For drama, we had to make a second speech about either a celebrity, holiday, the best day of your life, fashion or your neighbor. I did mine on my favorite holiday, summer holidays. So here is my speech:
I think I did well on my volume, and I am pretty sure you can hear most of what I say. I guess I have a good volume because of my projection. Since I did not use any palm cards, I had to face the camera the whole time, so I didn’t look down whole talking, so I was able to project my voice. My pitch of voice, however, stayed mostly the same. I am not exactly sure why my pitch did not change that much, bit I assume it is because I was trying to remember what I was going to say. So if I ever do a speech next time, I would at least change my tone of voice, so it does not sound like a monotone. Some of the words I emphasized quite a bit. One of the words were “ice cream” during when I was describing the various foods you can eat during summer.
I think I had a straight posture, and was not hunched down during my speech. Except for the part at the first, when I was explaining about how, without vacations, you would be all “droopy” and have red eyes. I guess I back would follow with my head, and since I was looking straight, my back was straight as well. I didn’t have that many gestures in my speech. Mainly because I did not have the need for many gestures, but only a few. I might have missed a couple of opportunities to use gestures.
I think my speech was mostly relevant to the topic “summer holidays”. I had some trouble with the structuring because I sometimes forgot to say something when I was talking about that topic. So I would want to improve on the structure of my speech. However, I think a lot of my information is based on my opinion. I think I should have made my speech more factual.
Another speech that was captivating was Spencer’s speech. I liked his volume, because it was not too soft so everyone could hear, yet not too loud to get frightened suddenly. I especially liked that way his speech was relevant to his topic christmas, and gave a lot of his opinion into his speech without getting off track.
For drama, we are learning to make and do speeches. We have started our unit with a first speech on what we like or know a lot about. But we had to keep in mind that, since we did a speech last year about the same topic, we could not choose the same one. Last year I made my speech about soccer, so i was not allowed to talk about soccer. After long thought and some suggestions from my friends, my topic ended up as chocolate. I chose this topic, not only because I liked chocolate, but also because I knew a few things about how chocolate is made. To clarify if my information on how to make chocolate was correct, I watched a video on BrainPOP about chocolate. So here is my speech.
I think I spoke loud enough, for everyone listening to this speech, to hear without any difficulties. I was mostly loud, but I dropped my voice at some parts. I dropped my voice when I was telling something “aside” that was not too important. Like the time when I was talking about how milk chocolate was made, I lowered my voice when I said “…You would probably be guessing…”. By doing that, I indicated that it was something to be said aside, and it was not a necessary part of the speech. Around the beginning, when i say “chocolate”, I kept on dropping my voice a bit. Instead, I should have raised my voice when I say the word because that is the whole idea for my speech, so I should have given it more emphasis in the word.
During my speech, I barely had any pauses. And when I did, it was usually not on the right time. The bad thing about that is it would make it sound boring to listen to the same voice at a stretch, and it does not leave me time to take a breath to keep me going. That is why I had to stop at odd times to breath. The only appropriate time I stopped to breath was at the beginning, before I say the word “chocolate”. I did that for emphasis as well, like I said in my last paragraph. I also did not use any inflection in my speech. Inflection is when, during a speech, you raise your voice for one word and the lower your voice for the word after that, or vice versa. It was mostly in one tone of voice throughout the speech, besides the word “chocolate” and around the end. If I were to do the speech again, I would maybe work more on remembering the speech. Because, around the middle, I started to say one words instead of another. For example, I said “white chocolate” instead of “milk chocolate”, and I was about to say “cocoa butter” instead of “chocolate liquor”. Also, the time right before I start talking about how cocoa butter is used in cosmetics, I got stuck because I almost forgot what to say at that point. So next time, I would practice my speech more to be confident enough not to stop because I forgot my speech.
Today for drama class, we watched a short video of a silent actor called Charlie Chaplin from the movie Modern Times.
At first, the girl is heartbroken to leave the place. At first she is able to control herself, but then after a little while, she starts to cry. After Charles Chaplin consoles her and encourages her not to cry but to go forward, she starts to be more confident and then they both go together and they are both happy. Overall, the girl turned from sad, to devastated, to confident, to happy.
The girls showed her devastation by crying on the rock. Then Chaplin consoles her by putting his hand on her back for emotional support. Then the girl looks up at the camera with a miserable face and says something. Then Chaplin shows that he is encouraging her by clenching his fist and raising his upper arm. When he does that, his movements are rigid and not smooth. Then the girl does the same and then they get up and then they walk down the street confidently. Then Chaplin draws a smile on his face with his finger and makes the girl smile.
I noticed that there were mostly facial expression and gestures in the scene. After the girl was crying, she sat up with her body bent to her side. Chaplin used quite a few gestures like rigid gestures to communicate to be confident and drawing a smile on his face with his finger to indicate that he is telling her to smile. The facial expressions were really strong and you can easily see what they are trying to say to each other.
In Friday September 21 2012, for drama class, we were working on slow motion. First we had a slow motion race to see how good we were in slow motion. A slow motion race is a basically you run in slow motion. After the slow motion race, we got into groups of four and did a slow motion scene. The people in my group were Sena, Elina and Anna. The scene was to be chosen by the teacher. Our scene was making a tent. Here is a video showing the slow motion scene.
First two people got a huge log and planted that on the ground, then me and another person just placed a huge blanket over the log to have a roof. Then we got a few pins and a mallet to stick the tent to the ground. Then one person got a knife from his bag, for safety, to cut open a face of the tent and then we all got in. I tripped in the way in. Finally, to seal the door, one person took a piece of string dangling from his shirt and tied a knot to seal the gate.
I think we had the size, shape and weight of the objects right. Especially tying the string to seal the tent. When the huge log was carried, the two people who were carrying it were showing that it is heavy. However when they were carrying the log, they were a little bit too fast. That is the main thing we needed to improve on. Some people were doing it as though it was a mime so then the acting becomes too fast for a slow motion scene. When one person took out the string from his shirt, he was moving too fast and it looked more like a mime.
For drama class, we are learning about body language and how we use our body language to communicate with others. In class, we did this activity where we had to pair up and create a mime of a door being stuck and we have to find a way in. Here is a video of a mime that me and my partner, Johan did.
We both were struggling to open the door, and I even crashed into the door. Then Johan remembered that he had the key to the door. Then when we managed to open the door and get inside, I went away to my room speechlessly. Some people thought that was funny.
We managed to open the door without the door flying away, or squeezing the door into the wall, or going through the door like a ghost. However when I crashed into the door, my legs went through the door yet my upper body was outside the door. I could have fixed that by slightly jumping backwards when I hit the door so it looks like that the door is strong and sturdy, and that the door is solid and I cannot just go through it.
If I were to use mime in an ordinary performance, I could use it the body language in play, for example, to enhance what I say. For example, if I say that I am angry, then I could cross my arms across my chest and make my facial expression look as though I am cross.
For drama class, we made a choreography or a dance with a group of our choice. Our group was with Eddie, Johan and Yudai. every group had to have a theme for our dance. Our theme was on medieval and wizardry. Another group had the same theme as ours, but that did not matter so much because our story was completely different from theirs. We did this for our drama unit on communication with dance. Our unit question was “How can you use your body to communicate ideas and feelings?” and our significant concept was creative movement can express and communicate ideas and feelings.
Some of the good feedback our group was that we had good organization in our dance, so we kept the organization the same as the trial dance. Our rhythm was good so that made the music-picking easier because all we needed to do was to find some medieval music with a reasonably similar rhythm. Our group had good patterns to go with the music. I think it had to do a little with the amount of people we had since we had an even amount of people in our group and not too many, but not too less people in our group. Using four people, we thought about first being all together and then splitting up into 2′s and then re-uniting at the end. What I thought went well was that our choreography was not just action, but also it had some visible connection with the music which made it look more like a dance.
Some things we needed to work on was the length of the choreography. As you can see, the choreography was too short in comparison to the other videos. Since this choreography was about a wizardry battle, we could have added more attacking moves but we were out of ideas so that was why our dance was quite short. Around the beginning we were circling each other and then splitting up, one of our points to work on was the transition from having four people into two people. Our teacher advised us that we could somehow show a ‘we shall begin a duel’ type of thing to have people aware of what is coming up next.
During our practice time we could not make as much progress at the beginning, but towards the final day we started to think of it more deeply. So next time, I would like to start by making progress and then we could have made the choreography longer than what it is now and could have made even better. Thank you of reading and stay tuned for more.
In drama class, we are learning about stage performances. For a summative assessment we had to watch a video called “Singing in the rain”. This is a song by Gene Kelly who was an actor in old movies. We had to consider what props he uses and how he uses them.
One of the props he uses is his umbrella. However, he does not use the umbrella as an umbrella so much. Only at the start of the song. Instead, he uses it as a cane while holding the umbrella horizontally holding it in both hands. He uses it when he pins around the lamp post and on the road as though it is part of him. He holds he umbrella straight out and spins around while holding it out. He also twirls the umbrella around which is not that unique in my perspective.
He uses a lamp post as well. He does not use the lamp post that much in the whole video. He goes round and round on the post by one hand while holding the umbrella in the other hand. I wonder how he does not get dizzy after he goes around because after he goes around, he showed no sign of dizziness. He uses it as though it is not part of his body but uses it not so unique.
The main prop he used was the rain. He used the rain the whole performance. His use of the puddles was very unique. He was tap dancing in the puddle causing the water to spread. Unfortunately he got caught by a police man. He uses the pipe that drains out rain water by going under it.
I think that is all I can think of. Singing in the rain is a very old song in a very old movie. And yet, it is a very popular movie. If you are looking for an old actor, I highly recommend Gene Kelly. Thank you for reading for reading and please stay tuned for more.
On the 13th of December 2011, we did yet another speech for drama. This time, the topic was about a person you know or a friend. Here is the video of the speech I did.
I think I was able to remember what I said without losing so much eye contact. I think that was because I had a card with all the keywords written down big enough to just glance at it. I could have done better if I kept to the order for the speech so I wouldn’t repeat some of the information. I think that was because I was quite stressed when I was speaking, so I blended information together to make things go faster.
The easiest part of the speech was remembering what to say, mainly because I had my note cards with me. The hardest part for me was remembering our the history of me and Jamey’s relationship because I had to remember things from first grade. Along with that, my “Hippocampus” is not as good so I have a somewhat hard time remembering things.
Now our speech unit is over so there will be no more blog posts for speeches until September or October. But until then, stay tuned!
As you might have seen in the Drama Talk 1, We have been working on speech and performance. The earlier speech was basically a practice where this time it is the final reflection. Now obviously we need to reflect on it.
I think I did well on my gesture because I felt sucked in to the speech that I could only focus on speaking and nothing else. I think I could have made my body relaxed because I am not really comfortable saying a formal speech. I would have also done better if I followed on with my format for my information because I got off track and that slowed me down.
I found getting on stage quite hard because I felt quite nervous at first. The easiest part of this speech was doing the eye contact because all you need to do is just look at the camera.
Overall, I think I did a pretty good job but not a splendid job.
In drama class we have been working doing a speech about our hobbies. We did our final speech at the 29th of November 2011. My hobby is soccer so that was my topic for my speech. Here is my reflection for the speech. Here is the video of my speech.
I think I managed to not fidget while I was talking because if I did, it would have been a little informal or maybe rude. What I should have improved on is to be more confident because I felt a little shrunk in or in other words, unconfident.
I think the preparation for the speech was not so hard because I remember most of my time playing soccer so it was not such a big problem. The thing I found hard was the actual speech because I didn’t really feel comfortable saying a formal speech in front of practically the whole world.
I was a little uncomfortable because I know my voice is not so clear and kiddish. I was confident of the layout of the speech because the order of the speech was from when I was young to present so I thought I was pretty organized.
