Second Draft Reflection

I think our second draft went better than we anticipated, and was a crucial help for our group because it also displayed moments that are lacking energy, tension, activity, etc. in our project. Based on the video of our second draft, as well as the lighting we have been adding, our project is really starting to come to life and it is super exciting. When we added lighting effects, I really was able to start seeing a final product coming together and how our vision was coming to life. When our group first started devising and coming up with the staging for our scenes, we always knew we wanted to do a split stage between Maddie and I to show the internal and external struggle that Helena’s character is going through. But, I don’t think any of us realized how much the lights can contribute to this kind of staging and how much better it looks with them. We also seem to have gotten a lot more comfortable with who our characters are and how we want to portray them. The more we rehearse, the better it gets! Since our first draft, we added in so many more things, such as Maddie’s monologue, an ending scene, and are nearly done with the battle scene. The changes and adjustments we have made are really getting our project up on its feet and we are heading in a really good direction.

One of the main things our group needs to work on is really building up more moments of tension. Based on our script, I think we have allocated a lot of space to add more of these in, we just have to incorporate this and be mindful of it when we are rehearsing. One example of something we could do to accomplish this is really living in the pauses that we already have, and possibly adding more. I think pauses can be really effective for our scene and add more emotion to it. I also think we have to work on our body placement. Meaning, moving more downstage during certain character interactions or moments to highlight important details that we have embedded into our script. This small change will help give our project more focus. Other less specific details that we need to continue to perfect are the blocking for the battle scene, line delivery with certain lines that are more important, and to add in our sound effects that we found to go with the lights and our acting on stage to tie everything together.