Process

Max Dadagian and 2 OthersTyler Morris
Micaela Pierce

The inspiration for our project started when we were given the task to create an instructional video.  We knew that we wanted to take a mundane task that we do everyday and make it comical.  So in a sense we wanted to create an instructional video on something that would not normally need an instructional video, thus adding comedic value to the performance.  We were also inspired by infomercials and, along with that, the contrast of saturation and the use of split screen that is commonly present in these videos. At first, we thought that it would be comical to make a video of how to make breakfast, because it would be easy to think of funny tasks to mess up, such as putting a banana in a toaster, burning toast or not fully cooking the eggs. Because the inspiration behind messing up these tasks was almost always tiredness, we decided that there would be much more material in our performance if we broadened our topic to How To Have a Perfect Morning.

We began the process by brainstorming ideas for our instructional video.  We eventually came to the conclusion that we knew we wanted to do a video on how to have a good morning and get to school on time.  We then came to the conclusion that we wanted the video to be a split screen account of two peoples mornings.  One person would be having a poor morning while another person would be having a great morning.  We chose Tyler to have the bad morning and Micaela to have the good morning.  We filmed their respective mornings by filming each task that one undergoes in the morning.  These tasks included, waking up, getting dressed, brushing teeth, making breakfast, and getting to school on time.  After filming the tasks for both of the actors we put the footage into a video software, Izadora.  After successfully creating the patch we then came up with the idea that we should make our video into an advertisement for a product that would magically make your morning better, thus adding comedic value to the performance.  We came up with the hypothetical product, “Kommon Cents” that is a bracelet that we designed on Rhino that would magically make one have a successful morning. We then rewrote the script according to the this product.  After rehearsing it once where I narrated the video alone we found that there was a lot of awkward silences between the clips.  In order to combat this we decided to make the performance an interview between me and Micaela and there is going to be an empty chair in order to accentuate the fact that Tyler is absent because he is not using Kommon Cents.  Thus creating a comedic feel to the performance. This allows for an informal feel to the performance because their is a certain interactive quality that the performance now has with the audience.  

During this studio we did not have to make iterations like we have had to in the past, but we did have to make many edits to the video that we made and script we wrote. When we started the project it took us a while to come up with an idea that we all liked and thought would come out to be a nice final product. At first we struggled with understanding how to use Isadora and how the flowcharts on the program work. While using Isadora software we had to make decisions having to do with what we wanted the video to look like. We tested various effects until we found ones that we felt would make the video look better when presented. After working with Bozzy,our video came out very nicely. The next piece of the project that we as a group struggled with was how to make the performance fluent. As we kept  rehearsing  we as well as our coaches felt that the script made the performance a little awkward and also that having one character up on stage didn’t help our performance come to life.  With that observation, we decided against the script and to make the live portion of the performance improvised. We also decided to add a second character to the live portion of the performance to help make the connection between the video and the live performance stronger.