Lesson 12: Pre-occupation

This class started off strong for me, especially when really talking about dialects and voice acting (because duh voice over nerd here, sorry if I show it a little too much in class!)

Some things I learned/relearned:
What is the essence of your character? How do they move? Where do they place their voice? What's their energy like? Are they soft spoken, loud, obnoxious, fast, slow?
We learned that rhythm is a strong, regular repeated pattern of sound, while tempo is the rate of speed of the motion or activity.
We touched on musculature and vocal placement in relation to dialects and speech patterns.

Then the exercise was given and all of that excited confidence went out the window. I was struggling SO HARD just to understand the complexities of the exercise that I could not get into character or see the environment.

We were paired up with one minute to agree on where we were, what we were doing together, what our relationship with our partner was and who we were.
Oh and also who would talk and who would be silent, but I was so focused on the first 4 that I completely forgot about that one.

Person A: Talking about a task they are working on while being pre-occupied with something else.
Person B: MUST be silent while pre-occupied with something mundane and easy.

We had to keep the relationship going with the activity without creating conflict.

I'll freely admit, I gave up in the first minute. I did NOT want to go first when I was still struggling with directions and I certainly did not want to be the talker.
I spoke last class about being brave and saying 'fuck it, who cares if I'm bad', but I went right back into my old habits out of a desire not to waste anyone's time.

We all quickly learned that some of us aren't where we'd like to be and Jon THANKFULLY backed up and suggested we stick to environment and one simple activity for next class.
Thank you, Jon, for being so patient with us and curving to meet our specific needs.

"To find essence is to find the truth of the character." (or something to that effect)

I am just glad that you keep at it. If you do that, the rest will come.