Hello readers, and welcome back to the blog. Today’s post is about the recent project we’ve finished in Humanities. This project is all about Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare. The driving question in this project is: “How has William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet remained relevant to contemporary storytelling? Although the language is very different today, you still see similar variations of his storytelling. For example, you see many variations of the infamous balcony scene, and the final death scene. The final product for this project was to recreate a scene from the play with modern aspects…..

We started off the project by reading scenes from the original play. In the process of that, we explored the language, and what it really meant. There was many words that meant no sense to me, and when I saw their definition, it really surprised me. Words such as, “hither”, and “Thither”, seemed pretty out there to me. Also, we did a “Elizabethan roast” activity where we combined different terms to create the perfect roast!

Here’s a few of my burns…

“You fawning, crook-pated, bugbear!”

“You saucy, dizzy eyed, giglet!”

As we read through the story, I discovered more about the story as a whole, and also the language used. It also gave me an opportunity to see which scenes I liked beast, as the final product was to recreate a scene of our choice.

For Keystone 1, we were tasked with creating a themebook, that explained each scene, and included evidence from a adaptation. To complete this, we watched “Gnomeo and Juliet”, and “warm bodies”, in class. Both films are adapted from the play, and both follow similar storylines, other than the fact that one is a zombie movie!

After completing keystone 1, we were put into our movie groups. My group was Alicia, Fraser, and Makenna, and we chose to recreate the “balcony scene”. Right as we were put into groups, we had to create our “film pitch”. We chose to center our scene around two teens, Rowan and Jessica, who fall in love through Snapchat. After finalizing our plans, it was time to put them into action.

My role in our scene was Rowan, the main character, and it was quite the experience. There was few “cringe” scenes in there, that took a lot to film. But you can judge for yourself: Rowan and Jessica, a Romeo and Juliet recreation..

The filming process was fun, as I got to have fun with my friends and create good work. The best part to me, was the credits scene where Zach and I broke out into song. It was an off script moment, where we were just screwing around, and Fraser thought it’d be cool to put in.

In summation, this project was a blast to do with Mr. Harris. We learned about old language, and how it’s evolved over time. And, how one story has been incorporated in hundreds of movies and films. I liked how we had little to no limitations, and could really release our creativity into our scene.

Thanks for reading!