Voice and The Actor - Blog Entry 3

A class waking up their resonators

In my last blog entry, I was looking at the radio assignment I was in. The exercises I had chosen to do were very helpful from last week and helped me to deliver a concise vocal performance in my final radio assignment. The exercises I had chosen to do helped me with my tone, missing beginning of lines and posture. I felt that all the exercises I chose helped immensely and helped me to achieve a greater understanding on the vocal needs of audio production. The exercise I chose to help with my tone, was to look and analyse the script and understand my characters objectives, relationships and the setting of each scene. I also did the exercise of waking up my different resonators so I was able to use them for different tones. I started off by waking up my head resonator and doing some humming in my head voice, this was good as I could access a different vocal register and it would be of use to me if I decided to use it for tone changing. For my nose resonator I tried to make a nasal sound but I found this quite difficult, this may have been because I was suffering from a cold at the time. I found it a lot easier waking up the chest resonator, I did this by making a fist and hitting it against my chest quite lightly with a low humming tone. My voice resonator was already in action.

The other exercise I used was to help with getting the beginning of lines, I felt I did this well enough. I started to put emphasis on the beginning of lines, at the start I found it difficult to put emphasis on the words so I would do a movement which would help me put more of a structured projected sound on the word. For example I found the line 'On the planet Gliese...' quite difficult to put the emphasis on, so I would make my hand into a fist and move my arm and fist downwards to give off the expression of power, this helped me gain emphasis and put it on the right word. I found that this exercise worked each time I did it. After a while I took out the movement and I found I was putting emphasis on the words anyway, then after that I was saying the words without emphasis yet I was still saying the beginning of the lines with good clarity, which I wanted to achieve from the start.

The third exercise I did was Alexander technique to help with my posture as I felt throughout recording, my posture could have been better and I felt it effected my voice. I have been doing the Alexander Technique regularly and I feel it has made a difference to my voice and posture both physically and mentally. After I did this I felt quite relaxed yet also motivated. I felt less tense but also at the same time present and in the moment. I recently did this exercise and I noticed a difference in my posture and also my voice, I felt I was more grounded in my posture and I felt little to no tension throughout my body. I also felt it had a positive effect on my voice, I felt my voice was more free and I could use a variety of tones, pitches and volumes that would be beneficial to me for the final recording of 'Far Side of The Moore'.

I enjoyed the challenges that arose this week relating to voice and I am finding the new project fascinating, especially incorporating the French dialect.

Voice and The Actor - Blog Entry 2

Vocal Development Programme

From my last blog entry, I have been focusing on my radio assignment. After practising the exercises I set from blog entry 1 I felt it would only be right to see what affect they had on certain vocal areas. The exercises I chose to do were all helpful to the radio play. For helping articulation I did an exercise which requires the actor to put his tongue to the hard palette and finger in between his upper teeth and lower teeth and then say a line of dialogue, this will make the vocal organs work harder as the tongue won't be able to move and neither will the jaw. The second exercise I did was to help with that I was saying my lines too fast, after further research I found that Sir Patrick Moore who I am playing spoke quite fast anyway, however I will still try to slow it down a bit as it may be difficult to understand. The exercise I used was talking to a beat, much like Iambic Pentameter. However as said before,  I won't be using this technique in the final recording as I want to be able to change my pace and tone so it is more interesting and emotionally investing. The last exercise I did was to help with my thought for each line which in turn would help me understand the emotion behind the line and would ultimately change the way I would say it. It's a technique that is well established called actioning by English theatre director Max Stafford-Clark. The technique helps the actor find the emotion behind the thought which in turn can help slow down a naturally fast talking actor as they are looking for the thought as their character would. 

A Metronome

After listening to this weeks audio recording, I felt I was still quite fast but not as bad as the recording before. I think the exercise that I used to speak to ore of a beat helped me a lot, as it helped me to take it slower, for this I used a metronome, a metronome is a device that delivers beats to a tempo, so if I wanted 10 beats per minute a beat would sound every 6 seconds. so I tried to speak to the beat, at points it was quite difficult as I wanted to say the whole line in a quick succession, I think the reason I was talking so quickly is that I wanted to get my point across considering Patrick Moore says so much, however I do understand that for my though I need to be concise and articulate and not too quick that these elements are affected. Another exercise that helped that I talked about was finding the thought, I did this partly in the radio recording and tried to find the next thought as the character would. There are points where this can become quite difficult as I'm reading off a script however I knew the script well enough where I knew mostly what line would be said next and so I would think that thought in my head before saying it to get a more genuine action from my character. I felt all of these exercises helped me to progress and I will use this in the future if I need to and I will work on my articulation exercises constantly as it is something I struggle with.

I felt I made good progress this week and that I am ready to do my final performance for 'Far Side of the Moore' radio performance.