JumpCut presents… Username

May 23, 2015May 25, 2015 Stacey Hartley Stacey Hartley

JumpCut is a close nit team of four female artists that have produced and performed their debut performance of Username. What an incredible show it was. I have now completed my role as stage manager for the first time. I was lucky enough to sit in the perspective of an audience member whilst performing all of my duties from the tech box. Throughout the process, I have witnessed everything from all the way back to discussions about the performance day, to it now being fully formed. On 19^th May 2015 I saw the actors of JumpCut perform with more commitment, vigour, and determination than ever before. They ruined their faces, trashed the room, and created chaos for an online identity that they will never be happy with.

From this performance I have realised that as stage manager, you should be aware of mistakes that may arise during the performance and be prepared for the unexpected. Taking control and trying to mend mistakes without the audience noticing, or any communication with the actors is a difficult and risky job. Within the performance of Username the actors use a live camera feed and unfortunately one of the actors set the camera down in the wrong place. I had to make a decision to either skip a cue and perform a live voice over through the microphone or carry on with the cue which was supposed to come next. Due to the nature of our performance it did not matter that I spoke this command live. I made the decision to skip the next cue and perform a live voice over, instructing in exactly the same way, but telling a different actor to do so instead. My thought was that the actors would have become flustered with the mistake trying to get the camera back to the right person. In our feedback from members of the audience, this act went unnoticed and my decision seemed to be the right one. As it was my first time being stage manager and I managed to cover a slight mistake, I feel much more confident with this role and believe I can carry on as stage manager for other shows in the future.

Thank you to everyone who supported and came to see JumpCut’s debut performance Username. The feedback we have received is tremendous. I would have never imagined the performance to be as humorous as it was. Personally, I was sat in the tech box laughing along with some of the great satirical moments within the piece which was never performed with this much intention as it was on the 19^th May. Our feedback mainly consisted of comments about the humour of the piece, emphasizing the laughter they had just encountered. The long, vigorous process has made me extremely happy with the outcome and I am proud of what we have achieved as a company.

This has been Username by JumpCut.

Works cited:

JumpCut. (2015) Username. Lincoln.

Stacey Hartley – Stage Manager

Last minute adjustments

May 17, 2015May 25, 2015 Stacey Hartley Stacey Hartley

I have now edited and cut all of the video and sound. They have all been converted to either MP3, WAV, or MP4 ready to be put into QLab on performance day. I have cut every voice and video recording many times so that the actors blocking marks my cue so they are not restricted by a time limit. Overall, I created 46 videos and sounds ready to be cued by blocking. Some videos need to be played on top of certain sounds, therefore, I added specific times to my cue sheet that marks when the video had to be played. This will ensure that the movement in the video is presented at exactly the same time of the instructions in the voice over.

Stacey Hartley – Stage Manager

Production meeting & Technical rehearsal

May 13, 2015May 25, 2015 Stacey Hartley Stacey Hartley

The production meeting on 6^th May 2015 with the stage manager of the venue has answered our questions and worries about the requirements for our piece. The technical rider was talked over and everything we need and want to do is possible. Furthermore, the risk assessment had no major risks and was cleared by the stage manager.

All technical documents have been completed ready for the technical rehearsal. I used Movie Maker and iMovie for the videos, and Audacity to cut and create the sound. We had a time frame of two hours for our technical rehearsal to manage everything we needed to do so less pressure would be put on to the performance day. As I am unfamiliar with QLab I brought all of the files, with the exception of a few still needing to be edited, to then be put on to QLab on the venue MAC computer. As I knew exactly where the missing video and sound needed to be in QLab, I entered a cue name ‘files needed’ in the position it is supposed to be in so I can add the files on performance day.

As I was in the tech box arranging all technical requirements, the other members of JumpCut were setting the stage with props and set. As there are so few of us, all members of JumpCut came in for the tech for the purpose of marketing, props and set design, and the director’s comments.

Here we was able to witness the whole set and layout for the first time and just a few adjustments had to be made, such as positioning of certain lights, however, that has not hindered or altered any blocking or cues.

The performance is now one week away and I feel that our piece is together and ready with just some minor adjustments needed. For now, I shall be editing the rest of the sound and video and giving notes on each run through we have.

Work cited:

JumpCut. (2015) Username [technical rehearsal] Lincoln. 13th May 2015.

Stacey Hartley – Stage Manager

Survey

April 25, 2015May 25, 2015 Stacey Hartley Stacey Hartley

As I stated in my previous post, we want the performance to relate to not just ourselves but the public as well. From discussions stemming out of the four of us members of JumpCut, we felt that if we are all feeling and doing similar makeup and dressing routines then the public will also feel and do similar routines. However, we want to know what society really thinks about online identities and our constantly growing obsession with perfection. We have created an online survey asking the online society about their approach and thoughts on our topic. All results are anonymous to try and get a true of an answer as possible. Since the launch of the survey two days ago on 23^rd April 2015, we have received numerous responses and we have found shocking and unexpected answers to certain questions so far. We want to use these responses for our understanding of a wider public sphere instead of just utilizing our own knowledge. Although we shall not be using answers from the survey directly in our performance, we have started to gather the information to assist the direction of the piece in a way that portrays the feedback.

If you would like to let us know your thoughts on perfection, please fill in our survey below:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/?sm=WsQHNjsq0byb2uGoixDjFg%3d%3d

Stacey Hartley – Stage Manager

Insecurities, Inspiration & Ideas

April 21, 2015May 25, 2015 Stacey Hartley Stacey Hartley, Uncategorized

Choosing to devise our own piece, we wanted to gather inspiration from other theatre companies and artists occupying a similar concept. We looked into Louise Orwin’s piece Pretty Ugly and discovered the integral relation that she had to her concept. Orwin underwent a yearlong experiment, ‘liv[ing] online as three teenage alter-egos’ (Orwin, 2014), asking online strangers to rate her appearances. From this experiment, Orwin created a performance that had real lived-in moments that she experienced firsthand. We took this element as inspiration and proceeded with an in depth discussion about our own experience with our concept.

Firstly, with our performance based on our own ideas of online identities, we had to look at the ways in which we update our individual online profiles. Our first revelation was the large amount of selfies we take before uploading just one to social media. However, before uploading, that particular ‘perfect’ selfie needs a filter and editing, which results in an altered image which does not truthfully represent the person behind it.

Our discussion lead to the process of the selfie, and we dissected it to understand each other’s method as well as our own. A few of us have watch videos on YouTube and have researched makeup tutorials in order to enhance and better their look. We found a contouring tutorial on YouTube and chose the one with the most views to see how the mass have attempted to contour their faces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dLSy75M46o

Contouring has become more and more popular and through these makeup tutorials, girls can contour their faces similar to their idols and celebrities. For example, this particular video is inspired by Kim Kardashian and is an attempt to create her look through contouring. We used this tutorial and tried it out ourselves and began to control the way our faces looked, such as a slimmer nose, slimmer cheeks, highlighted eyes, etc.

This lead the discussion to body image and how we feel about our own bodies in regards to the media. It seems that all four of us, including Orwin had noticed that ‘advertisments, magazines, film and television had been spoon-feeding images of unattainable ‘perfection’’ (Orwin, 2013). Although we do not want to focus on this too much, it has inspired us to use voice over to represent that the media and technology is still controlling the way we look.

We then discussed personal routines. Whilst just simply finding out more about each other and laughing about the silly things we do whilst getting ready, it seemed like all of us have the same problem. What do we wear? After frantically changing outfits many times, adjusting hair and makeup, whilst getting frustrated in the process, we thought this may be a good way for our piece to go. We all feel connected with this concept, and therefore, the performance will hopefully reflect our audience’s relation to their image and get a sense of our individual personalities within our company.

Another inspiration for our piece is comedian, Jena Kingsley, and in particular, her experiment on social networking in real life. Kingsley takes all things social media such as, poking, liking, commenting, etc, and brings them out in to reality.

This experiment tests boundaries of unsuspected people and determines that social media language and actions are seen as bizarre behaviour, yet it is acceptable behind the guard of their online persona. Although this piece is literally based on bringing social media to life, we feel that the idea of using social media names would stress the online influences in our performance. For example, we are going to take names from twitter for each of the actors, such as, @Harriet_Haynes, which will be read as ‘at Harriet underscore Haynes’.

Works cited:

GlamBooth TV. (2014) Contouring & Highlighting- Kim Kardashian’s Makeup secret!. [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dLSy75M46o [Accessed 10th April 2015].

Kingsley, J. (2015) Social Networking in Real Life -Social Experiment. [online video] Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pyJlERCrJE [Accessed 13th April 2015].

Orwin, L. (2013) Pretty Ugly: About the Project. [online] Available from: https://prettyorugly.wordpress.com/about-the-project/ [Accessed 21st March 2015].

Orwin, L. (2014) Louise Orwin: Pretty Ugly. [online] Available from: http://www.louiseorwin.com/pretty-ugly [Accessed 20th March 2015].

Stacey Hartley – Stage Manager