GCSE Drama devising log

What exam board did you do? I did OCR, if I remember rightly I got pretty high? Maybe dropped like one mark or so? So I can try and find my old portfolio and tell you what kind of stuff I put on it if you're doing OCR because the other exam boards are pretty different.

Enjoy this AQA exemplar I managed to dig up- I hope it helps.

Exemplar Material-GCSE Devising Log

Section 1:
The stimulus we choose as a group for our piece was a painting by Salvador Dali called ‘’The Persistence of Memory.’’ The painting shows several clocks in a strange melting position. This led us on to the idea of time itself melting away and slowly running out. When we looked at the empty landscape in the picture it also led to the idea that time is running out for the environment, and we are running out of time to change the way this is going and if we do not then there are going to many consequences i.e. animals going extinct. As a group we felt strongly about this and wanted to change our audience’s perspective on the topic and make sure that they realised the full extent of the issue.
The reason we wanted to choose Brecht as our practitioner is that his techniques work well with pieces with messages, and he uses drama and acting to change the audience’s perception of something which he believed was an issue or a problem is society. The reason this relates to our piece is that we believe problems like habitat destruction, pollution and poaching are big problems for the world today, and we would like to change some of their everyday actions which affect the environment in a negative way.
One of the main techniques I/we want to use is montage. We will use montage in our play, such as a moment when Walter Palmer, the murderer of Cecil the lion, is standing in the middle of the stage acting as an evil dentist while I play a thug spraying his house with paint.
One of my main aims as an actor was to make sure I would have the confidence to break through the fourth wall as I have struggled with this in the past. So I will attempt to make sure I talk to the audience as much as possible and ensure that I am always playing an archetypal role.
In our play I play the role of David Attenborough. For this role, I will need to develop a quiet whisper-like voice and a slow movement imitating an old man, as I want the audience to see it is David Attenborough so that they understand I am a wildlife commentator. This is essential as his function in the play is to all about the problems animals are having and showing he is David Attenborough will show the audience he is a reputable source, and knows what he is talking about. Another character I play in our piece is Mr Green, a timid car salesman who attempts to sell a customer an environmentally-friendly car. For this role I walk in a hesitant way to show a lack of confidence and I have a quiet shy and timid voice.
One of the main techniques I encouraged my group to include was montage as I felt it was extremely effective in the pieces I have seen performed and I think it is a great way to show the contrast between two very different scenarios. An example of my contribution is that I suggested the first scene, where we use a montage of a newspaper seller reading out headlines while the others in the group act a very short scene representing that headline. This creates a more exciting approach to the scene rather than just seeing the headline read out and should engage the audience from the start.

Section 2:
One of our most influential scenes in the piece is our opening scene ‘’The Headline Scene.’’ We developed this scene as a way of introducing our broader idea of pollution and saving animal life to the audience. This scene stemmed from the research we had done for homework, where all members of our group were told to come up with ten to twenty facts on their given topic, between habitat destruction, pollution, animal poaching and global warming. We developed a scene around the headlines which showed, for example, how Walter Palmer, the, man who killed Cecil the lion, was targeted for extradition and how he wanted to kill an elephant as well.
We started off with the idea of walking around the audience and simply reading out the headlines that we had come up with. For example I had the line ‘’Cecil the lion’s killer wanted to kill an elephant next, but couldn’t find one big enough. Although this did get the ideas in our scene across it was quite dull and not very Brechtian at all as it didn’t engage the audience and didn’t really break the fourth wall as we were not putting the emotion in to it. After we realised this, we decided that we needed more excitement for the audience and came up with the idea of acting out the headlines as we say them. Each headline would have a short mini scene attached to it this was not only more exciting but more Brechtian as we were using montage, a Brechtian technique. One thing we aimed for the mini scenes to do was to add a bit of humour and excitement to an otherwise flat opening scene.
Another scene that changed greatly in rehearsals was our poaching scene in the scene we wanted to show an actual killing of an animal and what happens to it. We decided on a rough format of two poachers played by me and Muj and one tiger played by Colin. We started off by having the tiger walking across the stage and being stalked by the poachers. This we found however to be a bit naturalistic and boring and there wasn’t much we could say to the audience while poaching. When performed to our peers they agreed and suggested a change to that scene. We decided that the poachers should enter first as it then gave them some time to talk to the audience and establish their characters. The poachers used humours to distance the audience from the scene and to reduce emotional attachment. We used hot seating to come up with the humour and had Colin asking us questions about our roles as poachers and we answered them in character and humorously this was useful as we came up with archetypal roles while answering the questions and therefore came up with archetypal comments and jokes which we kept when developing the characters.
In our piece I played the role of David Attenborough. I wanted to be David Attenborough as I thought that it would stretch my skills and that I would enjoy imitating his famous voice. To accomplish my goals as Attenborough I developed my voice a lot. As mentioned, David Attenborough has a very recognisable voice and this was a key aspect of the way I wanted to present him as this was the main way the audience would recognise me as, if they didn’t, my characters presence would be meaningless. I developed my voice copying, to the best of my abilities, his voice I found that he uses quite a whispery voice and I used my hand gestures to back up and emphasise the points. I also needed to show the audience my age and the way I did this was mainly by my movement.
I walked slowly when I was David Attenborough with squinted eyes to represent bad eyesight and shook people’s hands when I walked on, a traditional greeting more commonly used by the elderly. To develop my character I took part in hot seating with my group a technique which I have found useful in the past to further develop any roles I have. The hot seating involved other members of my group asking me questions on various topics and I would answer them in character.
Another key role which I played in the piece was the role of Mr.Green. Mr.Green was a hybrid car salesman who attempted to sell the main character a car and whose rival was Dodgy Dave, a Porsche car salesman. My goal whilst playing the character was to show how hybrid cars are perceived and particularly their drivers. I wanted to show how people believe hybrid cars are boring and for old people. To do this I tried to play an archetypal cheerful old person. As he is still a salesman I gave him a reasonably strong voice however I used typically out-dated phrases like ‘’jolly’’ and ‘’splendid’’ as well as talking about wisdom. Because of the staging, Mr.Green didn’t really move at all in the scene but he demonstrated a car and mainly talked. However I developed the character by giving him quite an elderly posture with a slow movement and slightly hunched over. As well as using out-dated phrases I gave him a well pronounced voice almost posh to show the common misconceptions about hybrid car owners being older and more boring than others. I based the character on my grandpa who has a hybrid car and is quite similar to the character of Mr.Green. All this was to show how the drivers of hybrid cars are perceived and to give a contrast between him and Dodgy Dave. My main influences in developing the character were older family members as well as the media’s perception of old people shown on the news.
We had a technical candidate as a group member, who made our set and we had to work hard to keep the transitions of our piece as smooth as possible. All of our set was designed by Jake who didn’t take part in the acting, just the set. The tree stump was used in various ways and by various characters in a minimal, Brechtian manor to suggest locations. It is used when Colin playing Walter Palmer hides behind it when he is attacked by an aggressive news reporter. He also stands on this in the same scene whilst hunting an elephant to show human superiority against animals. Also, when we played out a version of the lion king Colin stood on it whilst playing the dead Mustafa to symbolise being out of the world and spiritual.

Section 3:
One of my favourite scenes of my own performance which I think went well was the very first scene in which I played David Attenborough and talked directly to the audience. My aims for this were to make the facts I was presenting sound as if they were strong and were coming from the real David Attenborough, as well as adding a bit of comedy to the opening. I felt I did this well: I used a slow, monotonous, voice, to achieve the effect of the facts coming from the rather preachy Attenborough and, to add the comedy I made fun of some of his traits like his famous whispery voice and walked slowly in a crouched movement to signify his age. This also helped to introduce our play’s message and show what were about. I was proud of this scene as I also successfully used some Brechtian techniques which I had struggled with like breaking the fourth wall which I did very well in this scene directly addressing the audience. This also went well as the audience immediately knew I was Attenborough through my voice and laughed and found the scene very entertaining.
Another moment which I felt went well as an actor was mid-way through our piece when I played the role of a hybrid car salesman, Mr.Green. I wanted to show how people with hybrid cars are presented and make of joke out of that stereotype. I felt I did this by using a positive, blissful tone in my voice when I was talking to Colin, who was playing Mr Average, as I was trying to sell him a car, as well as a happy, sincere facial expression with an exaggerated smile, this made fun of the stereotype about owners of hybrid cars being older and overly optimistic.
A final scene which I thought went well for my own performance was in our supermarket scene in which I played a woman who was extremely wasteful. Through this character I wanted to show how wasteful we can be when we are purchasing things from a supermarket and how we shouldn’t waste as much as we do, I also wanted to add humour through playing a quite exaggerated character. I said the line ‘’Oh hello, Jane’’, as I spotted a friend in the supermarket, played by Muj, I added humour by using a very high pitched and excited voice while saying this and used a very excited facial expression also using fast and energetic movement and acted surprised as if this was the best thing to ever happen this helped to make a joke out of the posh housewife stereotype I was portraying. I felt that this was a good way of furthering our message by showing how wasteful people can be, especially as there were probably similar people to my middle-class housewife in the audience who might have recognised this version of themselves.
Overall I definitely think we accomplished our aims in this piece of trying to show the audience how we believed they should act when it comes to being environmentally friendly and I think we did a good job of presenting this issue. I also liked the way we explored Brechtian theatre and performed Brecht’s techniques as I felt it made me and the other actors in my group more rounded and gave us a good experience of a new form of drama. I felt we communicated our message strongly throughout with every scene relating to it.

Thank you! This helps loads and looks very detailed. What sort of mark did this get?

You aren’t meant to put ‘WE’ it’s meant to be ‘I’ this would get you very low marks

hi there, i am currently doing AQA GCSE and would be interested in some help with exam technique and devising log, i'm not sure how much is transferrable but i would like to hear about your experience with the exams

please PM me at : jackashn on discord if anyone needs advice or has advice to give, especially AQA students


(Original post by charves14)hi, if anyone did edexcel I’m happy to give advice on what they want etc, i also scored very highly (only dropped one mark), i'm currently doing a level drama and happy to help

i haven’t got discord, am i alright to pm you on tsr?

of course, allthough i dont know how to access the pms