible amount of practice, studying and ability is required.

The raw emotion and seriousness he can show through  his eyes has definitely got me practicing in front of the mirror every day so I can grasp how I react to certain places in the play, but more importantly how I should look at certain points and lines in the play, to feel the emotion my character is feeling in the real world, actually making myself feel what my character feels. I am able to use what I have learnt from Cumberbatch’s expressions in Lord of The Flies. For example, making sure I look furious every time Jack Merridew sniggers or snaps at my character.

His posh, well spoken accent is a great example of the accent I wanted to try and use in Lord of The Flies for my private school boy character of “Simon.” I feel that by watching Cumberbatch closely, I can improve the use of my facial expressions and physical actions, like posture (is my character confident or shy) or arm action when I am speaking as my character, but more importantly my facial expressions and posture when I am not speaking, what I do when not speaking is just important as speaking. He has more than certainly inspired me to carry on acting and pursue it as a potential career, and hopefully now to have a real good go at playing a confident or darker, evil character. But my main priority is that I can play the character assigned to me to the best of my ability and make the audience come out thinking, "Wow, that Kyle was good." Comments like that would definitely make all the work worth it, and give me courage to continue on.

Music for Lord of the Flies

Guys, I have found song for the opening we can play after our soundscape!

BastilleVEVO's channel

I feel it is almost perfect as the lyrics are very much focused on how people change and the theme of blood indicates, delicately, what Lord of the Flies is about. Also another song for the end which I feel is highly appropriate due to the fact that Ralph gets trapped on his own with the tribe chasing him.
 
My videos 

I know it says my videos, but there not mine it's just the link.
Hope you enjoy!!

Intro: The Soundscape

To start the play we open with a soundscape. To be honest this only took a a lesson or so to devise, but we wanted to invent an opening that is intriguing and original.

First of all we split our class into 2 groups to see what ideas we could come up with. 1 group came up with the idea of using the jungle sounds, whereas the other group thought up the idea of freezing in the middle all together. Then, as 1 group we devised our final idea of the soundscape which can be seen on GCSE Performing Arts. We are very proud of our final piece and feel the sound and atmosphere created is brilliant.

My Character: Simon Cambourne

In the play "Lord of the Flies" I have been given the role of Simon Cambourne.

A part of Ralphs group (Tom Falconar), he despises Jack Merridew (Toby Saddleton) with a passion, they used to go to school together and are bitter rivals. Through the way Simon speaks and moves around I have gained the impression that he is slightly more mature than the others and thinks things through before taking action. He is highly intelligent and is relatively composed, however, eventually the reality of their situation leads Simon to insanity before he has an epileptic fit, sadly, the worst is yet to come ...