Tuesday I went and saw a BYU student reproduction of Shakespeare's play Love's Labor Lost. I've been reading the play with my Shakespeare class and so the original play was fresh in my mind. I soon realized that the BYU version would not be exactly like Shakespeare's version. The most notable difference was the era that the play was set in. The director had adapted the plot of Love's Labor Lost for a World War II era military base as well as a night club next to the base. I was obviously curious to discover the purpose for this change and by looking in the program I quickly discovered that the director had made the change in honor of her grandparents that had met during the war and reminded her of Biron and Rosaline. I thought this was an interesting change and gave the play new meaning for me. The only problem with this is that they tried to retain the Shakespearean language which in a 20th century setting I found to be pretty distracting. I don't think it was just the language however. The director also attempted to create the 1940's feel by including some terminology from what I assumed was war era Britain. This combined with some of the Shakespearean language that she chose to retain caused further confusion.
One thing that I thought was very interesting was that at the beginning of the play the characters left the stage and interacted with the students. I know that in Elizabethan era plays this type of interaction was quite common but nowadays it is not as much and I had never been to a play with that. Unfortunately this did not last. Costard said a prayer and then the play really began and there was no longer the interaction that I thought there would be.
I wanted to say one more thing about the costume and also set design. I thought they were both fantastic. The officer's uniforms were very convincing and the ladies looked excellent. As for the set, I thought it was very well done. By rigging everything up with ropes on stage they were able to make very smooth scene transitions. In addition to this they also made the set very functional for a variety of situations so that they didn't have to rearrange too much as the play went on.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Monday, March 26, 2012
Market Research
So I have been wondering how I could do market research for my idea because other than the short video that Jake and I did explaining our project I don't have anything finished yet. What I decided to do was figure out who our potential audience might be and then go find people in that audience and discuss the idea with them. Since our idea has to do with film and ways to bring Shakespeare and all literature and creative writing into film in a better, more significant way I figured the best person to talk to would be a student from the film program. I remembered that a friend that I roomed with my freshman year was in the program so I sought him out and explained the idea. Here are some of the points that he brought up:
- There is a lack of talented writing in the film program because the students are trained on how to write.
- He agreed that short films are emerging as a dominant sub-genre in film.
- The youtube generation is becoming unsatisfied with the unprofessional quality of their videos and are seeking to improve their editing skills and video quality.
- Since the early 2000's the independent film movement has changed dramatically the way that Hollywood makes movies, resulting in a greater focus on varied shot selection, improved writing, improved acting, and more creative cinematography. (there are exceptions obviously).
- He envisions a day when the film and English programs work hand in hand to create collaborative visual narratives.
Talking it over with him I became excited about the work that Jake and I have already started and I hope that by turning our academic papers into a more creative personal essay and then turning them into a short video could open the door of academic research to a greater audience. By discussing themes in a short video that are usually reserved for a scholarly journal article, we will increase the chances that people outside of English students or teachers will see it and thus give our work greater influence and purpose.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Video proposal
I worked on a video with Jake yesterday. He put the video up on his blog so here is a link: link
Sunday, March 11, 2012
My project proposal
After having read Jake's paper I saw how closely connected our papers were. I also read his project proposal and liked the idea that he presented. The main idea of my paper was looking at how Shakespeare skillfully adapted popular stories from his time and made them popular on the emerging medium of the stage. I then wondered what could be borrowed from Shakespeare's technique to turn popular and/or compelling stories into films. I have a strong interest in film and I feel that it is the best medium now available for storytelling. How ever, I have never seen an academic research paper turned into a creative video. To me the idea is new and interesting and will definitely present some challenges. After doing some brainstorming with Jake we feel that the best approach to turn our papers into a creative video would be to combine the ideas from our research papers (they are already closely connected) and turn it into a single personal essay. From there it would be easier to create a video (probably narrated) presenting our main idea in the most popular and easily accessible medium of film.
Here is recap of our idea:
2 academic essays > 1 personal essay > 1 creative video
Here is recap of our idea:
2 academic essays > 1 personal essay > 1 creative video
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Cortnie's paper response
So I read Cortnie's paper and thought there were some very interesting ideas but I also saw some of the challenges I am facing with turning my paper into a creative project. I have yet to read and respond to Jake's paper (sorry brother) but I will get to it and post a response to him as well. Here is my response to Cortnie:
Hey Cortnie, I read your paper and your ideas about you could turn your academic essay into a piece of fanfiction. I guess I am pretty confused about how we can turn our scholarly essays into something like that (that is kind of what Professor Burton suggested for my essay). The academic papers do not have plot, characters, or setting and the only thing that I can think of would be to make that stuff up and then create dialogue between the characters discussing the main points of my paper. What I really wanted to do was put the claim I made in my thesis into practice (try a modern adaptation of a Shakespeare play into film) which is something that you have already done with you Shakespeare fanfiction page. I am just discussing my problems about the creative essay but if you are having the same problems then we can brainstorm together. The only thing from you actual paper that might need some clarification is your assertion in your conclusion that "With this freedom, amateur authors develop a more pronounced method of interpretation towards Shakespeare, able to perform in-depth character creation (and thus analysis) and adaptation that points towards a scholarly nature. What amateur fanfiction writers are today will eventually become the professional scholars and adapters of tomorrow." How is character creation the same as in-depth character analysis? How does it point towards a scholarly nature? (there is a lot of creativity but the examples you provided usually ignored key aspects of Shakespeare's plays and/or characters). I can see how the amateur fanfiction writers could become prominent adapters in popular mediums such as the novel or film (or are you arguing that fanfiction itself will become the popular medium of tommorrow?) but I do not see how they will make the jump into the academic arena.
Hey Cortnie, I read your paper and your ideas about you could turn your academic essay into a piece of fanfiction. I guess I am pretty confused about how we can turn our scholarly essays into something like that (that is kind of what Professor Burton suggested for my essay). The academic papers do not have plot, characters, or setting and the only thing that I can think of would be to make that stuff up and then create dialogue between the characters discussing the main points of my paper. What I really wanted to do was put the claim I made in my thesis into practice (try a modern adaptation of a Shakespeare play into film) which is something that you have already done with you Shakespeare fanfiction page. I am just discussing my problems about the creative essay but if you are having the same problems then we can brainstorm together. The only thing from you actual paper that might need some clarification is your assertion in your conclusion that "With this freedom, amateur authors develop a more pronounced method of interpretation towards Shakespeare, able to perform in-depth character creation (and thus analysis) and adaptation that points towards a scholarly nature. What amateur fanfiction writers are today will eventually become the professional scholars and adapters of tomorrow." How is character creation the same as in-depth character analysis? How does it point towards a scholarly nature? (there is a lot of creativity but the examples you provided usually ignored key aspects of Shakespeare's plays and/or characters). I can see how the amateur fanfiction writers could become prominent adapters in popular mediums such as the novel or film (or are you arguing that fanfiction itself will become the popular medium of tommorrow?) but I do not see how they will make the jump into the academic arena.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Adapting: Then and Now. (my paper).
One of the hardest things about my paper was trying to fit all of the ideas that I had while researching into 10 pages. Some of the ideas were easily combined but some of them had to be left out of the paper completely. In my interview Dr. Burton asked me to try and think of some ways that I could change or adapt the format of a screen play. The reason for this is that a lot of what I talk about in my paper is Shakespeare's genius in adapting well-known stories for the stage- which was the emerging medium at the time. Now, however, the most popular medium for telling stories is film and so I have been trying to figure out what Shakespeare did so well to adapt his sources for the stage in order to maybe know what could be done in adapting to film. The screenplay is where these ideas would be written down but Dr. Burton also wanted to see what could be done to the screenplay itself to make it more interesting as a medium in and of itself. I have given this a lot of thought and one thing that first occurred to me is that I would need to take advantage of the digital technology of the internet with links to video and pictures maybe just as a way to help whoever is reading the screenplay to catch the vision of the writer. What I concluded about this after some thought is that that might be confusing because the screenplay comes before any footage of any kind is taken and so the writer would have to include links to things that most likely wasn't his work and also wasn't 100% how he imagined it in his head.
Since that approach would not work I tried to think of how the creative process of writing a screenplay could be improved. When talked this over in a group, one friend suggested that it be a group process like through google docs much like how fan fiction is written and produced. Someone would start with an idea and a rough sketch of what a movie would look like and then people could make changes and edit and suggest other modifications. This way it would allow the creativity of a larger community shape the development of the screenplay. I could try doing something like this for my creative project. If I took something Shakespeare wrote and then tried to adapt it but left the adaptation open to others ideas then a lot could possibly be done that way. I realize that this whole post was kind of a stream of consciousness because it was just me brainstorming but if you managed to follow it then I would like your comment or opinion.
Also here is a link to my paper: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Id2bM50ZvZeTKtKvJVEUaiOSK--B18KEWLUaPfWSmmw/edit
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Finally my annotated bibliography
I was able to find some excellent sources that were very helpful in writing my paper.
Annotated Bibliography
Brunvand, Jan Harold. "The Folktale Origin of the Taming of the Shrew." Shakespeare Quarterly 1966: 345-59. This article is very helpful because Jan Harold Brunvand discusses the masterful way that Shakespeare adapted a classic folktale into the Taming of the Shrew. Since my topic is about the sources that Shakespeare used for his plays this seems very applicable and powerful.
Marchalonis, Shirley. "Medieval Symbols and the "Gesta Romanorum"." The Chaucer Review 1974: 311-9. This article is mostly discussing prevalent symbolism during the medieval time period which doesn’t apply but it does give a lot information about the Gesta Romanorum from which Shakespeare borrowed to create his plays.
McKnight, George H. "Germanic Elements in the Story of King Horn." PMLA 15.2 (1900): pp. 221-232. This article shows that there are a lot of wonderful stories in other literary histories that would be interesting to explore.
Muir, Kenneth. "Saxo and Hamlet." Shakespeare Quarterly 35.3 (1984): pp. 370-372. This shows the parallels between Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the account given by Saxo Grammaticus.
Saxo, Grammaticus,d.ca.1204. The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus. Ed. Oliver Elton 1861-1945. and 1850-1904 F Powell (Frederick York). London, D. Nutt, 1894. This shows the original work of Saxo Grammaticus translated into English and also includes commentary about the work by Elton and Powell.
Select Tales from the Gesta Romanorum. Ed. Charles Swan tr. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1887. This gives more detail regarding the stories that were included in the Gesta Romanorum and also more information about the quantity of stories in this work and other works.
Sperber, Hans. "The Conundrums in Saxo's Hamlet Episode." PMLA 64.4 (1949): pp. 864-870. This is another article discussing the differences between the two Hamlet accounts. This was helpful in understanding the changes that Shakespeare made.
Weiss, R. “Bandello's Fiction. an Examination of the Novelle.” The Modern Language Review, Jul., 1957, Vol.52(3), p.443-444, 1957. This was a very informative article from which I got the majority of my information on Matteo Bandello. It helped contrast his work with the later adaptations done by Shakespeare.
Tweethis Statement follow-up
I finally received some excellent feedback from some of my facebook friends. I'm a little late in posting these on my blog but they actually helped me a lot in my idea development for my paper.
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