Macbeth Meets the 50s
6 months later and let me just say that this isn’t the way I expected this unit to come to a close. From scheduling issues to equipment failure, a global pandemic was last on the list of things I would have bet on ruining our film. It has now been 3 months since we ground to a halt during the peak of this film’s production, but the story I want to tell is not one of failure, but one of PLP 11’s success and triumph despite the tumultuous world around us.
This all started wayyy back last winter when our teachers asked us what kind of project we wanted to do for second-term English. Without the guidance of the units content nor timeline, the consensus of the class was that we wanted to all band together and make something as a class. The ‘something” quickly morphed in to a film, and the rest is history.
Upon returning to school after winter break, the stage was set for a brand-new unit spearheaded by a class film we all knew was coming. Before then however, we actually had to do some learning! This unit was comprised of two subunits; Shakespeare’s Macbeth and the 1950s. We began our learning with the Macbeth side of things, more specifically, the man behind the famous play; Shakespeare. Not long after being first introduced to him and his story, we were given our first assignment of the unit, an essay titled “Why Shakespeare?”. Although certainly meant to provide Ms. Willemse with an overview of our initial knowledge, I this assignment opened the door to a more personal and opinionated response, which I capitalized on. With my limited knowledge on the topic, I wrote about who Shakespeare is to me, and how many may have a similar view, or one of contrast.
As we bounced between Macbeth and the 1950s, I quickly found myself in favour of the 1950s content, as one would expect of me. Ive always been a fan of history, specifically military history, and the geopolitical climate of the 50s was one so fascinating I couldn’t help but get attached. Throughout our learning, a constant task of ours was to be analyzing our research for similarities between Macbeth and the 50s. These similarities would be highlighted in a weekly learning portfolio post titled “This Week I Learned”. These posts focused on what we had discovered during the past week, and how the two topics intertwined in various ways. We completed 3 of these posts, and this one is my favourite, check it out!
To keep us on track with the core English content of the unit, we completed 3 Macbeth “Quests”, which is actually just Ms. Willemse’s misleading pronunciation of the word “quiz”. These quests focused on one third of the play, made up of a couple scenes each. For each quest we were given three random quotes without being told who said it. From there, we chose two of them, and wrote about the following:
- How the quote relates to what comes before, during and after it in events (plot)
- How the quote shows the characteristics of the character(s) involved in the conversation or affected by it
- significance of the quote and its relationship to theme(s)
This was a good way of ensuring each of us were following the book and understood each character thoroughly. Im not going to lie though, it was hard, really hard actually, and I certainly struggled. Although I definitely hated it, it made for good practice and helped me in the long run!
Now, this is where we switched gears, it was time for the film, we had put in the work to learn what we needed to, and now we were given creative freedom to produce our first class-wide work of art. The first step was coming up with an idea, baseline plan for what the film was to be about. I’ll save you some time by fast-forwarding through this period though, because my god it was quite the process. After filtering through various plots we settled on an idea we felt we could genuinely pull off with the resources we had available. The plot we chose was a combination of our whole class’s ideas formatted in to a tangible goal.
The next step was designating roles. To help us out, the teachers gave us a long list of all the roles on a film production that we needed to fill. We were then given a template with a Q&A where would write down which positions we wanted, and why. Once again, bit of a long process here, because as you can imagine, some conflicts occurred, and unfortunately having 9 directors isn’t possible. I, myself, was not in pursuit of a super popular role, and in the end I got the roles I was looking for: Editor and Location Assistant.
Our key creative team was made up of the following:
Producer: Alivia
Director: Giorgia
Screenwriter: Jesse
Production Manager: Luca J
Right from the start, I knew I didn’t want to have much of an acting role at all, I wanted to edit most importantly, and maybe help film here and there. When it came time to choose roles, I did end up getting a role (as everyone did), though it wasn’t a large role. However, once the script was finished and storyboard complete, as we began filming, I was unable to attend one day of filming so the creative team decided to give my role to Alivia. That really meant my only task was to take in all the footage, and once everyone else’s job was finished, mine was to begin, as editor. I don’t mean to make that sound negative though, in fact, that’s exactly what I wanted.
Unfortunately, our initial assignment to complete filming before spring break became impossible when Marshall came down with a mysterious sickness…This meant we had to postpone our filming until after Spring Break, this was the beginning of the end. We were about 50%-60% complete when COVID worries rained on our parade, and that left me in my editing role a little confused. Nobody knew if we were going to resume filming at some point or if we had to just work with what we had. The latter eventually became the only option, and thus I got work.
Honestly, I feel like I’m just in my element when I’m sitting at my computer, editing. Hours pass like minutes, and before I know it, dinner’s ready and I’m convinced I only just finished breakfast. Being forced to stay inside forced me to pump out the hours, and also kept me in a positive headspace with an otherwise empty day. In fact I got so wrapped up in my work that I didn’t even get ANY photos of my Final Cut timeline to put in this post! Silly me…
In total, I completed three versions of the film; the first and second draft, followed by the final cut of the film. Each draft presented it’s own challenges, all of which were allocated hours of my time to solve, which made each upload so much more gratifying. Obviously, the first draft was the biggest milestone, and the support from my classmates was really nice after the hard-work I put in.
After hearing feedback and thoughts from the creative team and teachers, I made some adjustments and added some simple text titles during the missing scenes to help try and tie everything together despite the lack of actual footage. I really tried to do as much as I could to enhance the film given the unfortunate conditions we were producing the film in.
Following the second draft, I could tell I was almost there, the (not-so) finished product was within sight. Under direction from Ms. Willemse, the final draft was given the addition of descriptions for each of the missing scenes, something that, to be honest, wasn’t a very fun part of the editing process. It did however make a noticeable difference on the film and made it much easier to follow the storyline. The feeling of exporting that final version of the movie was so rewarding! I really felt like editing this film helped me improve my skills so much, and I’m particularly proud of what I dreamed-up and created for the intro and outro.
All in all, this whole project was a complete whirlwind/roller coaster/train wreck/rescue mission all rolled in to one, and I think that made it even better. The fact we produced a film that everyone is genuinely proud of is truly inspiring and makes me want to do this again. I can’t wait for PLP 11’s next endeavour, until then though, you’ll have to have this one on repeat!
danielw • June 15, 2020