In our initial attempts of exercise 1, myself and Callum put a heavy focus on script interpretation and performance. Though a very short bit of text, we decided to record many different variations and interpretations of the Barney and Rachel scene. The different versions of this piece consisted of Callum and I taking turns performing both the roles of Barney and Rachel and changing the meaning of the text through different styles of character performance. An example of the variation we produced saw us perform the script as it was intended with Rachel seemingly happy and excited, with Barney appearing mellow and disappointed, and then in an attempt to change the meaning of the script through performance, we had Rachel appear apprehensive has she spoke her line of going to South America. We hoped this alternate version gave the impression that Rachel was worried about leaving or maybe going against their will. 

It was fun being able to experiment with this text and see how many variations we could produce without changing the script. After completing this we decided to stick with the original performance intended for the script, with myself playing Barney and Callum performing the role of Rachel. We came to this decision because our performance was much better in this version. After class we sat down and looked at how we could improve on the work. As we were largely happy with the performance, we decided change needed to be seen in the aesthetic component of the recording. Noticing that we both had heavy back light, causing the picture to be very washed out, we decided to reshoot with a much more suitable lighting set up. In our reshoot we made sure that more light was coming from the front, adding more light to our faces opposed to coming from behind.

As a technical and artistic analysis of some other student’s work, I was particularly impressed with the work of Charlotte and Irene’s pieces and how the addition of props and more movement in their second version made for an even more interesting display. Though both versions were great, I can see more thought was put into the execution of their second take. With the addition of props and movement, the performance appeared to be much more natural. As a critique of this piece from a directorial stand point, I would have focussed on the believability of the piece. As this script was set on a zoom call, I would have focussed on how particular elements would add to the credibility of the work. For example, not have Rachel coming in to the call as if she was already logged on.

Though this exercise was done under many constraints, it was still good to see how far we could push the piece under the limitations. Having such a simple body of text, it allowed us to play around with other elements such as performance. Due to the nature of the medium we used to capture the scene, we didn’t have the luxury of multiple camera setups and shots, which meant we only had one static shot at our disposal. This meant that casting and performance were very much the focal point. I feel this highlighted performative imperfections, as they were much more pronounced under the circumstances.