The Kovacsian

For the It’s Personal production, I’m hoping to create a short piece with only a couple of main actors and several extras. The working title is The In-Class Chorus and the idea stems from a conversation I had with some classmates about how to subvert gossip. It will be set in a classroom (preferably high school-style) where they are clearly supposed to be listening to a lecture.

The students will begin distracting each other with idle chit-chat, passing notes, starting out with believable interactions and getting more and more ridiculous until they reach a climax. When they are distracting all attention from the teacher character, they are told suddenly and angrily to “Shut up!” There should be a lull after the holler that will last several seconds. I’m also going to experiment with the volume of the piece to instill it with a musical quality.

In the way of resources, I feel this piece will require a lot of time in studio A; I would like to set up a fake classroom in there for recording. I think it can be executed with three cameras with some creative blocking, I would like to do the titles in the animation studio with binder paper and pens, but if time becomes an issue they can easily be done with the character generator.

Seeing as my piece focuses on gossip, a world steeped in personal experiences, I would like to focus on recorded interviews for my research. This research will possibly be supplemented with books or articles on the psychology surrounding high school gossip, a book from my Kovacs research about subversion in films, and the study of a few absurdist films that are yet to be determined.

To complete the piece to my satisfaction, I will need a writing group of at least one other person, probably to co-produce and assistant direct for me as well, four or five actors, and a full crew for filming. The set is also an important factor in the success of this piece and will probably require a fair bit of attention from at least one other person. I would like to avoid recruiting from outside of the class for this piece, but I understand the restrictions of having so many productions happening in such a short period of time.