Unit 1
Task 1
Task 2 portfolio of work
Pinter sketches
For this we were looking at short sketches by playwright Harold Pinter who was known for adding pauses in his plays. We started by reading all of the individual sketches to get a grasp of how they were written and the playwrights style of writing. Each sketch had 2 characters and there were a total of 9 sketches overall and we each did 2 to 3 roles each with me taking the role of barman in Last to go, Jakes in The Interview and Lionel in New world order. I played a variety of roles here with the barman being a more relaxed character role compared to the more humorous role of Jakes and lionel. Normally with performances I play serious or villainous roles so doing these was a fun and unique as I never do roles like these usually.
Horror performance
We came up with our own horror performance based on the walk through attractions they do at theme parks. This was a unique performances as we were constantly using our body's to make unnatural body shapes. We used Practitioners like Laban to help come up with movement for each of our characters and did a workshop with a scare actor.
Voice over work
These were pieces I used to practice recording in a studio. The pieces I chose were because these were roles I like to do my own interpretations of. One of these included me doing multiple characters at once. These were all fun to do as I always enjoy coming up with voices for characters.
A recording of my own interpretation of Diavolo from Jojo's bizare adventure
A group interpretation of a scene from the helluva boss series.
A recording of a chapter of the book Five nights at Freddy's the twisted ones.
A recording of my own interpretation of Terumi from BlazBlue Alter memory
A 2nd recording of my own interpretation of a scene from the game genshin impact
Showcase performance
The final show of my first year of HNC was fun as it was a performance that broke me out of my comfort zone with dance choreography as my physical fitness makes it hard for me to dance usually for instance one wrong with feet work can make me injure my ankle from a past injury.
Podcast
A podcast series I featured in that discussed a variety of different topics. These were enjoyable as we all had different story's to tell that were all unique and interesting.
A glimpse into the future
Next year on the HND course there are many things are planned for us to do on the course. We have been commissioned to do a Agatha Christie style murder mystery performance piece where we will interact with the audience and we will have an actual venue for the performance. It will be an majorly devised piece with some improved lines.
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I'm planning on doing more voice work and improving my vocal skills by doing my own interpretation of fight scenes and practising more emotional scenes. I might also do more re recordings of scenes I've already done in the past.
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We will also be doing some Chekhov comedy shorts using different theatre practitioners styles.
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I am looking into doing technical arts next year with lighting tech as its a thing that I've enjoyed from the times I've helped out with it and would like to look at it further.
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Marketing
Actors would generally advertise and market through auditioning sites or through an agent who would send an actors career portfolio to roles they think an actor would enjoy and to audition for. They would also use social platforms to promote themselves. Youtube is a big one for marketing as you can show videos of skills to share with people which a lot of dancers and rising actors do to promote themselves.
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The cons of using social media and Youtube to promote is that specific stuff you want people to see might not be seen along with stuff you don't want seen might be seen by a casting director.
Unit 2
Skills audit
Since my ultimate goal is to get into the voice acting industry I like to improve on my voice and my accent range. I usually do this by doing impressions of existing characters and actors.
Voice skills:
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A range of accents and impressions
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Able to do deep voices along with do variations of my regular voice
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Able to do quick voice transitions if playing multiple characters in a scene
I am able to do stage acting as well as I picked up my voice acting interest part of the way through my acting career and I have plenty experience acting on stage with many different actors and working with many different scripts including Macbeth and Billy liar.
Acting skills:
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Range of emotions but could improve on sadness emotion on stage
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A small amount of stage combat training
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Quick with improvisation and willing to take creative risks
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Loud projection
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Decent movement skills but could definitely improve on physicalisation for building characters.
Time management could use improvement as I never really keep track of the stuff I need to get done or manage what time I have in the day.
Dance is not something i'm comfortable with doing but I am willing to do it as long as it doesn't bring back some past injury like my right ankle as it can possibly injure even worse than last time. I used to be a skilled street dancer until injury's caused me to stop with my dance lessons.
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Skills required for voice acting
Voice actors require good vocal range to be able to make characters distinguishable from each other along with being able to project there voice into the microphone with the tone of voice they gone for. They also need consistency for voice roles just in case they get called back in for more voice lines or for another series or game that they are included in. An emotional range is also required as they need to portray characters in scenes where they are emotional like a character death which would be a sad moment or a happy moment like a character returning. Voice actors also require a lot of confidence as a voice actor with no confidence can get there role recast and may find it difficult to find another role.
I feel like I have a good vocal range as i'm able to change from a psychotic characters with a creepy laugh to a more serious character who's in charge of a group of characters. I am also able to project my voice into a microphone and keep up with a characters voice for an extended period of time.
I feel like I need to improve on my vocal clarity as when i'm doing accents or impressions my word can't be heard well and they get jumbled up or mispronounced.
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A lot of voice directors look for range in a voice actor. They would like them to have the ability to make characters sound different if an actor gets cast as two characters in a show or video game. They also would like to see a range for accents in case a character has a specific accent or dialect .
Looking back to this page after a year
After looking back at this after a year I feel like I have achieved most of the goals I set for myself for instance I definitely feel like my vocal skills have improved somewhat especially with how I don't speak quickly while saying my lines and have definitely improved with creating character voices.
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The murder mystery was a successful show with how we worked together towards the end goal and the lighting planning I did for the performance.
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My plans for the future haven't really changed with my end goal being a voice actor for TV and video games. I still need to improve on portraying emotions with my voice and physicality of characters and I definitely think the final performance project in the coming up in the next few weeks would help improve with this as my characters is a very emotion based character.
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The health and safety with my aspirations are mainly the loss of voice from not drinking enough water and to keep drinking it after long bouts of performing. I've also got to keep up a good physical health so as to not injure myself when doing physical actions on stage. All of this should help me sustain a long career in the industry.
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For marketing I should definitely make a more detailed website to show my work to help get jobs in the industry and keeping signing up for auditions for stage shows and voice work that pops up in the near future.
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