How might we craft a compelling vision of Macbeth set in the 1950s? This was the driving question for PLP 11/12’s most recent project. Honestly, this project could have gone a lot worse than it did. We had to create a movie to answer this question, as a class.

First we read Macbeth. Some of it we had to do alone. Some of it was done as a class, in class. This obviously provided some background information for our story to go off of. We also watched a couple different versions of Macbeth. I hate watching movies. Most movies at least. I don’t feel like I got as much out of watching the movies as I did reading the play. The only real thing I got out of the movies was learning that people interpret ideas differently. This manifests itself as different final movies. Kind of obvious I know, but it was a good reminder.

My one of my goals as a PLP learner this year is to become a clearer writer. I got to work on this goal with the act quests. My first draft sucked. I couldn’t find a way to clarify my ideas. I went into tutorial and worked with other students and teachers to get across what I needed to. I really enjoyed this process. It was more soothing and satisfying than I anticipated.

I was assigned the role of “Assistant Photography Director”. It’s not what I applied for but I think I may have learned more in this role than I could have in another. I had to let the controlling aspect of my personality take a backseat, which was difficult. I was working with Fraser as his assistant while he was filming. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough and was going to be the downfall of the project. But I tried to sit in the discomfort to prove that I could let my classmates do this, primarily without my influence. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t doing anything. Whatever Fraser or Kaia needed, I went and did.

Filming the movie was certainly a time. Sometimes it felt like the production team was trying to heard cats. It was hard to control my instinct to control what was going on.

The final product. Several months in the making. The fifth time a PLP had attempted this project. The first time it had been completed.

Voila: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18XIZYpuI8BjbqkK0gs2zdwbkygMlY__w/view?usp=sharing_eip_se_dm&ts=626b6e92

Ok, obviously it’s got some flaws. I think the flaws make it quite charming. It is a school project so it wasn’t going to be absolutely perfect in the amount of time we had. But we did it. As a class, we pulled together to do something none of us thought was actually going to get done. I’m really impressed with how hard my class worked.

Overall, I think we managed to answer the driving question as well as we could. It was hard doing this as a class, however, we managed to put aside our conflicting visions to collaborate on something really cool.

The end.