Hey Y’all, Max here.
The subject of the most recent humanities 10 project was Romeo and Juliet. I was not at all looking forward to going through a 400-year play, but I learned its not as bad as it seems.
This was a relatively short project, but I feel it achieved its goal. The driving question for this project was “how has William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet remained relevant to contemporary storytelling?” I will answer this question later, but for now I’ll get to the process.
There weren’t really any definitive beginning-middle-end assignments, the only notable one was the themebook I created throughout the project as we read further into the play itself. This themebook had five sections for each act in the play, with individual columns dedicated to the details of a chosen scene from the act, how I interpreted it, and a connection to an adaptation I have seen.
Before I show my themebook, I should probably explain how this project kind of unraveled itself. The first half of the project was entirely for reading the play and working on the themebook. In between reading the play we watched two adaptations of Romeo and Juliet:
Gnomeo and Juliet, and Warm Bodies. Gnomeo and Juliet obviously is one of the greatest films of all time and after watching it I can see why. Warm Bodies, on the other hand was a different story. I didn’t hate it and I even found a lot of it to be pretty good, but theres a lot of inconsistency ( main female protagonist’s boyfriend is ripped to shreds by main male protagonist and she doesn’t care after she finds out ) and lots of clichéd elements as well. One really cool part of it though was these really badass skeleton guys called bonies who are zombies that take off their skin and eat anything with a heartbeat. I wish I could be a bonie.
Anyways, the point of watching these adaptions is so we ( the class ) could compare the original to the adaptions, and ultimately be able to make our own adaptation of one chosen scene. This was such a short project I’ve already gone over pretty much the whole project, which is really just three keystones ( Am I the only one who remembers them being called milestones? ) :
- How can I organize my understanding of theme as it relates to Romeo and Juliet? ( starting the themebook, and deciphering the meaning, symbolism, and context behind the given act and/or scene. )
- How has Shakespeare influenced modern storytelling? ( watching and taking notes in the themebook about various adaptations of Romeo and Juliet. )
- Romeo and Juliet transposed. ( creating an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. )
The moviemaking part of this project was largely left until the last minute. We only had 4 or 5 days to finish it completely. I was sorted into a group which included Mateo, Claire, Paleo, and Mickey and we chose to make an adaptation of the last scene of the play, where Romeo and Juliet infamously kill themselves. Claire was mostly responsible for planning everything, as in making the storyboards and creating roles for everyone ( although it was a very difficult task which took much longer than it should have ). By the second day we knew what our adaptation was going to look like. It’s very different from the original scene and I don’t really want to explain it all so I will attach our planning document.
Filming wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected. We got every shot we needed on schedule, and we didn’t even have to re-shoot anything ( probably due in part more to time constraints than perfection ). The only technical errors were that we didn’t plan well and some shots were done in portrait mode and some were done in landscape mode. The only personal complaint with my role(s) is that I was forced into playing both Montague and lady Capulet, sometimes in the same shot. I had to wear a wig and speak in a high-pitched voice, on top of the numerous continuity errors that are pretty obvious. Ce la vie.
I have attached the movie below if you are interested in watching it. I don’t know why but for some reason it’s like 144p.
To wrap things up I’ll answer the driving question. If you forgot what it was you can scroll back to the top of the page. It’s alright. I’ll wait.
Okay. So, in my opinion, Romeo and Juliet is pretty frequently described as the ‘greatest love story of all time’ and it probably spawned the ‘forbidden love’ sub- genre as well. The most obvious reassurance that it remains relevant is by looking back at the project. Why else would we have watched Gnomeo and Juliet and Warm Bodies if Romeo and Juliet wasn’t relevant anymore? The success of these movies is based on probably the most referenced love tale of all time. Avatar, Titanic, West Side Story, and hundreds of other plays, films, or pieces of art have ripped this story ( or aspects of it ) from Shakespeare ( probably without asking ) changed it slightly, and released it to the world. Some make millions off of these adaptations. So yes I would argue that, despite the unoriginality keeping it going, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet does remain relevant.