Content:
1) What is your essential question? What is the best answer to your question and why?
My essential questions is "What is the best way for a set designer to enhance a play?" My best answer is that the best way for a set designer to enhance a play is by making sure that they know the concept of the play like the back of their hand. By knowing the concept extremely well, a set designer is able to see what they can and cannot do with the set of the play. The entire design is built upon the concept, so it if a set designer wants to do anything that will enhance a play, it is crucial that they know the concept of the play like the back of their hand.
2) What process did you take to arrive to this answer?
This answer has always been something that kind of crossed my mind after reading the book, Theatrical Design and Production: An Introduction to Scene Design and Construction, Lighting, Sound, Costume, and Makeup. In this book they talked alot about the set designer and the concept and how important the concept is to the set designer. Through the several chapters in the book that I read, the concept was mention quiet a bit. And throughout later research articles that I got, I also noticed just how much the concept was mentioned and how it was essential to the designer designing the set of a play. It wasn't really until my third and fourth interview that I figured this to be my best answer. Through my interviews with Mario Montenegro and Mara Gutirrez, I was able to confirm and truely understand just how essential the concept was to the designer when creating the perfect set for the production.
3) What problems did you face? How did you resolve them?
One problem with my senior project would have had to been during the summer when I was looking for a topic that I could do with mentorship. There were a lot of things that I wanted to do as my topic, but the problem was that the topic I wanted to do would either cost me a lot of money, or my parent would have to drive me somewhere pretty far away in order to get mentorship. How I resolved this was by being open minded to different opportunities that came my way. I did not close my mind to just one thing.
My biggest problem though was my Science Component. It was really hard doing this component especially because of my topic. At the beginning when we had to find a reliable quote about a problem within our topic, I had a hard time finding a quote that stated a problem. It took me a long time and a lot of searching before I actually found a quote that I could use in order to do a science experiment. Another part that gave me trouble was the collecting of data. For my science experiment I ran a survey about hiring theatre technicians who had a degree in Theatre Technology versus someone who didn't. In order to do this experiment I had to call theaters all around California to conduct the survey. The problem with calling these theaters was that it was hard to actually get responses, because one, they they didn't have the time to answer a survey because they were busy or it would take me to machine that had extensions to reach someone who worked in the theatre, and two, sometimes the places I called the number no longer existed or the theatre was a non-profit theatre which means they don't hire Theatre Technicians to work for them. The way I resolved this was by simply being persistent and to keep calling to get some data for my experiment.
4) What are the two most significant sources you used to answer your essential question and why?
I would have to say that my two most important sources would have to be my 4th interview with Mara Gutierrez and a book I got from the Cal-Poly library called Theatrical Design and Production: An Introduction to Scene Design and Construction, Lighting, Sound, Costume, and Makeup. These two sources helped me the most because they gave me lots of information and support for my answers. The book gave me basically the foundation of set design and the process a designer goes through to create a set. It also described in great dept the steps and the importance of the different steps a set designer takes. This book basically gave me a solid foundation on set designing and also a lot of support to use for my answers. My second source was significant, because she gave me some very useful and interesting information that helped me support my answers as well. She also helped me learn more about design in such a short amount of time. She was one of the most helpful people I've interviewed.
5) What is your product and why?
My final product I would have to say would be that my skills of working as a team improved. This topic helped me realize just how important it is to be able to work well with others. I know that all throughout iPoly we have worked in groups for projects, but I never realized just how important the skill of working together with a team really was. It took me this experience to really realize just how important being able to work with others is in real life. At iPoly our groups were only ever around 6 people max, but here I was to work with 60 other people and be able to cordinate with them to put on the production. Both my first hand experience and the articles and books I read helped me realized how in the real world, you will have to be able to work with others, and teamwork is an important skill to have especially in a field that requires one to work with other people. I learned to tolerate and get over any differences between anyone and avoid drama because when working with others on such a big project, there is no room for any of this. Through this project, I feel that my skills of working as a group has improved greatly, especially since I had to work in much larger group where you have no real option but be able to work as a team. I feel that the improvement in this skill will probably help me in the future when I enter the world of working, and I hope to be able to what I gained from this experience in real life scenerios.
