Digital Techniques

Becky Cutler

The Birthday Party

The birthday party is based around Stanley, a failed piano player, who lodges in a boarding

house with meg and Petey by an English sea side. One day Meg claims that it is Stan’s birthday. On this day two men turn up at the boarding house, Goldberg and McCann. A birthday Party is throw for Stan which turns into a disaster. Goldberg and McCann torture Stanley psychologically. This torture results in Stanley attempting to strangle Meg and to assault Lulu (Stanley's friend) , sexually.

In the final scene we experience the aftermath of the party. Lulu comes downstairs after having spent the night, regretting sexual activities with Goldberg; and Stanley is led downstairs by McCann unable to walk on his own or even speak

The play is left leaving the reader confused as a lot is left up the imagination.

Some indication of a boarding house would need to be shown to explain the setting of the piece. I also believe that the costumes should reflect a 1960’s style. And be quite realistic. I like the idea of an angular stage shape and the set looking quite creepy and obscure.

This was the initial idea for the play. The stage is angular and split in half. Half being the kitchen and the other half being the front room.

Would possibly be good to have a door or staircase to show people coming downstairs.

I did this by cutting out images and placing them together to form this image. I also used many textures and transformed the images in different ways to make them fit my desired shape

This is my experimentation for working with photoshop in a theatre design based situation. I worked out how to apply patterns to so a drawing of a figure.

This is not a costume design for the play

I have worked with photoshop quite a lot in the past and know the programme well, therefore it was easy to pick up how it can be used in theatre design.

I did however learn a lot more about what different things did and how to edit things more accurately.

Since learning more about applying photoshop to theatre design I have used in my project to give myself a clear image of what things on stage and costumes can look like more clearly.

This is my work from 3D studio max. I created a stage and desk and added some lighting into it.

Working with stages in 3D studio max.

I Edited a desk into the programme using an image of an actual desk and cutting out the shape to create the table leg

I found 3D studio Max to be quite difficult programme to work with. Adding in lighting and camera angles was something I found challenging and needed assistance with. I did however find it interesting and can understand why it is useful for theatre designers. I think that with practice I would use this for 3D modelling in Design.

These are experiments and tasks in AutoCAD to explain how to use it. I looked at how to draw curves and angles and how to measure up things and add the dimensions

Further work into experiments with AutoCAD

I found working with AutoCAD to be extremely difficult and confusing at first but gradually learnt to understand it. It is a programme I have never used before.

I can see how AutoCAD can be useful for ground plans and side elevations of theatre sets. But I think modelling things more graphically on the programme for me would seem too complicated.

I think that with practice I could use this programme a lot and over time get a clearer sense of how to draw on it more sufficiently.