Macbeth. Possibly the most famous play by the most famous playwright. A masterful piece of art showcasing love, tragedy and human emotion. A play that has been adapted to film many times by many people, including PLP 11. In this post I will be detailing the creation process of our Macbeth movie including the bumps along the way.
Way back in January, I was given a new project in Basecamp called “Hide Your Fires”. Later on I would learn that this is a reference to a line in the play referring to trying to hide the evidence. At this point in the project I think I had some idea that we were making a Macbeth movie but not much more than that. Lectures were the main portion of our classes throughout this first section. Going over the play in detail, breaking it down, and doing tests on what we had learned. This all seems very monotonous but if you can get into the play a little bit, it’s not that bad. It is one of the most famous plays ever for a reason. This was mostly the building knowledge step. Learning what I had to know and covering the basics. Next was script!
The script is where thing really started to get interesting. As a class we all were assigned different roles at this point. The group leads (like managers) mainly worked on a plot line and script while the rest of us figured out our roles. I was away the day we applied for our roles so I got stuck with key grip and props master. They actually weren’t that bad of roles but it was kind of the running joke at the time. Once the first edition of the script was done, everyone had to storyboard a few scenes. The problem with this is that everyone had different ideas of how they wanted the movie to look. After all the story boarding, they didn’t go to much use even though we spent a few days on them. After this I think we jumped right to filming.
Filming an actual movie is a big endeavour. You need coordinators, actors, directors, filmers and producers at the bare minimum. I had a really big acting role, playing Macbeth. I guess everything usually works itself out after all. Our movie idea was a play on Macbeth. Similar story but warped to fit into a 1950’s high school. Because Seycove isn’t very 1950’s or very attractive, our first set location was Queen Mary School, early on a Saturday. I happened to be coming down with of the worst sicknesses I’ve ever had on that same week, which isn’t great considering my lead role. I hauled myself out of bed anyways. With all the makeup on I may have looked like a million dollars but I sure didn’t feel it. Throughout the day we moved through different sets eventually moving all the way back to the cove. By this point I felt like a shell of a human being and had to call it quits. We got our filming done and it was a wrap. This was the only day of filming I was in.
By the time I was in good enough health to act again, full lockdown had set in and there was no way we could film with COVID-19 regulations. The clips we had were sent to the editors, producers and put up on YouTube. With the COVID crisis still happening, I don’t see the movie ever getting finished. There seems to be a curse as no PLP class has ever finished their movie completely. I think we were a good team and as far as I could see, everyone put in their share of work. Coming into this project I think I had more movie knowledge than the rest of my peers. I’ve been acting since I was a toddler and I was happy to be able to share things I knew with everyone. I believe we would have finished our movie if it wasn’t for events outside of our control stopping us from doing so.
Speaking on behalf of the whole group, I think communication was the biggest challenge. With a really big group it’s hard to make sure that every single person gets the message and stays in the loop. We did our best, using basecamp, reminders and group chats to stay in connect but it always seemed like one person was missing or something was forgotten. I think our greatest strength was our ability to pull it together and solve our problems on the fly. Even though I didn’t shoot much when I did I was always solving problems. If we didn’t have something, how could we get it or replace it. Fast thinking is where I think we did well, even if that’s something that’s hard to see from the outside.
As I’ve gone through high school, I’ve been with these people the whole time. Every project I work on with them, wether it’s a partner assignment or a month long class collaboration I never fail to learn something new. Interestingly, I never fail to be amazed at the variety of our talents and how broad our passion goes. In my class there are some very smart people. Not only in the way of stereotypical “book learning” intelligence but in creativity and problem solving. In Macbeth we probably ran into more problems than any other project. Every day something seemed to go wrong. In the end, I think it brought us closer together and taught us more about ourselves than any other project. The struggle at first seemed chaotic but looking back I feel a sense of Taoism on the whole thing, proud to have gone through it.