It's called a play for a reason.

So I had a little bit of a break through in regards to my final year project. 

I've been saying that I'll happily crew for people on their films/projects but I want to have my own theatre based project running along side. Then I got distracted by work and internship brainstorming along side dissertation writing that it kind of got left behind. 

Yesterday however I was sat doing some admin for work and decided to make it double productive and found a podcast with Robert Lepage. Robert Lepage is a key person for dissertation and whilst I've been reading a lot about him it's nice to get an overview of his work from the man himself. You can listen to the podcast here (interesting from around 25 min).  It's around 25 minutes in when he starts talking about his film work. He describes that whilst working in film he felt like a beggar, he was begging companies to look at his work and take a chance on his work because he couldn't prove he had a large audience. That it no longer felt like an art form but a business.

However his theatrical work is know for being filmic, it contains everything from projections of digital work to 35mm, robotics, interactivity, some of his work is even 9 hours long! But a french reporter once described him as a theatrical revolutionary because he works like a frustrated filmmaker. He break down walls because he understands that 'the audience today is radically different than it was 20/25 years ago. And that has to do with narrative vocab.' He draws on the education his audiences get from the internet, TV, Movies and adverts and treats them on that intelligence level rather than treating them like idiots.

Then he said something quiet fascinating. Theatre is a sport.

There's not actors in theatre, there's players. It's called a play for a reason.

Even the greatest tragedies are a game. Richard III is a game.

And suddenly I was flooded with ideas and visuals of what a stage production could look like, once again modernising shakespeare but treating it as a computer game. Only the lead character wouldn't be part of the game, they'd just be witnessing it through passers by as they get knocked off course, a bit like an RPG game where you meet people along the way to further the story. Only this time the story would come to them in the inner workings of the computer.

Then because I cant draw I wrote this very fast idea into some kind of script form, detailing the visual I have in my mind for the opening scene.

[Show opens to actor already onstage, actor is playing a video game. Stage floor is covered in coding. Other three walls act as giant displays for the 3 monitors the actor is ‘playing on’. As action starts within the game, it starts speeding up until the player dies. ‘Game Over. Continue? 9’ would count down and the house lights would go down in time with it. The actor would not be able to click continue, getting agitated when his mouse/keyboard doesn’t work.]

[Countdown reaches 2]

Actor: Nononono! [Frantically clicking everything]

[Countdown reaches 0]

[Gaming set-up drops under the stage. Actor screams as he falls with it. The 3 walls now turn to code, matching the stage floor.]

[Actor, still screaming drops from the ceiling onto the floor now trapped inside the coding, trapped inside the game (Possible Hologram)]

Actor: Where am I? Who did this? Show yourself.

[Actor punches walls shouting profanities, the walls just refact him back. He is stuck in the computer]

I imagine the stage to be something of a hybrid of the work of Finn Ross in Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

And possibly the backdrop design of Robert Lepage's Blue Dragon.

I've also been doing some research into making the 'walls' interactive with the use of a Kinect camera and having actors appear to phase through walls.

It's all crazy talk for now but it seems interesting - I just didn't want to do more Shakespeare but if it works then I don't see why not. 

Hello from UCA

So this summer I'm doing a variety of projects that I feel I should document somewhere online so everyone doesn't think I've fallen of the face of the earth - right now I'm currently sat in my old house on campus, not going to lie it's very strange. 

For the most part I'm working closely with marketing helping deliver some of the Summer school actives here in Farnham, making some videos along side my Vlogs for the UCA website, helping out with photography for some new marketing campaigns and helping shape the new ambassador scheme/team for the next academic year. 

I've also been talking to marketing about possibly running some events in local feeder schools to give the students an idea of what filmmaking and arts education is like at degree level - which is all very exciting and actually quite interesting. My current thought is running a workshop surrounding video poetry, giving the students a poem or a piece of music they have to think about whilst working. Then giving them a quick overview of camera work (probably using a DSLR as these students will be around 14-16 years) and sending them off onto campus to get footage they believe represents the work that's been given to them. Then in the afternoon giving them a quick tour of Premiere and seeing what they come up with. But any other ideas I'd love to hear because the quicker this event forms the easier it will be to execute.

Whilst all of this was happening I also got put forward for a filming job via marketing for a youth centre here in Farnham. They are hosting their summer festival in the coming weeks and needed a one-person-film crew to come along and conduct some interviews for a case study to use as feedback/marketing for their trustees and anyone they approach to help fund their cause. This all takes me back to first year documentary but I'm surprisingly calm about it all. I've managed to get some very nice equipment from stores to help make it as marketable and presentable as possible as this is a very charity that not only need the money but they deserve it too.

But UCA aside for a second I've also been working on a project for a company called Seeper Arts an organisation, that I feel personally, sums up the DFSA ethos. I tweeted them out of the blue after discovering their website asking if they had any internships available and they replied saying they don't really offer them but to send my CV, website etc over to them and they'll take a look. Later that week I got an email back explaining that they are willing to offer me an internship in which I can pitch multiple ideas at them, they pick their favourite and then they'll facilitate me making said project. On the condition it produces an interesting behind the scenes video for their website. Which I'm all for.

I'm trying to keep it relevant to this summer in particular as I believe that will be the best marketing technique for the company (and maybe improve my chances of them liking the idea). So I'm back working on Shakespeare as it's currently the 400th anniversary and the Olympics/Paralympics as soon that will be all over our TV screens.

Medium wise I do want to branch out a bit and venture into some territory I'm planning on using for a final year project, so using this opportunity as a way to experiment before term starts up again. But that seems terrifying so I may tone it back a bit from holograms (I'm not crazy I just sound it) and venture more towards projection mapping something I know Seeper work with often. Seeper Arts as a company thrive on interactivity within their work and I'm afraid that as of now I'm not that well versed in it which is something I hope to pick up on. You know, if they accept any of my pitches.

For now I'm going to go back to work for a week or so, working on these projects whenever I have some free time, then hopefully dive straight back into them once Summer School season is over.

Also made a website a few weeks ago www.rachelbramley.com - thought I'd put that out there too. 

OK. Bye.