“Fair is foul and foul is fair,” (Macbeth). This famous quote from the Shakespeare play, Macbeth, means things that look pretty (“fair”) will become ugly (“foul”) and things that are ugly will become beautiful, which describes exactly how this Macbeth movie project is going.
Our class is currently working on a collaborative project where we have to use the play of Macbeth and create a movie using that storyline but in a different setting. Since we were most recently learning about World War II, that is the setting where our movie will take place. The whole class is working together on this one movie, which when you think about it sounds like it’s going to be a disaster. Currently it is a disaster, but it didn’t start out that way.
When we first began the project everybody was bouncing ideas off of each other and for the most part everyone was really excited to get going. We were all given roles and were then set off to begin. The script writing went well and so did preparing the costumes and props. However, as soon as the filming started things started to go down hill. Since everyone in our class has very different personalities and ways of working we found it challenging to get anything done in a short amount of time. There was always one person who wouldn’t like the way we filmed a scene or wouldn’t like how the actors presented themselves so we would have to re do it and try another way. In reality we probably shouldn’t have listened because if only one person was complaining about how they didn’t like it, then oh well, you can’t please everyone. Especially not when there are 25 of you working on one project.
The filming process has involved a lot of out of school time, which I know for myself and a lot of people is challenging to do considering we all have a lot of extra curricular activities and homework from other challenging classes. We never had one day where everyone showed up and I don’t think we will have one day like that. However we have managed to work through these bumps slowly, (and with a lot of fighting). Currently our project has been reduced and we have plans to continue filming Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all day. Here’s to hoping everything goes well and nobody else gets into any more fights!
On a better note, my job on this movie is costumes and makeup. I was in charge of designing all of the costumes to make sure they fit the roll of soldiers from WWII. Also I have had to do makeup for the actors. I transformed three people into dead civilians/ghosts. And what I find the most fun to do and what I have done most of is create fake gashes and cuts on people. Of course I didn’t do all of it alone. Maria was a big help and I’d say we both worked equally on making sure all of our actors looked beaten up enough.
The Macbeth movie project is still a work in progress and I will post again once the product has been completed. Hopefully that will be in the next week if we stay on top of all our work and filming days.