Evaluation of my talking head monologue to camera
We were told to pick a monologue from alan bennetts talking heads. It was a book he wrote of monologues that soon were put to camera back in the 1980s. The monologue i chose was "her big chance". It was originally performed by Julie walters but modernly, Jodie comer. 
Its about a young struggling actress who so far has only had small walk-on roles and roles as extras in lone episodes. She seems very confident in her abilities and believes she is underestimated. She gets cast in a "film" after going to party with people in the industry and along the way ends up having to do things she doesnt feel her character would do and later much worse things that go against her morals. The premis of the short film she has been employed to do is about a young woman whos much older husband, who is originally portrayed as a respectable businessman, is the head of a rather violent crime organisation and she is used as eye candy with very little care for her. Her name is Travis and we see Lesley begin to form a kind of bond with Travis and we see her struggle to be accepted among the film crew because she can sometimes seem very full on. During filming she gets asked to do things that lesley isnt comfortable with, like strip. She gets told to take her clothes off and gets used for plessure by the director. It seems they failed to inform Lesley that this film turns out to be a pornogrphic film. 
For my small section of the monologue i chose to do the first 3 or so minutes. It begins with her saying she shot a man and immediately i was intrigued by what it could have been about. I selected that section because it seemed omnious and i like the idea of making an audience feel on edge. I like that an actor can have that ability, to make an audience feel emoted in such a powerful way. The brilliance of acting is that nothing is wrong. Every peice of theatre or dance or anything is open to interpretation and you can decide the hidden objective or tone or atmosphere you want the peice to have. With that in mind i chose to round off my monologue on the sentance "this particular party, i made an exeption". I chose to end it here to change what could have been taken as completely innocent as a suspenseful peice of theatre. 
I decided to film my monlogue in the theatre inclosed in the curtains. I needed a dark or warm toned room. my vision was to set it in a dark and quite dingy hotelroom with tacky or overly common furnature with that very common musky red colour to help with the colour palate i wanted. I used the chaise lounge that is backstage and i sat on that to recite my monologue. For the various camera angles, i decided simple was more effective. I chose for it to be zoomed in to the point of my shoulders and my original idea was for it to zoom out when i said a specific line which was, "it wasn't crossroads of course" but decided that while i wanted to make that line be a focus and one that intices people, my idea of the zoom out wasnt how i thought it would be. After talking with Lewis who was opperating the camera, we decided that a cut shot of me turning my head and being met still with a camera. We did this by pausing the filming and then moving the camera to the other side so it would look like a jump cut that is common in the media. 
We were told that to go off about the college and film we could split into small groups to support each other and so we wuld have enough resources to film us all. I was in a group with Lucy, Jayden, Casey and Lewis. We had a running order of who had to film after each other. That order went as follows; me, lucy, jayden, casey.
If i was given the oppertunity to do this again, in retrospect, i would take my time a bit more as i feel like i rushed my words out nervously. I would also like to be able to do a few practice runs of the monologue in the place we had chosen, i feel like this would have helped us all to be more relaxed when it came to the final filming. If we are familiar with the setting it would be associated with our monologue, when it finally came down to it the words and actions would seem to flow because subconsciously  we would know. On the personal side of things again i would delve deeper into the character and try to adapt more of the mannerisms of them.

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