Blog 8

 "Inception" was the idea that John Jiang brought up in our acting class for the group project. I knew that John started to get interested in Leonardo DiCaprio after the Great Gatsby scene. When John offered me a role of Leonardo DiCaprio, I accepted the role without lots of concern. At that time, I was very confident about my acting ability. At that time, I did a fine job acting as a male main character in the winter musical "Once on this island". Also, after acting Leonardo DiCaprio in the Great Gatsby scene and showing my energy and characteristic that I haven't shown to other people, I was feeling really good. I was feeling good because I felt people accepted my rough and wild characteristic and I even felt I received some respect by showing the part that I was usually hiding in my real life. So, after all of those acting career, I was being over confident. I started to enjoy the reputation that I gained from my job in Great Gatsby scene and Once on this island and forget how much work I put to those performances. When I accepted John's offer of acting the role of Mr. Cobb, I wasn't realizing and thinking about the responsibility of the role and just thought that I have an ability to act the role successfully. That cocky attitude and mind made myself being lazy. I learned that the first step and the most important part of learning the character is memorizing lines as soon as possible from the past acting experiences. There were few elements that gave me hard time learning the lines. First, there were a lot of unfamiliar vocabularies. In the movie, Mr. Cobb is extremely intelligent character who knows everything about inception which is very complicated concept. So, it was very hard for me to act with those words that I didn't really understand. Secondly, the script wasn't clear to me. I couldn't tell what director was expecting only looking at the script. The biggest reason why I was confused was because there was no explanation of scene change. Lastly, when I was in the class, I was more focused on to other peoples' acting instead of focusing on my role. Because of the confidence that I gained too much, I was judging others's acting, just complaining about the situation to the director without doing any productive action, and forgetting about what I was supposed to do. Because of all of those excuses, I never memorized my lines and eventually my role was given to someone else. Now, my role in our class is just filming, and helping the director in general. This project was good chance for me to think about the ideal role of director and actor. Next time, I hope I can be a better actor who knows the role of himself.

Too well described...

Last Wednesday our English class had a sweet trip to New York Broad Way. Since, it was the first time that I visited Manhattan after I came to this school, and my girl friend was also accompanying, I was extremely excited. The show that we watched was "Curious incident of the dog in the night time". The play was basically about a boy who has an autism. The boy tries to find the person who killed a dog, which leads him to find his mom who left him when he was young. In the first half, most of the story happens in the boy's home town but the second half was about the boy's journey to find his mom which lives in London.

 The biggest thing that caught my attention was staging. They used a lot of weird sound effects such as siren sounds and electronic sounds. Purpose of the sound effects was to describe the characteristic of autistic individual. People who are affected by autism has great ability of visualization, but also has poor hearing ability. The sound effects that they used perfectly expressed how autistic feel when they hear things. Also, the lightening was very captivative and splendid. It made me to be speechless. The other thing that I was so interested was the cool props. The whole floor was built up by the tiles which could be opened, closed, and go down.

 This show changed my opinions of  autism or those people whose actions are weird. I used to keep away from those people, as if they could hurt me. But the show described the life of autist so well. The sound effect, lightening, blocking, choreography, acting, and the way how author told the story strongly encouraged me to focus on the play and helped me to understand the mystery of the human brain. Although the show had lots of interesting and funny elements, topic was still heavy.

I suppose that the show affected the audiences in all different ways. For me, before I got into the theater, I was just glad about watching a Broad Way play with Charlotte which is huge fan of Theatre. During the show, however, there were a lot of scenes that reminded some of my personal memories which made me extremely nervous and uncomfortable in the theater. Fortunately, she recognized that I was having hard time just sitting there down and watching it. I sincerely appreciated that she hold my cold hands and helped me to release my tension. After the show, I was exhausted and surprised because of the too well described play. I would say this play is a awesome show, but I won't recommend it to people who already know and understand about an autism. You will feel extreme pain in your brain, heart, or both for 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Still have a long way to go

In this comedy scene project, I worked with William. We chose our scene in the TV show "how I met your mother". Since both William and I love the TV show, we could easily decide our scene for the comedy project. So, we chose the dialogue between Ted and Barney which are the two of the main characters. We choose this scene because o two main reasons. The first one is because that these two characters have a similar connection like I have with William. The second one is that we never worked on comedy scene with each other before, and we thought this might be the perfect scene to try.

There were several things that we focused on during the project. The first one is creating the connection based on the characters' relationship. For example, Ted and Barney are great friends and they know everything about each other. In the scene, Ted tells the secret that barney is dating a stripper to other friends even he promised not to tell which makes their relationship and scene so funny. As acting Barney, I had some places where I had to change my voice to convince Ted to put on the brobe and promise to keep my secret. So I worked a lot on those voice change to make the whole scene funnier. I used really strong, serious, and low voice for most of the time when I was doing the ritual . However, I changed it to a high and light voice when I was talking to him about my situations my honest feeling and thoughts. Also, for my individual character development, I wrote the notes on the every single lines to tell myself which part I should use my higher or lower voice, louder or quieter voice like a music sheet. It was the first time that I used this strategy, and I thought this strategy is going to come our better if I also write details about my movement.

I was quite disappointed at myself during working on this project. Firstly, although William and I have decided the scene before the spring break so that we could have a lot of time to practice, I was still struggling with the memorization of the lines until the day we were filming. I am regretting that I haven't practiced more and come up with more ideas, but I am glad that I could have a lot of conversation about acting with William. I have to confess that I didn't work enough on my lines which effected my final video. However, it was also a great experience and practice to improve my acting skills, and I will work harder next time, so I will be 100% ready to take the video with all my lines!

http://youtu.be/JfVNAG0mDx4

Random casting of kung fu Panda

  John Jiang

Charlotte, Samantha, or Gianna


 Ryan or Cade


Cade, William, or Zola 

Wiebke or Jaden

Abby, Maggie, or Julia
William or Angel

Jack or Robert


Josh, or Michael

Project that is going to be a LEGEN wait for it DARY!!

The next project that I am going to perform is comedy scene. Since, both William and I really like the TV show "How I met your mother", we decided to pick the hilarious scene from the show. The show tells the funny story about five main characters' daily life. The characters that we are going to play are Barney and Ted which are best friends and the two of the main characters. In the show, Barney is the one who does the most unpredictable and weird things and my favorite character among the five characters. As like Barney's characteristic, this is one of the most hilarious scene that is led by Barney. I honestly think William will be a better Barney than me, but, I really wanted to act as Barney because I thought I will be able to improve my acting skills a lot if I put enough effort to be a Barney and he is one of my favorite character among all kind of TV show characters.

The Scene starts with Ted entering into the Barney's apartment which is full of sacred mood that already makes audience to laugh. Candles are all around the apartment, the music that monks are chanting "bro" is turned on as a back ground music, and Barney is wearing a costume that monks wear which is really weird to wear in a normal apartment. The main element that makes this scene so funny is Barney's constantly changing acting. Basically, he uses two totally different voices. First one is very serious voice that expresses a monk and another one is his actual voice that shows his playful characteristic and unconfidence about his girlfriend because she is a stripper.

I think there will be a few difficulties to act this scene successfully. First, Neil Patrick Harris and Josh Radnor who actually played Barney and Ted in the show have been acting with each other for more than 5 years which causes a great teamwork. In my opinion, developing a teamwork between me and William will be the most challenging part to make this scene as funny as the original scene. The thing that I need to work on by myself is practicing that instant change of voice and acting. Also, I am going to observe all the details such as tiny facial movement, tone, volume, and pitch of his voice, and body language that Neil Patrick Harris makes. I will put a lot of effort to perfectly understand how Neil expressed Barney, then try to make my own Barney.

 As I learned from my previous group project, I will be prepared for the work that I need to do by myself as soon as possible and work on as a highly participated teammate. Since I have a whole break to practice by myself, I will spend a lot of time to work on with my own acting skills. I am extremely excited to make an awesome chemistry with my good friend William.

Reflection of Man in the Pink Suit

 I worked the dramatic dialogue project with Jack Palmer and Abigail Zuckert. The scene that our group chose was hotel scene from the Movie Great Gatsby(2013). I watched the movie day before the class and I thought that scene would be a fun and challenging activity for our group. I played as Jay Gatsby which is originally played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack played Tom Buchanan, and Abigail played Daisy.

The first thing that made me really excited about this project was my partners. I first saw Abigail's acting from the play Peter Pan and I felt she really is an actress, not just a high school student who likes acting. Then, I was more impressed at her acting by activities that we had together in acting class and Winter Musical. Also, I was really impressed at Jack's acting. I felt his acting in the silent movie was hilarious and thought he knows how to act. So, at the beginning, I thought I was the only one who I need to worry about and needs much more development to do the scene successfully. However, after I got used to my role and confident about it, I could see that I couldn't see before. I could started to feel their habits when they act, how they use their voice and body, how they get prepared for acting, and how their characteristic in the real life affects acting. I couldn't realize all the details of them, but I could realize where the chemistry between actors come from. The chemistry between Abby, Jack, and me wasn't really great for this project. I felt we could have made better teamwork if I made my work which is memorizing the lines and thinking about the emotion done little earlier and spent more time thinking about our whole scene and my partners acting. Thus, for the next group project which is the comedy scene that I am going to work with William, I will finish my own work as soon as possible and spend more time to communicate with my partner.

Generally, it was a really tough scene to act for me. In my opinion, the scene required the maximum level of energy that our group members had. Gatsby showed the highest anger level of him and Daisy cried which is one of the hardest part of acting. Honestly, I was willing to show our scene to other people especially the last part of the scene. I can't usually scream to someone like how Gatsby screams to Buchanan because I will probably get into big trouble if I show that level of anger in this school. So, I have been hiding my other part of my characteristic and this was a great chance to reveal myself little more to others. Since I was young, I had an anger problem and realized my level of anger is extremely dangerous when I was in high school in Korea. I have been trying to use and turn that negative and uncontrollable energy into some positive way and while I was working on this scene, I felt acting can be the best practice to come over my problem. Also, the other thing that I learned a lot was how to deliver my lines effectively. I used to only focus on my voice instead of my facial expression, physical action, and reaction which is because of the habit of my singing. But, I learned how movement is important for delivery by Mrs. Guarino's coaching.

The third project was not only tough but also really exciting activity. I didn't have enough time to get prepared perfectly but I learned what I need to work on for my next project. I sincerely appreciate that I could have a chance to act this intense scene with Abigail and Jack, but also hope that I can act with this group again. Now it's time to don't worry about this heavy scene and ready for the comedy scene which is going to be a legen wait for it dary!!! (This is what Barney always says in the TV show "How I met your mother".)

Great Gatsby hotel scene link

http://youtu.be/pa5EIj7xIxg