Unit 9 - Music From The Movies Evaluations
Planning
For my individual role(s), I am in charge of Finance (on my own) and Merchandise with India. For finance, I made a spreadsheet to track all of our expenses and our income for the show; this consisted of tickets, merchandise, stage design and more - I think I did a good job with this, especially with the functions for sums with totals and percentages. I also did well at consistently keeping the spreadsheet updated whenever someone bought something, raised money through fundraising events (busking, bake sale, guess the sweets etc), or received money for things like t-shirts or badges. Another thing that went well in my role was getting quotes for proposals - these were for anything people needed for their own roles. However, I think I could have contacted people more regularly, especially if I wasn't given enough information for something like tickets. Also, when ordering the proposal items I accidentally missed one; if I choose to do this role again, I'll make sure to have a checklist with every single item to order to make sure nothing is missed.
For merchandise, we gave roles out to people for individual items (such as badges and keyrings). For this I was given programmes; these went very well as all of the information was in the correct order and the page designs looked really nice. However, because they were sent to printing so close to the show, there were bleed lines on a few pages; this could've been resolved if they were sent even a week earlier so, if there were any issues, they could've contacted me to sort them out. If I do this role again for FMP I'll make sure that the deadline is at least a week before the show so any issues can be sorted in plenty of time.
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Overall, the show went really well in my opinion as we made an overall profit of £817.14 (including VAT for the tickets) - the stage design looked really nice with the red carpet and velvet ropes paired with the lights (the "now on" board was also a really nice touch); the stage manager was focused and quickly resolved any issues on stage with lighting and sound; and the front of house team did a good job with getting all of the tables set up in time and handling merchandise and refreshments. Despite this, there were a few things that could have went better. For example, the sound team should have researched the songs in the running order more in depth so that they could be prepared for any difficulties with vocals or any solos, instrument drop outs, dynamic changes etc. Also, social media (both Facebook and Instagram) should have started regular posts earlier because they only did it in the 10 days leading up to the show for Facebook - Instagram just posted a few updates on the same day every few days; they need to improve communication and have the pages linked with scheduled posts so they don't clash with each-other if a few people are running a page, otherwise people will get confused or think that we don't have enough content so they might not go. The marketing and promotion team also need to improve planning for things such as poster placement, flyers, and getting the designs for the flyers right - they ended up not having the information for the show on so people didn't know where the show was or what time it started. I think some of the visuals could also have been improved because a few of them were just still images with a few transitions which isn't visually interesting when paired with the lighting and the stage design.
Performance
On the 20th and 21st of November, we performed in the Carlisle College theatre for our Music From The Movies gig; during this, we played a selection of songs from Dirty Dancing, Suicide Squad and Twilight. Overall our performance was better on the second night because any mistakes made on the first night were all corrected for the second night and we felt more comfortable after doing it the night before so we knew what to expect.
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Hungry Eyes - On the first night, during our entire Dirty Dancing set my guitar sounded much quieter than it did during the dress run and the tone sounded more dense than I had it during rehearsals because other people had been using that amp - because of this, the tone for the solo was wrong and it didn't come through clearly; on the second night, it sounded much better and I could hear it as I was playing.
(I've Had) The Time of My Life - Like Hungry Eyes, the tone for my guitar for the first night during the solo sounded muddy - the notes didn't ring out clearly so it was more like jazz than a guitar solo, however, I also dropped my guitar pick during the performance so I was distracted by that; to avoid that happening again, I made sure to have another pick on me on the second night. Also, in the future, if I'm using a pedal again I need to practice with it during the rehearsals so I know when to hit it while playing and the change sounds smoother.
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Heathens - On the first night I struggled to see what I was playing on the guitar because of the mask so there's a few parts in the song (mainly before the last chorus) where I play a wrong note and quickly move it to the correct note - to fix this, I moved any guitar parts that were high up on the fret-board lower down so it was all within the range I could see and this worked a lot better for me because my playing sounded much more confident.
You Don't Own Me - This song sounded really nice with the vocal harmonies and the key change, however, on the second night the drums went slightly out of time just before the second chorus; even though we quickly corrected this it was still noticeable. Also, the bass didn't change key in the second half of the song so it clashed with the guitar and keys (this was on both nights).
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Supermassive Black Hole - Like most of our set, this song went better on the second night because on the first night I played part of the intro riff wrong (missed note) and one of the chord run downs in the chorus sounded wrong to me and my playing sounded clearer with the main riff.
A Thousand Years - This song sounded really nice on both nights with the strings, keys, drums and guitar complimenting the vocals. On the first night, it felt like the keys went out of time with me in the verse which threw me off a bit but on the second night it was better because I looked across to see when keys changed chords so we were in time with each other.
Decode - Decode was my favourite song in our set because I felt most comfortable playing this, as shown when I stepped onto the drum stage for the solo on both nights - the riff compliments the rhythm guitar throughout the entire song and all of the drop ins/outs were tight. However, I feel like my stage presence was much better on the second night because I moved more with everyone else and just enjoyed playing.