Okay, I think that I finally figure out what I want to focus my docuseries on!
As you can tell by my blog post, I want to name my docuseries the same name as my old documentary project. This isn't a coincidence however, I want them to be part of the same documentary series! The first documentary I made was called the show that goes on because it focused on the stereotypes of theater, and how both actors and directors look past this in order to put on a great show. I want my new project to still focus on theater, but on a completely different aspect of it: theater tech, or the actual backstage elements of a show.
The project is supposed to be a small extract of an episode, that is supposed to be a part of a full docuseries. I have decided that I want to focus my series on putting on a show, even through its struggles of it. Each episode will focus on a different aspect of theater that makes it hard to put on, but will then explain how people push through these aspects in order to put on a show. Hence the name, "The Show Must Go On!" I also chose this name because it is a popular saying in the theater. Even if something bad happens in a show, the actors, directors, and tech people must learn to put up with it and push past it.
The audience never really knows when minor mistakes happen, which is why people who put up a production know how important it is to act normally and push through mistakes and hardships. The audience also usually does not really know the months of effort that go into putting up a show, which is what I want my full docuseries to focus on. In the episode that I will be creating an event for, I will be focusing on the technical aspects of theater. This is one of the hardest parts of the theater, yet it is also the most overlooked too. The audience, and even most actors, don't really know the effort that goes into the set, lighting, sound, and more in a show. They are usually more focused on the show and acting and dancing and singing, rather than what goes into actually putting up a show. With this excerpt, I especially want to focus on how the tech crew feels when they are overlooked, especially when they are barely given credit for all the hard work that they give.
I still need to figure out specific questions to ask my interviewees, but I think I have a pretty solid idea so far! I am excited for the weeks to come, especially asking my interview questions to my friends in order to figure out exactly how they feel about the whole process of teching a show!
World Fest
All of this reminds me of what I did today actually! Today was an event called Weston World Fest, which is an event hosted by the arts council, that focuses on teaching children and adults about 20 different countries from around the world! It is such a fun event and I love doing it each year! Our booth is for Sri Lanka, because that is where I am from!
My and friends and family spent months preparing for this event, just like a show for theater. This is because we had to do so many things in order to put up a great "show!" We had to make up fun and engaging games for the kids to play, figure out how we wanted to decorate our tent, buy items to display, find costumes, make posters, and much more!
Even though we put so much effort into this country booth, the people that visited our booth did not notice this, because they do not know how much effort it takes to make something look so effortlessly beautiful, again exactly because they like putting up a production. Most of the people even only looked at our tent and activities for a few minutes, even though it took us hours of work. They don't even realize the fact that we spent 3 hours setting up the tent and 1 hour taking everything down. This event was a one-day thing that lasted 5 hours. This meant that I spent 9 hours today working on this event!!
This is so similar to what tech people go through since they put so much effort into a show, yet they still do it! And this is exactly what happened to me with World fest. I knew how much effort it took, and how little people appreciated it from last year. Yet this year I still continued it! Like as you can see from the phot above, even though I was EXASHTED after a full day of work, I still had a smile on my face because I loved what I was doing for the community to teach them about sri lanka! Because I know that even that one minute per person of someone smiling at our booth was so so worth it in the end. <3
No comments:
Post a Comment