Lesson 3

In today's lesson we experimented freely with music and the characters we felt drawn too by listening to the different songs. We listened to 3 completely contrasting songs and as we created our characters, our teacher used the same exercise as lesson 1, by using the scale of 1-10, and increasing or decreasing our character depending.

The first song was slow and I can only describe it as... twinkly. As I lay listening, I thought of this song being used in a movie when the protagonist is at the peak of happiness in their life and skipping merrily down the road. I created a character of the same emotion, having fun at the park with my dog. When the scale increased, my actions were much bigger and my pace quickened. Not necessarily with increased speed though, (I realised from the second song.) At a neural 5, I was happy spending time with my dog with a smile on my face, so by the time we reached 10 I thought my face was going to fall off, having increased the happiness. 

The next piece of music played had a rocking, loud roaring sound to it. I recognised the song but was sure not to make it influence my decisions for a character. As I lay listening, I listened intently to the song as if with new ears. I thought of emotions and intentions with the song,'and adapted quite a moody and frustrated character. As I walked around the space adapting this emotion, I thought closely on who would act openly in such a way. I ended up creating an stroppy toddler in a supermarket, throwing a public tantrum because my mum wouldn't get me my favourite sweet. When having to push him to his limits, I realised that just because the number on the scale increases, I don't necessarily have to speed up like first expected. Because my character was moving slowly and begrudgingly anyway, the more I had to push this, the slower he would become.  When the number on the scale decreased, my character stopped being so stressy and just.. a little bit stressy.

The third song was, in one word: depressing. The pace was slow, melodic and had a dark feel to it. It was sung by a female singer, and the pace was incredibly relaxing, however with more of a downbeat melody. I sort of annoyingly went with my first initial reaction and played a very sad and depressed character. I adapted a slow pace and didn't actually move that much at all, as if the simple action was on the same level of pain was getting stabbed in the throat. The higher the scale, the slower and unhappier I found my self. Looking around and interacting with the other people doing this exercise, I found most of us adopted the same emotion and character with similar intentions.