PAB (Friday 13th November) company budgeting

HTop ten budgeting rules

One- be realistic with you budgets for each section.

Two- over estimate your spending rather than under.

Three- only spend on nessesatys, things that are luxuarys should come second.

Four- research about your company and how much things are approximately.

Five- negotiate for better prices.

Six- if you know you will be spending more on something's, try to cut down on other things, to balance it out.

Seven- make the most of publicity and promoting the company.

Eight- look around for the best prices

Nine- offer out sponsors in the performance, to get your name out there.

Ten- be innovative with fund raising, eg...workshops

Research into costs for rights.

£65 per performance (need to call to double check)

£9.99 per script X15 (only available in paperback)

Contacting hire company's and theatres

I began by calling CPS which is a technical theatre hire company, I called them to enquire about hiring out a truss unit but over the phone I realised that the cost would have gone over my insal budget, so I requested a quote for a 10x10 meter truss. They quoted me between £1000-1500 for full hire and recoverable side panels, and I also asked if this would include set up fees and they said that it does.

My second phone call was to 'stage electrics' and I was enquire about lighting hire, to do with special hires. I got quote about a follow spot and four programable, moving lights that can take gels. I am currently awaiting on the quote over the phone.

My final quote for the day was to the Capitol a Theatre and Bristol theatres. This was to get some information about the theatres and what they can offer. For Bristol they gave me this information:

Their theatre has 528 seats within three levels and then the dress circle is wheelchair accessible.

They have three dressing rooms, with shower facility's and a green room. 

In terms of their tech you can have anything within the theatre, including the basic rig and sound desk but you can hire in your own things independently or through them which may work out cheaper.

Performing Arts Course Funding

Uni Grants UK

They are a funding company that offer support and help to those looking to go onto further education to study a range of subjects.

They also help set up student bank accounts, this is useful as they often have better ratings and offer better balances. They also offer extras to draw people in but also help. HSBC offer 2 years worth or Travel Insurance with a student back account. NatWest give student discount and vouchers of laptops to students. Lloyds extend the NUS card for a further three years and give free music downloads. Finally Halifax offer 25% off AA Breakdown cover. By the banks offering this is gives students a reason to go with them and get benefits from it.

Uni Grants UK offer 'Crowed Funding'. This is where you put money into something with an idea and people can fund towards it to help you out, you then put a time scale onto it (IE how many months you want it last for) and then after that you have the time to pay back what you were given.

Dadas Funding

 



This stands for Dance and Drama awards, they pin point student looking to study dance and drama, they base how much you get off how much your family income is, for example if your family doesn't earn as much you would get a higher grant. They also go off how popular the course you are applying for is and if you would need more money to fund for it.

 

To be able to get funding though this company you have to be living in the EU for over three years, and have had at least one of these qualifications:

 

Level 6 diploma in acting (3 yrs)

Level 5 diploma in acting (1 yr)

Level 5 diploma in drama (in classical ballet or contemporary dance) (2 yrs)

level 6 diploma in dance (3 yrs)

level 6 diploma in musical theatre (3 yrs)

 

To be considered for this funding scheme you must be between the ages of 16-23 for the dance courses or 18-23 for the acting based courses.

 

They will only offer funding for students looking to study at these schools:

 

ALRA

ArtsED

Bird College

Cambridge Performing Arts

Elmhurst School

English National Ballet School

The Hammond School.

 

 

CDET Council for Dance Education Training

 

You must have a household income of £30,000  or lower to get funding through them. No fee will be charged but you will receive a scholarship. If your household is lower the £21,000 you will receive a maximum of £5,185per annual year, this can be put towards living costs and is also available for first years. To go the accredited drama schools CDET cover it costs between £7000 and £30,000

 

They will give funding to a range of different courses, this includes dance, drama, musical theatre, jazz, ballet, contemporary, commercial or street. They will also offer a smaller help towards vocal training.

 

Anyone is eligible to the funding all you have to do is fill out a membership form to see how much you are entitled to and where you will get it from. Membership forms have to go through Equity, UK theatre, Society of London Theatre and Spotlight.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday 27th November (head shots and What you own

This In the start of this lesson, I focused on my production role, which is the film and sounds. To finish the filming all that we had to do was the solo head shots. This involves slow pace spinning around, I decided to have it in dark lighting and then quite shadowy. This gave it a dark and eary line. We are now ready to edit the film and add some effects too our footage.

In the second half of the lesson, I got the opportunity to have a one to one with a peer to focus on my singing technique, with the song 'What you own' in particular. I was happy to do this as she has a good understanding of technique when singing and what to do to get the power and right mood to the notes. I hoped to get some techniques that I could use when singing.

I began by wanting to focus on the first solo verse of the song and my pitching with it. I said that this was my main focus. During my rehearsal I was given advise to really push from my core when coming up to higher note, and once I focused on this they came out a lot easier if I didn't get my self worked up on them.

Friday 27th November (Evaluation of Music Stimuli)

For our music stimuli I wanted to play around with something different, and not just a contemporary piece. I once saw a show where they used the 'Benny Hill' theme song and wanted to follow the theme of cops and robbers.




We began by playing around with some general chasing movements, and how we could travel around the space. and movements that we thought would fit. Our main focus was old talkie movies and slap stick comedy, this involved comical faces and looking out into the audience. I think by using this style it really brought the piece alive for the audience and made it really interactive for the audience. I was happy with my performance in this as I thought that it really suited my style and my comedy traits.


To improve my performance I would like to look into lots of different styles of dance that would suit this style of performance. I think a mixture of jazz and contemporary would work well with this as they can work well with a faster beat and then can be changed around to fit in the movie style movements.


If we work on this dance again, I would like to look at creating a unison movement that could go in the middle of the dance, I have thought about using a movement phrase that I have used in a dance before and then just adapt it using dynamics and changing up the rhythm.


Video of my Music based stimulus dance

Thursday 5th November (Christmas Bells)

I began the lesson by reviewing act one and my progress in Act One:

• I feel really confident with the opening number of rent, this is now one of my most confident songs, and am feeling really relaxed with my harmonies and my placement within the song.
• Tango Maureen is now working more, and I feel that me and Joanne have got the right level of connection, and I have played around with the relationship, and I feel that it worked well when I was being really sarcastic and pitying her.
• Even though 'You'll See' isn't my main song, I feel confident with my characters objectives in this song and it now works well, with my emotion towards Benny/Betty. I think that it works best when I completely blank him/her and make them feel so unwelcome.
• The song that needs to improvement is the 'Tune Ups' as I really need to work on the timing and the pauses within the song.

Before the next lesson we need to learn the songs:

• I should tell you (which not in)
• La Vi Boehme (Which is my main solo song)
• Will I ( All I need to do for this song is find out which part I am in)

In the second half of the lesson we started to learn the song 'Christmas Bells', for a first run of this it wasn't great, I was not sure of the timings of my section with Roger, this made this rehearsal quite slow on my part but this has given me a target to improve on over the next few days to listen to it, and get the timing of it, so I can know my part inside out.

Friday 6th November ( sing through of act one)

This lesson we had the musical director for the full two hours so we did a full sing through, we did this stationary, and just put all of our focus onto singing and the songs.

'Tune up'

These songs I felt were quite hard, as there is no piano accompaniment, only a drum beat, I found it hard to keep my timings and then found it hard to work out where all of the pauses went.

'Rent'

My first song is rent, I was happy with this song, and because I had spent a lot of time on my singing technique in this song and was really confident with my harmonies, and I could then leave this song alone until closer to the performance.

'Tango Maureen'

This didn't go as well as it has done in past rehearsals, I was confident with my solo sections in the song, but the problem then came in when we sang together as I kept losing my pitch and then the harmonies threw me off. I would like to spend some more time on this to get the harmonies stuck in my voice and get more confident with it. 

My target for the next few weeks is to have one to ones to work on the tango Maureen and all of the tune ups.

Friday 13th November (happy new year b and speed run)

In this rehearsal we had our first half with out muscial director, and we spent this time to look into Happy new year B' and we did a sing through of it. I was confident in this song as I didn't have to many lines, so I took a leadership role and offered my support to others that may have had more in the song. My lines are simple, but the line in particular that I spend more time on was "friendship is thicker than blood" and " depends on not denying emotion" as these have a had melody and they are faster than everyone else's, I had to play around with saying these in different ways in order to fit them in to the timings.

In the second half of this lesson we went into the rehearsal room and did a ruff speed run of the second act, this involved looking into ruff blocking but this was mainly for the areas and then how we would link each scene. 

My initial impression of the act is that the pace is a lot faster than the first act, this is a big change as in the first act it covers about a month of the lives of the characters but in the second act it covers a hole year, and the characters lives seem to jump from one dramatic state to another. I think that the pace is one of the main features of the this show, and in order to fit in all of the messages within it the pace needs to be kept up. Although all of the characters go through a journey in the second act, I saw into my own character and how he is always thrown into the middle of everything, and everyone seems to take everything out on him, such as Roger shouting at him when mimi leaves, Maureen not liking him getting along with Joanne. 

Over all the second act has a negative feel to it, this is a big change to the first act, and would come as I big shock to the audience as the watch in comparison to the first act. At the start of this act we hear the song 'Seasons of love' this is a foreshadow of the act that is about to come, as the song tells the story of the life and how you should make every moment count, and that is the moral of life to the characters as they see everything changing.

We also looked into the narrative devices within the show, the main one is the in character narration, and my character plays a big part in that, as most of my lines and my earlier songs are out to the audience and narrate the characters and their lives. This helps to keep the audience on top of what i happening. But also helps to keep the story rolling as it does jump around a bit. The other narration devise is obviously the songs, as in most musicals that tell. Story either of a character (E.G 'tango Maureen, where it describes the character to the audience and highlights a lot of her character traits).

As a class our target for the next few weeks is to get on top of our act two songs, as we won't be spending time in lessons learning them but just running, so I will be taking on independent rehearsals for our own songs, such as 'what you own' where I have a arranged a one to one with the musical director, to get my half of the song down early.