Macbeth Movie Vs Play

I have never intentionally deleted anything that I have written due to the belief that everything is, or once was, important. All work can be analyzed for strengths to keep practicing or reflected on as an example of what not to do. One of the most memorable pieces of writing that I have ever done, is one of the few that I was not able to save. However, its impact on me reached far beyond what I thought a school project would be capable of. After reading Shakespeare’s Macbeth, my sophomore English teacher, Mrs. Fritsch, tasked us with creating a movie production based on the play. The language had to remain the same, but we could set our film during any era we wanted and cast whoever we thought would fit our perspective on the characters …show more content…
In between class discussion, Mrs. Fritsch showed us different scenes from various film adaptations that she thought were successful in translating some aspects of the play onto the screen. Many of the productions retained the original setting and era, while others updated it to a modern or futuristic time. Despite a few sharing the same setting and location, each film felt vastly different due to the tone it set, the character portrayals and how it handled the supernatural elements of the story. However, within every adaptation, it was apparent that it was derived from Shakespeare. Viewing and discussing the different elements in each film, contextualized the freedom I had in this assignment. Everything was open to my interpretation. It was possible to remain respectful to the source material while still implementing a few unique qualities. All lines could imply completely different moods and information depending on how the scene was treated. Provided the basic requirements were met there was no incorrect way to do this …show more content…
The original dialogue could not be altered in any way. At first, I thought that preserving the language would be the most difficult constraint to follow due to slang from the eighties having a stark contrast to Shakespearean English. For some time, I considered setting it in eleventh-century Scotland as it was intended to be, but that was not the aesthetic I preferred, nor would it capture the blend of morbid comedy and everyday drama I wanted present. Though the juxtaposition between the time period and dialect was jarring, it added a surreal quality to my adaptation. For instance, the scene where Lady Macbeth recited Macbeth’s letter word for word worked well in my production when I changed the letter to a voicemail left on an answering machine. Having her voice go from speaking in time with his to completely overtaking it with emotion and excitement worked well to build tension for her iconic monologue. Instead, I found that the most difficult constraint to work with was picking scenes from each Act of the play. There were many scenes that I enjoyed such as the ones including the witches, but overall, I felt that they did not enhance the themes that I stated were important to the production. Though I was intrigued by the concept of including supernatural elements, it did not suit the grounded story