Days 10 & 11: Practice Makes Perfect

by: Lauren Ramanathan, Volunteer Instructor

On Friday, we rehearsed and recorded the scenes that had been written the previous day. This particular exercise was a great way to anticipate some of the challenges that will arrive once the actual shooting begins. It was important that everyone be thinking about the frame, the scenery, the acting and audio capture in addition to issues of media literacy such as the messages that are being sent via the images and dialogue. After rehearsal we watched some of the previously recorded footage as well as scenes from The Secret Life of the American Teenager in order to get a better grasp on framing, transitions and dialogue. Personally, I prefer Degrassi, but I think we got a lot out of examining media that ostensibly is of the same genre that we hope to work with. The next three scenes were written that afternoon.

On Monday, there was again a rehearsal. Whereas Friday’s focus was acting as well as camera work, the main focus of this particular rehearsal was acting. There were a lot of “repeated takes” so to speak, so that the whole group could discuss what needed work. A lot of times we found that a scene needed more emotion, more realness. It was important that we pushed ourselves to think of specific things that make a scene real so that come the day of the shoot the group can give as compelling a performance as possible. The final scenes were written that day as well.

During the afternoon the group had radio time with Cory and talked with city officials about their “Let’s HYPE Chester” campaign to “Help Youth Positively Excel.” There was a lot of brainstorming and communication about teen events and plans for the future of teen programming in the city.