Hello there, we just finished another Humanities project about Romeo and Juliet. In this project we made our own Romeo and Juliet adaption about a specific scene. We also watched a couple adaptations about the play like “Gnomeo and Juliet” and “Warm Bodies”. The Driving Question for this project was: “How has William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet remained relevant to contemporary storytelling?” This was a lightning fast project completed in under 3 weeks. To start the project we read Romeo and Juliet only reading the most crucial scenes. 

In reading Romeo and Juliet we were filling in a theme book about Romeo and Juliet we were to analyze themes from different acts in the plays. The themes included The Nature of Free Will, Honour and Obligation, The Naivety of Youth, The Power of Love and Hate, Violence and Death Gender Roles, Revenge, The Multiplicity of Identity. Also involved in the theme book we included connections to the adaptions. For example “Gnomeo and Juliet” and “Warm Bodies”. Now let me show you my theme book.

Romeo and Juliet Theme Book

As you can tell from my themebook it is very good. It goes into detail connects to themes and the adaptions very well. The one thing I need to improve would be to hand it in on time as it was two days late. For future projects I will try to start earlier.

The next stage of the project involved planning for and shooting our adaptation. Our group consisted of me, Colton, Hannah, and Dylan. We started out the the filming process with a pitch form

So as you can see on the pitch from our scene was the Tybalt vs Mercutio fight scene in which is Mercutio dies at the hands of Tybalt. Our idea was to make a metaphor of the fight using a chess board. This idea I thought was very clever and ended up looking very nice and dramatic which was our overall goal. 

Onto the filming process it was relatively easy to film as we had a gimbal which made it easier to shoot. We also had a good idea of what we wanted each scene to look like. We were a bit rushed a the end as we didn’t have a lot of time to film and edit. However despite this time crunch we got it done. Here it is. 

As you can see after watching our video. It is very dramatic, the most intense chess game in history (maybe). The idea to film in noir was a fantastic one. As it looks great with the single light shining down onto the table.

Now onto the answering the driving question which in case you forgot was: “How has William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet remained relevant to contemporary storytelling?” 

Romeo and Juliet has been around for a long, long time. And is probably the most famous play in history. Simply put Romeo and Juliet is an iconic story with relatable themes like love, conflict and choices defining a person. These themes along with relatable love struck main characters will continue to keep the story of Romeo and Juliet alive for centuries. 

Thanks for reading! 

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