Group Project 1 Progress Report ("Frenemies Closer, Friends Closest")

    I am very proud of all of the work we’ve put into our group scene so far, and what it has resulted in. It took us a little while to settle on a basic premise we all agreed to, and even after we had a skeleton of a plot, there was stuff that we ended up adding in the process to flesh it out more, including the whole ending with Allie trying to get the others to sign her petition. At this point, I feel that we are near total completion of the scene, once we smooth out a few bugs.
    When looking back on how our scene evolved, a part of me feels that I may have done too much in shaping it compared to my classmates. I had come up with a very basic idea for the scene in advance after looking ahead on the portal: since all our characters happened to be children, I thought it would make sense to set our scene in a school cafeteria after the events of Helen and Yongche’s monologues. When it came time to discuss our ideas, though Helen and Yongche had some different ideas for settings, we ended up back at my original plan in a roundabout way. In earlier drafts of the script, I also feared that I was somewhat dominating the scene, and so attempted to write myself out of the middle entirely. However, in the end, I was very happy to see Helen and Yongche add to the scene through how they prorated their characters. Nicole is less open to people who she doesn't know but is more willing to go along with people she considers friends, while Austin shows eager honesty, a strong sense of justice, and fierce loyalty for his friend. I feel that the resulting scene is not only far more balanced than it was at the start of this development, but also more interesting in terms of themes presented, like loneliness and friendship.
    As we rapidly approach our final performance of the scene, I feel there are a few smaller things that we could still work on. For my part, I think that I should work on solidifying my lines more over the weekend. Most of my dialogue started off as bullet points that I filled out with ad libs and then continued to reuse if they stuck with me. However, I do not want to waste too much time with filler when performing, so I need to decide for certain which lines I will be using. In terms of my classmates, I personally feel that they could both work on increasing their volume while still staying true to the emotions of the scene. In addition, Helen could work on keeping a straight face, and I think Yongche could show more levels of anger when arguing with me at the end. Other than that, I am very confident that we are ready to give a great final performance of this scene.