Final Project – Reflection

Well here we are. The last part of the last project of the semester. I am going to miss this class, but let’s get going.

First, I have to say that showing the project was very hard. My stomach was all knotted up for a couple of hours afterward. I am not sure why I feel so anxious about talking about what I want to do. I’ve always loved acting, but never been able to say that I want to take it seriously. In the past, I’ve always played it off as just something fun that I wanted to do on the side, but I know that it has been a more serious thing to me. So dealing with that conflict in me was much harder than anything from the production side of things.

I am glad that I did the video that turned out to be the final project. It was a lot different than what I was originally going to do, but for me, it was a better exploration. I have mentioned that originally it was going to be an interview (kind of a fake one really) that I was going to use as a base to show off some video skills. I was looking forward to having some new short pieces to use for my job search, but I can still work on those. The other thing was that it was going to be another example of my 5 Questions video series. I am still planning on doing more of those (I think I am going to rename it Sounds and Colors). The class has given me many ideas and projects to continue working on. Now I just need to figure out what I want to focus on next.

As for this project, there were really two parts. The interview was something that was really helpful for me. This was part of the original project, but it wasn’t going to be a very truthful interview. Morgan questioned how I was going to make the answers more real, and I was hit by the fact that originally I had questions and answers preplanned that would fit nicely into my project. It made me want to do something different. I still wanted to do the interview, but I wanted it to go further. I sat down with questions listed and gave my BS answers, but then forced myself to go one step further and see if I could find something deeper. It seemed to work for some questions but not for others. I’m glad that I have the entire interview, but I don’t think that I will ever post the full version. Even though it isn’t all of my hidden truths, it has more of them than I would feel comfortable sharing. The other great thing about the interview was that I did it on my 40th birthday. It will be nice to look back on it later in life to see what was on my mind. I’ll probably plan on doing more of them periodically to check up on myself. I know I’ll do one next week on my official graduation day. It only took 22 years, but I will finally be done with my degree.

The second part of the project was the monologues. I knew that I wanted to do a Shakespeare piece, but wasn’t sure which one to do. I started off with one of Hal’s monologues from Henry IV. Part I. In that monologue, Hal talks about how he has been hiding his true self and eventually when the time comes he will reveal his greatness. I kind of identified with that, but it was a long boring monologue that isn’t well known so I wanted to try something more common. I looked at the “All the Worlds a Stage” monologue from As You Like It, but I only liked the first four lines. After that it goes on for a long time about the seven stages of life. It is again long and boring. The Macbeth piece that I chose is pretty well known and not too long so I went with that. It is also a serious piece, which was a good contrast for the other Shakespeare piece that I wanted to include. (More Later). So after choosing the piece, I went ahead and recorded myself doing it. I hated the performance, so I did many takes over a few different days. They all sucked and I think they were getting worse. The take I used was one of the later ones, but it still wasn’t good. From an acting point of view, I never connected to the character. The words were just words and I never felt them. The choices I made were bad, because I wasn’t the character, and the delivery was horrible, stilted and …

The second monologue was one that I found early on when I was looking for things online. I liked that it was about a guy who gets wrapped up in being an artist. I also did multiple takes with that one and was never satisfied. The take that I did choose was one of my early ones, and I wasn’t even good with the lines yet. It was more of an improv around the idea of the monologue than an actual performance of the exact words written. The later takes are more true to the script, but I think I lost a lot of energy in the performances.

I did two other pieces that I was thinking about using for project. The first was me reading a letter to my daughter. I had written something to her soon after she was born that expressed my feelings at the time. I thought it might be nice to do a piece that I had written. In the end, it turned out fine, but I didn’t feel like it added anything to the final video so I left it out. Here it is embedded if you want to see it.

The last piece that I did was Puck’s monologue at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is a lighter piece that contrast well with the Macbeth one. They also featured it in Dead Poet’s Society as one of the pieces from the play scene. I love the film, I love Puck and I love that monologue. What I did not love was my version of it. It was awful. I won’t be posting that, and might even get rid of it completely. Awful, awful, awful.

I decided to add the little quotes and the end credit bits just to pull the project together. The quotes are supposed to be related to the monologues. “Are you looking at me?” goes with the part of the Picasso monologue of being watched. The Carpe Diem quote is from Dead Poet’s Society and would have gone well between Puck’s speech and the end. Even with just going with the end interview segment, it makes sense. It is about seizing the day and the last interview segment is me hoping that I follow though with things. The last quote is from Some Like It Hot. Probably the best closing line of any movie. “Well, nobody’s perfect” also works well with my performance quality.

Not sure the final project was any good for anything other than an exploration for me. I tried to make it look good and flow well. I noticed a couple of placed where the audio noise could have been cleaned up, but over all the tech was fine. I wasn’t happy with my performances, but I am OK with that. It has been awhile since I have done anything, and I was just off when I was doing them. Just need more practice with them.

I thought for awhile that the bad performances were what was making this project hard for me to produce and show, but the real problem was the fact that I was exposing a truth about myself. I was filled with tension throughout the whole process and felt horrible when I showed the project. When I watched the project again, it was the interview sections that were the problem for me. The bad performances weren’t easy to watch, but didn’t make me sick. Stating what I really would like to do was what was bothering me. Not only stating it, but realizing that I wasn’t doing it, and I was just full of excuses. It is hard for me to seriously consider doing something so unpractical and non-money making. I could go on for a long time about why I shouldn’t do it or why I wouldn’t be successful, but those would just be excuses.

So that is it. Not sure where any of this is going to lead me, but I am looking forward to continuing the different paths that I have started in the class.

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An now for something completely unrelated. Whenever we talked about the “This I Believe” project, I could not stop thinking about The Darkness, “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” video: