For our latest project in Humanities our class was tasked with creating a 10 minute short film based in the 1950’s using the story of Macbeth (a famous play written by William Shakespeare).

Now, this project had been implemented in multiple PLP 11 classes prior to ours and it had gained a reputation of being a “cursed” project, given the fact that none of the classes have ever been able to completely finish it by the end of the school year. Anyways, this will come into play later on in this post.

Now, if you want to learn more about the actual learning process prior to this (studying Macbeth and the 1950’s as a whole) please refer to my previous posts titled “This Week I Learned“.

 

Now, back to the details. Obviously we wouldn’t be able to recreate the play work for word (given our 10 minute time constraint) but we knew that we were capable of making it happen. Each person in the class was given a very specific role based on real film crew roles. Our roles were also determined on what we were actually interested in/good at.

I eventually got assigned the role of “director of photography and operations”. Basically I would be doing all of the camera work for the film. Some of the other roles given out to students were; Producer, Screenwriter, Production Manager, Script editor, Production Designer, etc. I was really happy with the role that I got given the fact that I just bought a new video camera. To check it out you can click here.

 

During the pre-production of the film, our entire class helped write the storyboard. Even though that might seem like a lot of work, I really feel for the script writers because turning the entire Macbeth story into a ten minute long script based in the 1950’s would definitely not be an easy task.

Each of us were assigned a certain part of the plot to turn into a storyboard. Not only would this make the process go much faster but it would also allow for some creative expression.

For the production of the film I believe we went all out. Some people bought costumes from the thrift store, others brought clothes from home, we had people as dedicated makeup crew, we even had catering at the shoots, (curtesy of Alivia and her amazing cookies). Anyways, making this film was a blast.

Even though we ran into some serious complications such as weather, availability of crew members, cast members getting sick, and coronavirus crushing any hopes we had of finishing the film after spring break ended. I still believed I learned a lot from this project. Wether that be from a filmmaking aspect (camera angles, recording etiquette, technicality, lighting) or from a literacy aspect (studying Macbeth and its literary devices, studying the 1950’s and the events leading up to it). I cant believe we weren’t able to finish this film. But I certainly had a great time during the learning prior to it and the actual work that we put in. I think that this truly cements this Macbeth film project as “cursed”.