HALLMARK CARDS

Joyce Hall founded Hallmark Cards in 1910. It is a family-owned company and is America’s largest and oldest cards manufacturer of greeting cards. Hallmark cards owns big brands like Crayola. It manufactures things such as party goods, gift wrap, giftware, Electronic greetings and keepsake ornaments. Hallmark also have their own tv channel created in 2001 , 50 years after Hallmark Hall of Fame series was released

Day 1

On the first day in lesson we worked in pairs on an improvisation task, me and Ollie did improvisation on a dentist waiting room as someone who has come in for a heart operation and another person who was a survivor of the ”sugar attacks”

We then moved onto working as a company and we created a little scenario in a waiting area of a dentist as out characters from the duo. We slowly developed the piece as a company and slowly split off into mini groups. These groups consisted of Business workers, Old ladies, bullies, Phone fight, shop, dentist.

Day 2

For day 2, we did another improvisation task. This was called “sit, stand and kneel” this was when we had one person standing, one kneeling and another sitting. This helped us improve our characterization and improvisation skills.

We then moved on to our smaller groups within the slapstick comedy section and worked on little skits for the hallmark project. For the business group, we decided to have each group member have a stereotypical office worker. This consisted of a clumsy worker played by Ashley, A lazy worker played by Jack, A n unorganised worker played by Lucas and the try hard worker played by me. We all put forward ideas for our short skit which involved slapstick elements such as ‘hitting’ each other with books or falling.

Day 3

Today we ran through our slapstick skits each taking turns at performing it on stage. This helped us shorten areas or make areas longer as well as getting Constructive Criticism from the rest of the company, this also helped us see how we would respond to feedback from our peers.

When the level 2s were gone, we started working on a script in 2 groups. Our group decided on a nosy neighbour listening in on the family next door arguing about a relationship. We decided to assign everyone a character, me and Ellie were the nosy neighbours, Sophie was the girlfriend of Keira who played the son of Alliyah, the alcoholic mum and Usman, the dad who doesn’t care. Beetle played the emo son who didn’t care. and think of a plot to build up on. From the plot we thought of a setting, a script and what the comedy elements were going to be. We did a few run throughs of the script. The first run through being a plain reading one as a group, the second run through was getting into characters and the final run through was adding physicality by getting up and moving around the stage. This helped us work on improvisation also as we got to build on our scene without a script. From doing this task, I learned that I need to work on my facial expressions and projection more. I will continue to focus on Expressing myself and projecting my voice more for the audience to hear me loud and clear.

Day 4

Today we worked on our Hallmark Cards Skits. We organised the groups on the stage so we knew what order we went in. We also started developing our ‘train station’ scene. This consisted of us choosing running orders and what we could do instead of sitting down and making it less exciting. We decided on moving about around the station and acting as if some of us had missed the train and others were waiting around for it.

Day 5

Today our level 3 group came together to create a script for our hallmark cards assignment. We had to start from a blank canvas and build the whole show up from there. We had many different ideas for a comedic scrip such as a gender reveal, a funeral and a birthday party. However, the one we chose was a teachers lounge. We chose this because we were all relatively the same age and had similar experiences with the stereotypical teachers. My role was the pregnant English Teacher, Mrs Blake. Mrs Blake was a snarky hormonal teacher with a teaching assistant that followed her everywhere.

Day 6

Today we he ran through our little slapstick skits before continuing to work on our Level 3 script. We helped the people who were absent by catching them up on anything they had missed and letting them choose characters and personality types. We then split off into small groups of 5 and worked on each section of the show. My group had a scene where the pregnant Cheerleader barges into the staffroom looking for one of the PE teachers and then a clumsy student who wants to have her detention reconsidered but ends up making more of a mess. After putting together a little scene, we came back as one big company to share our ideas and help improve them. This helped with our characterisation and creative skills as everybody had to put forward ideas. I learned to put my ideas forward more and not just sit back and watch, this has also helped me with my confidence as I now get more involved with group activities.

Day 7

Today we split off into 2 groups to have 2 meetings, Our group meeting was about set and behind the scenes things. We decided on Costumes, Lighting, Props and staging. We then came together as a whole company to discuss our ideas and what the rest of the script would look like. We managed to bring our script to life by adding our props and the furniture to give us a better feel and help it feel realistic. This we used as a guide for the rest of the performance.

Day 8

Today we added 2 new members to our group so we had to slot in 2 more characters and think of personalities for them and what they could say within our script. We showed them what we had created so far and how they could also give their input as audience members. We then ran over our script a few times, this helped with our fast thinking and improv as we didn’t have much time to restart our whole scene over because we had more people. We decided on changing up some of the music as having the same backing track didn’t work for all of us. We separated off into our little groups again to think of music ideas that could fit for our scenes. This helped improve timing as we now know when to be on stage.

Day 9

Today we did a full run through of our performance with music, props, lighting and sound. We then came together as a whole company to discuss everyone’s lines and how we could shorten some sections and maybe make other parts longer. We also discussed seating arrangements on stage so nobody got confused with where they were going and what time to come on stage. This helped us feel more confident about our first show.

Day 10

Today we did a full run through of the performance without stopping to see what it looked like as a whole, this helped us as we then knew what was good and what could be better before doing the whole thing in front of our real audience. We then improved the teacher’s lounge scene by adding and taking out certain areas we thought weren’t necessary. We also decided that having just acting in the performance would be boring so we added some jazz dancing to add to the 20s theme. We replaced the train station scene with this jazz element to make it seem more productive. This also have it a more physical theatre element as we used each other to support certain turns and jumps within our little dances.

Day 11

Today again we ran through our little slapstick skits and cleaned up areas that looked out of place, we ran it through with music and the props to get a feel of what it would be like. We also worked on getting props on and off the stage at a faster pace, so we weren’t stuck waiting around. We decided on wearing black and white for the costumes as it fit in with the theme of the 1900’s. it gave the performance a bit more context as people could now tell it was an old theme.

Day 12

Today was all about timing. Getting on and off stage at the right pace, not too fast and not too slow, We also worked on the timing for the jazz section so we knew our ques and when to go on stage. We then worked on the timing in our little groups so we knew everyone knew what they were doing! This made our piece look a lot cleaner then the first time we went through it. We then moved on to discussing TikTok ideas for the audience to watch during the blackouts. By this point in rehearsals the whole performance looked a lot better.

Day 13

Today we continued to go over the whole performance and keep practicing getting it tight and perfect. We were a lot better at getting props on and off stage at faster paces and moving set around with ease. We made the transitions smoother and the whole piece had come together very well. We also had others learning multiple Roles just in case anyone was off sick. We worked on the bowing on stage at the end to make it look clean and les sloppy. We moved things off the stage to make it less crowded and so we could have more room to mov.

Day 14

Today was the actual performance, we ran over it a few times in costume with costume changes just t0 make sure it looked perfect. We learned that not everything was going to go as planned as some people could fall on stage, mess up lines and even be off sick on the day. I learned that we have to be ready for the worst-case scenarios as anything could happen on the day of the performance. I believe I could have been a bit louder as I didn’t really project my lines as much as I hoped I could. We also need to work on volume backstage as it was very hectic, and the audience could hear us.

RESEARCH

Hallmark cards are one of the biggest card making companies in the us. They make cards for things such as birthdays or other types of celebratory cards. They are known for their humorous one liners, dark humor lines and their witty one liners. Joyce Hall was the founder of ‘hallmark’ in 1910. Hallmark cards is one the longest running companies ever (over 100 years ago). They never change their style of cards, it has always been comedy type cards. The aim of Hallmark cards is to make cards for all types of humor as everyone’s sense of humor is different and one style of comedy and humor might be completely different to someone else’s.

We used hallmark cards because it helped us open our minds to a wide range of humor we didn’t know existed. We got to try out different types of Comedy scenes to help improve our knowledge of everyone’s type of humor. We got to create different small comedic scenes based only off the front of the cards we used! When it came to our actual performance, we used these cards to inspire us and give us ideas on what sorts of teachers we could create, We used the stereotypical teachers as most of our audience would be teenagers and they would be able to relate to some of the scenarios we came up with as they might have gone through some of them at school.

When doing the research, we looked at multiple websites to give us a better insight on what hallmark cards was and how we can use their humor in our performance. We then effectively used the information we found out by working with some of the jokes they made on their cards and it helped us by giving us a full idea for the performance making it easier to portray the hallmark card idea to the full potential.