Famous for silence
I have been having fun performing in front of my camera working in my spare room. I seem to be able to let go of my inhibitions when I’m working in the comfort of my own home. Putting on my make up and Penny Arcade wig really adds colour and strength to my perceived character. Although to make the Penny speech/rant more effective I need to move myself around within the frame and use the foreground and background. When I am practicing I like to use the ustream link to see what the performance will actually look like. I was a little bit concerned though as the frames seemed to be slower today, this may vary depending on unforeseeable factors. This is another thing I need to research, as even though I like the aesthetic of being out of synch, for the performance to work there has to be moments when I am perfectly in synch with the sound. As I was practicing I could speed up and mime ahead of the audio, which made the stream appear like it is in synch.
It’s almost impossible to be in synch all the time as the stream drops frames and the capture is always very slightly behind my actions. However I over compensated with my actions to cover up the slippages. I recently watched a documentary about famous female silent movie stars and I was particularly interested in Clara Bow. She was an American actress and was a child star making over forty movies. It’s just funny to think how people were famous for simply moving around and not actually verbally speaking any dialogue. This has got me thinking that I must watch the movie The Artist that is a contemporary interpretation of the silent movie. At the time I really didn’t want to see the film when it was originally released as I thought it was too performancy. However I want to see it for the use of facial expressions and the use of body language. I will also take another look at Clara Bow’s 1920’s movies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Bow. I seem to be attracted to troublesome stars such as Penny Arcade, and Clara Bow who are a bit ignored and overlooked.
