My targets were mixed voice and taking on feedback. I haven’t been doing that well with these targets because feedback can be hard to take on and mix is not an easy to skill to learn, but I was getting better as time went on, and I understood it. Patrick also confirmed that despite a hiccup here or there, I was also improving at taking criticism. This means that it’s a good challenge for me, with plenty of room for improvement. All I need to do is rise to these, and while it won’t be easy, I’ll never get any better if I don’t try. I will need to be more open to learning new things, and not giving up just because it can get difficult.   

At first, it felt like I wasn’t really improving as much as I would have liked in the early stages, because some of the exercises felt weird to me and I’m still getting defensive over small critiques. It often felt hopeless when I would not get it quite right, and that lead to a general lack of motivation. However, and especially during the last few weeks, I found it came more naturally to me, and it gave me what I needed to see it through to the end and have more belief in myself. One time during panto, Patrick told me not to smile in a scene because I was supposed to look scared, and it was one of the first times I actually stopped and listened without getting argumentative. Another area of improvement I found is staying in character when performing, because I would break character when I found something funny. This could be a potential target to work on in the future given how much it happens. 

I changed a lot of the vocal exercises I did, dropping some that worked and some that didn’t. One that I dropped was lip trills, because despite the fact they were supposed to simple and intuitive, they were far too much of a challenge for me, both to learn and carry out. I found some that worked, like “ng-ah”, “wah”, “nyah” and “ming ming”. I wasn’t really on board with it at first, but I slowly grew to like it and got something out of it. This was important to me, because I often get put off something if I don’t get it immediately. One that I found hard but eventually worked for me was sirens, one that I’m still doing to this day. This taught me to give exercises a chance and learn how they work before I get going.   

There is always some learning curves that I need to work on, no matter how good I get. I can’t say I’ve gotten too good, but I have found mixed voice in the span of a few weeks, and I feel proud of that. It’s still not quite there yet, the tone could use a bit of work, but it’s definitely made singing quite a bit easier, as I’ve now stopped relying on chest pulling to hit highs. It was hard to unlearn this technique, and sometimes I do relapse into it, but for the most part I have stopped cracking on highs, and it’s a healthier solution overall. I need to be familiar with these exercises, and always do these warm-ups before I sing, and practice feeding the exercises into the songs that I’m learning. 

I’m still struggling to take feedback on board, and it’s getting to the point where I almost feel like switching targets. It’s to the point where it feels unachievable and I might as well just cut my losses, but I’m already so far in, so there’s no real point in giving up now. But as I tried a little bit more, I found that I actually was improving more than I thought I was, so I kept going. And now, even though I realise that there’s always room for growth, and I shouldn’t push myself too far, I will actually get quite a bit better as I go, all I need to do is stick with it and not back down. 

I’ve been dealing with these issues for quite a while, and the first step to getting better at it is by looking inward and saying to myself that I can be better, so that I will be more inclined to put in the work. This is because without any effort being put in, I’m not going to see any actual results. And even if it’s not the perfect result, or it’s not quite what I was hoping for, at the very least I can say I gave it everything. 

My areas for improvement are avoiding corpsing and characterisation, also learning a decent German accent. My desired career path is a voice actor, so it only makes sense to develop this skill by learning more accents and corpsing has always been a big issue of mine. I’ve noticed some positive changes from beginning to end which I will talk about in this evaluation.

My first target was avoiding corpsing.  It’s been great finding what works and what hasn’t, such as finding something that annoys me and thinking about it so that I could keep a straight face. When it comes to how well it worked, it differs from technique to technique, but overall, it’s been very tough to improve at it. Some of the ideas that I had at the start, like watching a funny video that always got me to laugh and trying to hold my nerve didn’t really work as effectively as I’d hoped. Instead, I feel if I spent more time mentally preparing for a rehearsal (character’s backstory, feeling, emotions) as advised by the industry professionals in some of the videos I watched, then I would have had more success in rehearsals. There was, however, some notably successful moments, such as the scene in the connections piece, where I was physically being poked and prodded at repeatedly. The connections performance on the day at Derby Theatre went well, as I felt I managed to remain in character throughout, and on top of this I was able to keep myself still, something that I’ve struggled with before. When I took the time to think about something that brought up negative emotions in me and trying to connect to the character, I find myself able to stay present in the scene. When I filmed myself saying a line that always made me break, I saw myself and realised I smiled way more than I thought I did. I could actually learn to feel and see when my facial muscles where changing, because it was happening right in front of me. This idea of using a mirror when acting has proven invaluable, and I’ve learned a lot from this.

I have had frequent discussions with Patrick about some of the more philosophical talking points made in a handful of the videos. One or two were a bit unclear in their message, one which said, “there is no such thing as breaking character… character is an illusion in the minds of the audience,” though it prompted further discussions first trying to glean exactly what he meant but just through talking about it got me thinking more about it.  Overall, working on his target has helped me get into a slightly more professional mindset when it comes to staying in character, and the things I need to do to prepare myself and maintain it.

My second target was characterisation and learning a German accent. I learned several key differences between the manners of talking, such as vowel enunciation being quicker and sharper, the vowels in English are longer; being referred to as a glide, and there are several consonants that change sound in this accent, most notably the W sound turning into a V. I spent time practising my own German accent with all the information I have gained. I notice that I somewhat caricature my voice while trying to do the accent normally. While this worked for the comedic tone of Shrek, I found it difficult to speak in my regular voice with the German accent and without those more exaggerated inflections.

To break down how what I learned shaped my accent, one of my lines in the piece is “I’m proud to be a piggy.” On the word “proud,” I used a really guttural back-of-the-throat trill on the ‘R’. This is a strong example of how someone with a thick German accent would talk, but it wasn’t easy to pull off.  It took a lot of effort get it to sound realistic. It was about not going too easy on it so that it didn’t trip me up, not trying too hard that it sounded forced, and led to me toning it down enough so it was still heard and sounded natural. On another line “they blew our condos down,” several applications of what I learned were used: the ‘TH’ sound becoming a ‘Z’ or ‘D’ in this case I opted for the ‘Z’ sound, making the word “they,” into “zey.” Example two is the soft and hard ‘L.’ In English, we put most of the enunciation on our ‘L’s whereas Germans tend to hone in their pronunciation on the vowels so the ‘L’ feels more under pronounced. This leads to the word “blew,” sounding more like “bloo,” with a very soft ‘L.’ The vowel enunciation I mentioned earlier comes in on the word “our,” which in English is pronounced as two vowel sounds. A German speaker would say it as “are.” On the word “condos,” the S would be pronounced as ‘SH,’ turning it into “condoesh.”  This resulted in the lines becoming, “Zey bloo are condoesh down.”

In the future, this German accent will support me in my career goal to become a voice actor. It will lend itself for me becoming more versatile with the extra skill on my toolbelt. Understanding how to learn accents has always been a goal of mine and this is the first time I have taken a proper deep dive into learning one. The next step for me personally is to learn the tricks in mastering some UK accents.