the making of Charlie and the chocolate factory

​The making of Charlie and the chocolate factory

 

Something terrible happened and on Christmas day of all days. My whole blog deleted because I was editing it on my phone and its not very secure on there (I didn’t know that till I researched it when it was too late). I’ve re wrote everything I can remember and have gone through important points with other members of the course, so I don’t miss anything out. (Also, there is other blog posts about playing Violet.) I bought a laptop to stop this happening again. I hope its still up to standard 😊

 

Okay so something terrible happened on Christmas day. I went onto this post on my blog to add some pictures to it. When I did everything on the page just disappeared, so I was like oh no. but then I thought maybe I just have no internet because this has never happened before, so I checked again when I had internet and it was all gone. I checked every file, all the trash things but nope everything was gone, so now everything on this blog is a rewrite that I’ve tried to remember of my old blog so I’m sorry if it’s not as up to standard as it should be. 

Characters

After doing a read through of the script and watching both the movies, I came to like a lot of the characters. Before we did the read through and I’d just watched the movies, I wanted to go for Veruca because I thought it would be good for me to play a big character. But then after doing the read through I thought Charlie would be quite a nice character to play, he just seemed like a character that you could be quite comfortable with. And then there was Violet, I loved how much freedom the script gave her, how unlike veruca who was expected to be loud and bossy and Charlie who was expected to be sweet and quiet, her only expectation was to be chewing gum 24/7, the rest was up to you. So, when it came to writing names on the audition script I put myself down for Veruca, Charlie, Violet and then Violets mam because I thought Violets mam was quite a good character too with good lines in the script. However, when I was reading through Veruca’s monologue it just really didn’t click, I didn’t have anything unique or exciting to bring to the character and I didn’t particularly enjoy doing her monologue, so I crossed her off my audition list. Then I also decided to cross Mrs Beauregard off the list because I thought there was no point auditioning for a character as a backup or learning an extra monologue when I could be focusing on a character I think would really help me grow as an actor, and I also knew that from my Violet audition alone Kelly and Kain would know if they wanted me to play Mrs B. So we went home on the Thursday and had till Tuesday to rehearse for the audition, Kelly gave us Monday off to practice so me and La Toya met un and we helped each other with our auditions, it was a very, very helpful day. 

Audition Day

Audition day, everyone is nervous and excited. I was very satisfied with the amount of preparation I had done for Violet however I definitely did not do enough for Charlie. Once I had learnt Charlies monologue I just pushed him to the side because I was having so much fun with Violet’s monologue. I went into the audition for Charlie wearing jeans and a white jumper because I thought that’s something he would wear. I messed up on the monologue the first time and then the second time it was fine but I wasn’t proud of it. Then it was time for Violets audition. I wore the same jeans but with a blue jumper because I didn’t have a Violet one. I was very happy with how my audition went for Violet, it was very prepared. I like how whether you do it good or bad Kelly and Kane and Nina still look smiley, it’s comforting. 

Auditions 2

Now today was also an audition but not like usual. Kelly, Kane and Nina had rounded each character down to three people for double cast. We were split into groups and told to pick a scene and preform it. We all picked the same scene because it had a lot of dialogue and it had all the characters involved. I played Violet. Trinity played Mrs Beauregarde. Everyone was asked to watch the other groups and write down on a piece of paper who  they thought stood out. I only had one line in the whole scene which was “who are they” about the oompa Loompas so to catch peoples eyes and go all out with the reactions (facial expressions and body language). Megan and Holly were the other violets for this task and we all played it very differently. 

Cast

We weren’t expecting to get the cast list when we did so everyone was really excited. And lets just cut to the chase…. I GOT CAST AS VIOLET!!! I am beyond happy to play this character. There is so much space in the script to play Violet however you want to. I am so exited to be playing a bigger character and I cant wait to develop my character and challenge myself. 

Costume

I had a few different ideas for costume I didn’t want to dress like the Violet in the original movie because it didn’t fit my Violets personality and it was too much like Veruca’s costume. And then in the remake movie Violet and her mom wear matching costumes that are pretty iconic, I don’t want to wear a costume like that because then for the audience it won’t be about how well I played the character and the personality I created for her, it will be about how well I mimic the Violet in the movie and I want to make her my own character. My first idea was to make her a Pageant girl. I thought it would be fun to dress her in sweats but with the big hair and makeup crown and sash from her bubblegum pageants.but then I thought if I make her a bratty pageant girl she’ll be too much like Veruca so I needed to think of something more unique. Then I thought if she’s mean to the this all American cool girl I could make her a cheerleader. She could wear a Violet cheerleading costume so I told Kelly my idea and she liked it then she told me that it would be nice to wear a lilac tennis skirt with the over the knee socks with two black stripes at the top and a white top with a v on it, then me and kadie would have matching lilac wigs to become the iconic mom & daughter duo. So I went home and shopped online, I found the socks and the lilac tennis skirt with a white long sleeve top but I thought I didn’t have enough lilac so I also bought a lilac sweater vest. I also bought a pink Love heart shaped small mirror to use in the show. Then my mam and me ordered a varsity v to stitch onto the costume but when it came it was way smaller than it said online so my mum got a pillowcase and cut it into a v then stitched it onto the vest then cut up some of her black jeans to make the black outline. With the purple wig I think my outfit looks really good, she looks really American and it describes her character to wear it to the factory. Because she’s showing that she’s cool and talented. She’s also advertising herself with the big V in the front.

 

Oompa Loompas

The oompas Loompas are a very important part of Charlie and the chocolate Factory so we had to make them special. We were all brainstorming different ideas for them when Kelly came up with the idea of having all of them represent their country, but then we adapted it to make all of the songs and style to fit the characters and instead of just chanting the chants they sang them instead and danced to them. Augustus’ song is a German song with a German dance. Violets is a cheer beat song with cheerleading me and Justin came in to create the routine for this so that people could rehearse it from the video. Veruca is traditional violin music with classical dancing and Mike tv is an electric vibe song with a dance ask about being in his phone. I think there are all really unique and entertaining. Our idea is to dress the Oompa Loompas up as LOL dolls. Wearing so bright colours with colourful wigs and big coloured makeup. The Augustas dance was a bit too complicated and people couldn’t get it so it became messy and hard to watch so for the third show we cut it down and shortened it and for the last shot there for alarm went off so we couldn’t do it. My parents said they liked the Oompa Loompas and the ought they were funny, especially when Morgan and Jamie pushed the salts down the shoots and they danced. I think our Oompa Loompas were unique and entertaining. 

 

Rehearsals 

We had a few weeks of rehearsals in our own class room where we just got to know who was playing who and ran the all the scenes until we went into the factory. Then Elf started so we had to switch between different classrooms everyday so even we’d ran every scene the show still seemed really messy, just because we hadn’t done it all in our own place a lot of times. I think we all felt very unprepared when we went into Christmas break because it never really felt like things were falling into place. Everyone knew what they were doing for most things except the Oompa Loompa dances but because Alice and the cold case was getting filmed at the same time  and some of us were in elf we never had a full cast and some people didn’t know the scenes. It was nobody’s fault though and I was sure that we’d have it sorted after a week rehearsing in the theatre. So then after the Christmas break we were in the theatre and there has been a big break out of COVID and a few people on our course had it  so on our second day back ( Wednesday ) we were all sent home to isolate i till Monday just so it wouldn’t keep spreading throughout the week and ruin the show, so the show got pushed back a week. The week when we came back was really amazing. We all had such a great time because it felt like things were looking up so much more with the show. We learned all of the Oompa Loompa dances which took a lot of worry out of everyone’s minds. Then we blocked all of the scenes on the stage and built the set some more. We practiced with lights and music which really gets you into the characters mindset and puts you into the scene, it helps you feel the emotions and with all the pros The Stage felt full of life. The week leading up to the show in the theatre is always my favourite because it’s when everyone is trying their hardest and really just putting everything into making the show the best it can be. Then we did a dress rehearsal and some people did a makeup rehearsal like Mrs gloop and an Oompa Loompa and everyone looked great. I was happy that Kelly liked mine and kadie’s matching costumes because we had worked hard on them. Then I  got to try on the Violet blueberry costume one day but didn’t end up wearing it for the show instead Trinity and Freya did. I felt so confident and ready for the show because we’d just ran it and ran it in that week and I knew exactly what I was doing and knew my lines off by heart. It was also really comforting knowing that in every scene if I did my makeup on the stage one time the next time I could be fixing my hair and it would be perfectly fine, you could just work with the people around you and react to what was going on however you wanted. 

I have another blog post going into detail about show week and the lead up to the show :)