MONDAY 18TH NOVEMBER

Task one:

In today's lesson we established all of the scenes we were going to include in the play. The scenes are in order: Office scene,Club scene,Dinner with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth,Split screen office scene,Letter scene,Hotel scene Lady Macbeth and Macbeth, MP speech scene,Contract signing scene and Macbeth's death. We went through the whole play with certain scene being improvised and I suggested that when Lady Macbeth asks Macbeth to sign the contract there should be a pause, to suggested to the audience that following action will have great consequence later in the play. After performing the play we decided that we wanted to give Lady Macbeth and the witches even more power, so we collectively decided that we would use levels to convey this. We used two platforms to make a form of podium where Lady Macbeth and the witches would be and that would be our final image for the whole play. I also suggested that in order to inform the audience that we were in fact in an office we should have some 'background' noise that would resemble that of an office. This than sparked the ideas of including eerie music for the witches scene. This really helped to create ambience and set the mood for that specific scene.

Task two:

Elizabethan music and sound.
Music was an important asset of the entertainment to the people who lived during this era. Music and Elizabethan instruments would be performed by musicians or simple songs and ballads could be sung in the villages to ease the tedious tasks undertaken by the Lower class members of society. Many Elizabethans attend church on a Sunday which led to the popularity of hymns and secular songs.
Hymns: A Hymn was a religious song or poem to praise God or a God.
Secular songs: Secular songs were the opposite, they were non-religious songs, very popular in the west.

Music had been used many times before to accompany poems during the Elizabethan era. The Elizabethans desire for the theatre was soon enhance by the attribute of music. The importance of music to the Elizabethans was reflected in the plays by Shakespeare who had more than five hundred references to music in his plays and poems.

Music and sound at The Globe:

Different sounds were used to create special effects on stage. One of the most obvious SFX was music. Musicians were employed to further enhance the overall theatre experience. One of the balconies above the stage housed the musicians. Many Elizabethan composers were instructed to write pieces of music and songs to accompany the works of playwrights. The most famous composer for The Globe theatre was Robert Johnson, who had composed 'Full fathom five' and 'Where the bee sucks' which were written for The Tempest by William Shakespeare.
As well as music other sounds were used to create SFX. Fireworks were often used to imitate the sounds of gunfire which resembled a battlefield. Sounds could be made from 'Hell' including different sounds from various instruments such as the trumpets, chimes, bells or drums. Actor who were skilled in imitating the crowing of roosters or the wailing of ghostly sound would be waiting in 'Hell' to create these sound effects. Also a metal sheet or rolling cannonball were used for creating the sound of thunder.