Yes, you read that title right. Before I get into explaining, we obviously need to start off with a brief explanation of what this project was. The final product was to be our very own 4 minute long adaptation of one of the scenes in Shakespeare’s original Romeo and Juliet, but before that we had to prepare. We spent multiple weeks watching 4 different adaptations of based on Romeo and Juliet and simultaneously reading through the original. We used the information gained from the play and the adaptations to make a theme book collecting all the varying themes and ideas introduced throughout the different acts and relating said themes to the adaptations and entirely unrelated bits of media too. Eventually we were paired up into groups of four, and from there we had scenes selected for us to remake and then perform for a camera.
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To start off, here’s my theme book:
I have some gripes with this project, just because acting isn’t really my thing. I’m the type of guy who likes to hide out in the background and stay under the radar, as my teachers are all most likely very aware of. I do commend this project for forcing me out of my comfort zone to try something new, but I assure you I will not be trying acting on my own time any time soon.
My groups adaptation was just as the title says. Juliet was a homeless girl being sold off to Paris so her parents could get their hands on a fat pay check, and Romeo was a closeted gay of the upper class. Friar Laurence, now Fatha Laurence, was a magical drug dealer having a secret affair with Romeo. Juliet meets the Fatha in the woods talking with Paris, and Juliet sits with them. Fatha Laurence gives her a mushroom and Paris leaves, giving them some time to talk alone. From there Juliet and Laurence talk about a plan to get Juliet out of Paris’s clutches and into Romeo’s, and Fatha gives her the poison just like in the original. He secretly is plotting to kill Juliet so he can get his Romeo to himself. In the end, we dropped the wizard detail (against my will), so now he’s just a regular homosexual drug dealer. Unfortunate, I know.
I played Romeo (in the flashback) and the plant that comes to life after they take the drugs. I imagine I felt the same way that the guy from Diary of a Wimpy Kid felt when he had to play the tree in the school play.
Now coming back to the actual analysis we did, I would like to bring in some other movies I watched during this project into my reflection on what I learned about themes and their importance. I happened to binge a TON of movies from the 1970s to the 2010s (and wasn’t originally doing it for this project), here’s the list:
-The Breakfast Club
-The Lost Boys
-Buffy the Vampire Slayer
-The Craft
-Brokeback Mountain
-The Rocky Horror Picture Show
-Interview With the Vampire
-Little Shop of Horrors (1986 version)
-Tremors
-Donnie Darko
-Scream (the original)
(Ignore how half of them are vampire themed, I like vampires okay)
These films really got me thinking. I watched all of them in the span of one weekend right in the middle of this project on a mere whim, and it was interesting. I’d like to highlight The Rocky Horror Picture show, as it was the movie that actually made me start questioning the themes in these movies. Half way through it I started to wonder, “this movie can’t possibly have a central theme, it makes zero sense, but it’s still such a good movie and a cornerstone in queer media!” …and then I thought, “wait. This movie does have a theme, even though the story takes you all over the place and doesn’t make any sense.” Part of what makes The Rocky Horror Picture Show hold up so well is literally the fact that it’s themes are so strong. The simple idea of embracing the odd and different. This movie really opened my eyes to how true it is that a movie, or any media for that matter, needs to have a strong and familiar theme to captivate any audience. It does not matter now inconsistent or nonsensical the story/plot is, as long as it has a captivating and consistent theme/number of themes throughout the movie.
Aside from that, I 100% recommend every movie mentioned on that list, ESPECIALLY The Rocky Horror Picture Show, I’m still listening to the soundtrack days after and am planning on forcing my friends to watch it.
Back to my groups video, I’m linking it for you to watch here (please don’t watch it, it’s embarrassing).
Another problem I have with this project is that they had us creating AI GENERATED IMAGES (I am NOT calling that crap art) to make our movie posters… as an artist I have a number of problems with this. It’s entirely unethical, as most AI image generation tools steal human artist’s work to program the AI, effectively throwing that art into a metaphorical blender to spit out some gross amalgamation of an image. Hands, limbs, lighting etc usually looks nonsensical and the AI ends up making errors that a human would never make, and it ends up looking like a cheap alternative to making the movie posters ourselves. I mean come on, just look at this:
Not only does it look bad, but it makes no sense. Every time I think of AI imaging being used for advertisements/posters it just reminds me of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Experience, and I’m sure we all know what that was like. Instead of stealing from real artists via AI we could have used real pictures from our video’s or drawings made by us. I guarantee it would look a thousand times better to just make the posters ourselves instead of cutting corners like this for a final product that looks terrible. I hope the PLP teachers read this blog and take this all into consideration, because oh my god I cannot stress enough how dumb the AI art looks. Even the “good” example that Mr. Harris showed when introducing the AI tool had pointless, ugly errors and lines in places that did not make any sense. I wish I had a picture of what it looked like because it was laughable how bad it looked.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.