Blog #5 - Week Two Part Two

We pretty much spent the second half of week two just filming other scenes. After getting the talking heads and the Principal Dean scenes out of the way, we went through the rest chronologically. This was the point at which we all sort of started to worry about time, so it became increasingly important to get at least two scenes filmed a day. We usually achieved this, although sometimes a bigger scene would have to be re-shot the next day because each one takes so long. 

There were also a lot of unexpected complications around this time because of the number of scheduling conflicts our group had. Between doctors appointments, AP tests, and other prior engagements, it became difficult to make sure we scheduled our four-person scenes on a day where we had all hands on deck. 

Personally, I started to have some difficulty with my character around this time. Shmeeko, the character I played in the mockumentary, was honestly quite the acting challenge for me. They were originally branded as "the weird one", so it took a lot of effort to keep that zaniness while also humanizing them enough that they could conceivably be a real person. I worried a lot that Shmeeko would come off as too weird, or that I would be inconsistent in my portrayal from one scene to the next. It took time for me to overcome these worries, and luckily our mentor helped talk me through it and helped me find moments where Shmeeko could be really insightful and deeply human. I learned that it's really challenging to develop a fully fleshed out character from scratch, especially in an improv setting.

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