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CTS - ASSIGNMENT 4

Jonathan Hiew - 0333787

FINAL PROJECT - SOUND WIZARDS

- Glitched In/Frustration in FID -

Assignment Brief

Taken from the assignment itself: This Final Project, is based on you are able to create! You aren’t creating from nothing. You are creating from sound! The brief is simple. Download the sound clip (pick 1 of 2/3 options) which is a about 2 minutes long and plan a performance based on it.

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  • 1st Step: Download the sound clip from TIMES & Initiate your ideation. Apply what you have learned thus far in CTS!

  • 2nd Step: Interpret the sound clip into a narrative based on your ideation

  • 3rd Step: Rehearse (record the number of rehearsals) and prepare for presentation.

Interpret the sounds as a story sequence to Perform a short scene, skit, mime, or any type of stage performance. Performance will involve Make up and some props where necessary. Rehearsals are the key!

Week 11

After getting the assignment brief at Week 10, we (as in the entire course of FID) decided to form 1 whole group instead of splitting to different groups. We also welcomed our good friend Tyson from FNBE to join our group because the more, the merrier! On the Tuesday of this week, it was our official first group discussion. What we did that day was to decide on which sound clip would be best to perform together. We had listened to all 3 sound clips that were given by the CTS lecturers, and only one stands out: Sound Clip #3. This is because it really had an adventurous feeling and also - it had Mario soundtrack. We were immediately hooked up to the sound clip and could think nothing more but perform with this one. However, I, as the group leader, asked them to be open with more ideas and try listening to the other sound clips to see if they might actually like them.

Week 12

The next day, I held a group discussion for everyone to lay out the plot and storyboard. We designated roles to people that day (i.e. my friend, Zafran as Bowser) and we planned to have our plot inspired by the popular fantasy film called "Jumanji". The sound clip was moving quite fast for us to act out how we imagined would be, so I will tweak around with the sound clip to suit our performance. I was only limited to editing what's already inside the sound clip, and I strictly cannot add in other sounds to the clip. We finally decided that the group name would be "The Bum Chums" and the performance name is "Glitched In".

We had postponed our group discussions for a week because we had to do another assignment which was due earlier. After having an English group discussion test on a Monday afternoon, we stayed back for a little while to decide on a group name. There was "The Bum Chums", "Chubums", "The Chum Bucket", "The Cringe" and "Games Blenders". We couldn't decide the group name that time, so we further discussed about it in WhatsApp. I had also requested for them to prepare a storyboard, so that we can share all of our ideas together and perhaps blend them into one storyboard.

We had also checked out the venue of the performance (Lecture Theater 20) that same week. We tried out the microphone, the lights and the curtains. We couldn't try out the projector because the computer in the lecture theater was locked (I forgot I could login with my given Taylor's account then). One of our scenes required to switch off all the lights and have torch lights to play out. Another reason why we switch off the lights are so that the prop people can move the props on stage. It would not look messy as we would be running around the stage trying to set things up and be into positions.

Throughout the entire week of Week 12, all we did was discuss and refine the storyboard. We thought of a bunch of different ideas for the plot and the props to go with the story. During this week, we also came up with character names. This is because our story revolves around 3 types of games: Mario, Dungeon Game and Robbery Game. So, the story starts when 3 kids are playing their video game casually. They select 3 characters:

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  1. Frygal McFrypan

  2. Sweepy Von Broom

  3. Anna Banana

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Then, after they pick their characters, they get sucked into the game and they transform the their respective characters. They then explore the world of fantasy and adventure! Anyway, how they get sucked into the game was that we would pre-record a scene where the 3 kids would have already been in the game (with the settings and costumes) and that they would knock on the camera. This will be displayed through the projector in complete darkness. Then, when the music starts and the lights go on (with the projector switched off), the kids would be standing on stage with their same confused look in their faces. This would show that they are already in the game.

Week 13

I forgot to mention that this week was the performance week which was due on Wednesday, but thankfully it got extended to the last week (Week 14)! Before the extension, all of us were losing sleep because of the tight schedule that we have. There wasn't any time for leisure too. Anywhere I went or anything that I did, my brain alternates between 2D Design Studies, CTS and Fundamental Drawing. Anyway, for this week we continued working on more props and slight rehearsals of the story.

90% of our props are from unused cardboards from the culinary arts department at block C. It was the easiest place to find and get as many cardboards as we want to. We used spray paint to paint the cardboards, but we needed to use a lot of it to cover up the rough texture of the cardboard - and even if we did, the patterns on the cardboard needed much more. So, we solved this problem by pasting mahjong paper on the faces of the cardboard.

We had made the bushes to fit Mario's scene and coins because in the sound clip there are sounds of Mario collecting the coins. We tested out different lighting too like flashing the light in front of a soda bottle. It was really cool, so we bought different coloured papers to filter the light to a certain colour. As you can see, there's a pillar covered in grey spray paint. This is for the setting of the Dungeon Game. The lights we tested and the pillar we made is for the scene where we switch off the lights to make it look like we're in a dungeon. For the Racing Game setting, we decided to reuse the Bushes we made because our plot twist is that Mario is the evil character, so the setting is Mario's Game.

Week 14 (Performance Presentation!)

We had a hard time figuring out how to transition between these 3 games. We tried to use half of the stage each game by closing 1 side of the curtain, but unfortunately both sides close together. So, we thought of switching off the lights because that's how the dungeon scene is. However, people will get confused from being a Mario Game to a Dungeon Game. After talking about it, we decided to build a portal made out of crepe paper. The portal was really fragile in a sense that it's not steady/stiff and it breaks easily. The most we could do to make it steady is layer the portal around with cardboard. So, we could not test it out during our rehearsal and could only hope it works out well during the real performance (which it did)

This is the portal

Considering that our group discussion during this week was the last day before the presentation day, all of us literally rehearsed from morning till late night to have our skits perfected. Everyone was feeling tired but we had to go through with the rehearsals. We had edited the beginning of the story because we hadn't have the time to do it, so we agreed to have 2 wooden sticks and a piece of paper written "TV" glued onto one of the sticks to show that we are playing a video game. After the character selection sequence, a bad boss shows up and sucks us into the game by wrapping us with black cloth.

Here you can see a video of our rehearsal the day before the performance (sorry part of the video got blocked by a seat):

CTS FP - Rehearsal

CTS FP - Rehearsal

Play Video

Our last group discussion for this performance was on the day itself, minutes before the presentation! We had run through again with the storyboard, so as to prevent any errors during the play. You can see our finalized storyboard here:

We went ahead and performed first among the other groups because we thought it would be best to finish it once and for all and we can relax while we watch other groups perform. Below is a video of our final performance (the real thing!):

CTS 1st Final Performance

CTS 1st Final Performance

Play Video

Our performance was going well, until at 1:26 we had a prop malfunction behind the curtains. At that time, Bowser was supposed to come out and attack Mario but he was delayed because the coin box that carried the coins he was supposed to bring broke at an unfortunate time. Besides, I was supposed to run and take a weapon close by behind me but it was all the way backstage so I had to run all the way to get it before the shooting sfx came on. Other than that, we had lost the final red key somewhere during the performance (which was necessary to bring the 3 kids back home). All in all, the performance didn't go as planned even though we had done lots of rehearsals the day before.

After everyone's performance was done, all of us had a little talk with Mr. Charles, Ms. Fu and Mr. Choy regarding our bad performance. Mr. Charles mentioned that our performance was off synchronization and we did not interpret the sounds really well. Overall, our performance was downright bad. They did gave us advice furthermore to improve on our performance and they gave us a second chance to "redeem" ourselves (we had a 4/10 score fyi). The interpretation of the sounds in the sound clip maintained was not fresh, as in that we didn't think outside the box to implement the sounds in a different way (i.e. Mario's coin sound could be something else). Almost everyone reached a consensus to redo our performance a 2nd time because we were not satisfied. The props were what contributed to most of our marks, but they said that we don't have to make magnificent props to gain high marks.

Week 15 (Redemption Week)

Despite feeling despondent, everyone put their heads together and endured the tiredness to revamp our performance by using a different sound clip (Sound Clip #1) and thinking of an entirely different plot. We thought of having something really simple to do - not having lots of running/actions and props. Simplicity was what we were looking for. My two good friends Khiirtana and Daryl took the lead in being the coordinators this time. Anyway, they decided to have a performance on our FID lives to show how stressful/frustrated we are doing our assignments. Their plot starts when we are drawing on easels and our lecturer for Fundamental Class was monitoring us. Then he'll start commenting and drawing on our pieces of bad art and we'll start becoming really frustrated. For me, I thought of an entirely different topic about a zombie apocalypse. One person gets infected and slowly infects/kills everybody.

This was the zombie apocalypse storyboard I had made. It only required 1 prop: a toy gun. All we had to do was run, hide, and act sickly. However, we thought that this plot had no meaning to it, so we tried combining both plots to show that FID is very exhausting it made us "feel like zombies". We tried thinking about the plot several times but it just doesn't seem to add up. So, we scratched my zombie idea and came up with a 3rd final idea. It's still about our frustration in FID but the storyboard is different. This time there will be an embodiment of FID commanding us to do assignments and all. We thought that FID would be a much better example because every assignment makes us feel stressed out, even just a bit.

After completing the storyboard and the plot sequence, we went straight ahead to rehearsing. All of our roles are pretty simple. However, it seems like only a few people would be the highlight of a few events. The rest would just be at the background, not interacting as much. That's what I thought but perhaps because it is in a class environment it would be fine (as in all schools, when a drama happens, the rest just watch like it's a movie).

Rehearsals for 2nd Attempt in FP

This is pretty much what we did for the entire week of Week 15. I was feeling dispirited because our performance seems too simple that perhaps our first performance, despite being bad, could be better. However, I just went ahead with this because it's something personal from the course itself. Everyone still agreed to go ahead with this performance even though we had doubts about it.

Our last rehearsal took less than an hour because everyone wanted to do their IDJ more than the performance.

Week 15 (Redemption Day)

The pictures above are the 2nd final performance that we did. Unfortunately, I do not have the video but only pictures taken for the final performance. On a side note, the pictures above are not in sequence of the storyline. After this performance, we were still in low spirits because we thought our story was not good as well - perhaps worse. For my IDJ, I had asked for a short feedback by Mr. Charles and Ms. Fu about what they thought about our performance. Little did we know, they actually liked it a lot more than our first idea! Contrasting the first performance, they were very much impressed with this because this performance has a stronger storyline, the interpretation of the sound is much different (in a good kind of way), the representation of value of our story is good and we were much more synchronized here. The only two cons were that some of us did not interact as much as the others and the highlight of a moment should be centre stage. All in all, this 2nd attempt was a lifesaver (scored 8/10!).

Credits to Mr. Charles for the photo!

All in all, Creative Thinking Skills Final Performance was a huge learning experience which will definitely play a part in my student life because it taught me how to manage my time well, be disciplined and practice my leadership skills. Even though there was a point where I was feeling so discouraged that I almost made up my mind to give up on CTS entirely, I persevered and went through with it. The joy and fun outweighed the negativity during the entire progress of this assignment. I'm glad I had the opportunity to do something like this.

My Idea Journal (IDJ)

This is my Final Performance Idea Journal. Here, you can see my ideas and the progression of our work from start until the end. Because this was my last assignment which carried a lot of marks, I did a lot for this IDJ. The pictures on the left are only about half of my IDJ, so if you'd like to see the entire IDJ in PDF, click the button below:

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