Hey, hi, and hello. Welcome back to my blog where not all those who wander are lost (J.R.R Tolkien). In this post I will be focusing our latest project. This project was one of the most fun projects ever. The driving question was: “How might we craft a compelling vision of “Macbeth” set in the 1950s?” Our end goal for this project was to be able to create a film that combines the gruesome tale of Macbeth and the Cold War. The stages we went through to lead up to this final project were to analyze the story of Macbeth and different versions and to learn the history of the Cold War. At first I thought that we wouldn’t be able to acheive our end goal due to the teachers telling us tht no PLP class has been able to complete this project. However my thoughts were soon to be altered.

When we first started with the learning of Macbeth I found myself more enthusiastic than my fellow classmates. Back in elementary school, grade 7, I became so interested in Shakespeare and learning how to understand his work. I am always looking forward to when we incorporate Shakespeare into our projects. We started by getting a textbook copy of the play and started to read. As we read we would analyze and ask questions. We would also look a one or two different film adaptations to be able to get visual representation and see how different directors in vision this tragic tale of madness.

I found that we as a class were lacking on the knowledge of the Cold War and what happened during it. We only had two quick lectures and I think that we could have spent more time delving into it to then be able to have included it more into our final project. During this project we had to make a weekly literature note about something interesting we learned in class or something that sparked an idea in our head. One of the literature notes I was really proud of was the one I did after we analyzed the witches in Macbeth.

Once we had our knowledge on macbeth and the Cold War we then started into our final project. The first step was to assign roles, not casting but the roles like director or producer, even in my case, wardrobe manager. When we applied for a role we had to hand in a vision for the role and a resume tailored to that role. I applied for wardrobe manager and added in my experience of helping with the costumes at my dance studio into my resume.

The first thing I started to do was put together a Pinterest board of my vision. I collaborated a lot with Kaia, the director, on what her ideas and vision so I could stick to an idea. I had a rough idea of what Kaia had in mind for the story and used that to start planning costumes. Once we got the actual story and the class had collectively written it I formatted my final ideas. The next step was getting them. I went down with the rest of the wardrobe team (Natalie and Liam) to our school’s theatre to find some costumes. I was able to find quite a lot of costumes that would work with the time period of our film (the 50s) and any missing things would be brought in by the actors.

Now due to the timing of editing this film I will not have the film on my blog until a later date but once I do have the film available a link will be below.

Now as usual I will be not only evaluating how the project went but how I personally think I did and how I can improve. I think that we were able to achieve our goal in being able to create a vision of macbeth that was set in the 1950s. I did wish that we were able to learn more about the Cold War aspect of the 50s but due to our previous knowledge of the 50s I think we were able to execute this project well. Now before I began writing this post I asked myself some questions. What did I do? How well did I do? What should I do next? After answering these questions I collected one conclusion. This project was amazing. Not only did it go well but it allowed me to realize what my true academic aspirations are. This project helped me achieve a realization that I really want to become a costume designer for theatre or film. I think that this project was one of the best by far because it allowed me to use my creative and critical skills and helped me build on them. The best thing about this project was what I was able to take away from it and this is what is important in projects. I hope we get to do a project more based around my second career choice (creative writing) and that the next project will be able to help me focus on building my writing skills.

Stay tuned for the next post.

Peace ✌️