Dr. Marc Reynolds Performing Arts Studio

Sing Easier - Perform Like A Pro

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Lessons Live Performance Can Learn From Blockbuster Movies.

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DAY 5 Introduction

Cinematography changed the live entertainment business. Our audiences are more visually perceptive than ever before. They are used to watching super realistic fast-paced action where the music and action are perfectly timed and matched. Where audiences were used to using their imagination to fill in the blanks or heighten the experience of live theater they now expect singers not only sing well but act as well if not better and all during a live broadcast. All the ways that cinematography continues to change the live performance arts are impossible to identify. The important point is that it is here to stay and there are some amazing lessons we can learn from the movie industry.

What can we learn from the top blockbuster movie producers who have the time and money to get the timing just right? A lot! Imagine if for a live performance you could rewind, edit, independently slide the music around and adjust the timing of moments until they fit just right. Live performance doesn’t have this luxury, but moviemakers do. In this section, we will learn how to both see and apply some of the principles that emerge from watching these movies so we can better reach today’s audiences.

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MMC in Practice – Performer, Director, Cinematographer, or Designer.

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Words make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. A song makes you feel a thought. – E. Y. Harburg

The tools you have to apply the MMC principle in practice will change depending on what role you are playing in the production process. Let’s talk about how you might apply MMC in practice.

In day 5 we will give you some other powerful tools that will help you apply The Big 3 and MMC so stay tuned.

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MMC in Theory

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Make the Music A Consequence

MMC is an abbreviation for Make the Music A Consequence. The short explanation is that music should seem as if it comes as a result of something a character does or something we see on stage. Music is part of the auditory part of our sensory world. Consequently, like all other sounds in the natural world, something has to make them occur for a sound to be made.

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Big 3 + 1

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The things we judge live performance by on a subconscious level.

You just walked out of the best performance of your life. Someone asks you what you liked about it. What do you answer? You will probably find that what you liked fits into one of these three categories. In Boris Goldovsky’s book “Bringing Opera to Life” the first chapter mentions these three criteria for creating engaging performances.

If you feel like your performance is missing something but you don’t know what this is the place to start. This will guide you to where you need to spend more time refining your skills. This will also help you become more efficient in isolating what works and doesn’t work about any performance you watch so you can help make it stronger.

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Performance Project 4: Art Song Concert Version

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  • Choose an Art Song if you are one of my university opera students.
    1. If you are not one of my university students the key is to choose a song that doesn’t belong to a bigger work of music. With this project, we are learning how to tell a story with our body of the course of one songs worth of time in a more confined performance space.
  • Go through the process as outlined in Days 1-3 of this course.
  • The goal of this project is to perform this version as if it is part of a recital or concert. Essentially you will be taking your fully staged version and eliminating props, costumes, set pieces, and shrinking your stage to the circle your arm span makes if you hold your arms out straight from your sides and turn 360 degrees in place.
  • Perform in Class what you have prepared.
  • You will be graded as follows:

Grading

__/100 Performance Project 4 : Art Song Concert Version

            __/10 Visual Research

            __/20 WWWWW Research (Including who am I paper for character)

            __/20 Marked Up Score 2.0 (Including Monologue written in)

            __/20  Monologue Performance (Graded on application of what is has been taught so far and Believability, Clarity, Variety, Repeatability)

            __/30  Sung Performance (Graded on application of what is has been taught so far and Believability, Clarity, Variety, Repeatability)