Shakespeare Criterion A: Investigation

Shakespeare has been considered to be one of the greatest writers to ever live. However, most of his plays were written in old English, making them quite difficult to understand. As we had just finished reading the play, “Much Ado About Nothing” he have a fair understanding of the play, mostly because our teacher, Mr. Thompson, explains the events going on in our language, so we can understand it. What about the not-so-good-at-english people? Can they understand it? Probably not. This is the purpose of this new unit. We have to make a modern day, news report about the scandalous things going on in the play, in the format of a celebrity gossip, news, and other stories. The characters in the play being the celebrities of course. Today, during English class, we almost finished watching the movie of the play, and I found out that seeing the characters actually act, and perform the characters in the play, it is much easier to understand. So even making the words modern would make it even simpler. We have to make it so anyone, even a person who has never heard of Shakespeare, understands the events happening in this play.

The format of the news report I chose is to do animation, utilizing toys and materials to make a little cartoon, or stop-motion movie, in the style of Robot Chicken, which takes modern events and depicts it into a cartoon. Now Robot Chicken is basically meant for humor, but I will also be adding maybe drama. I watched an episode of the show, and got the basic style of it, which would be short random little skits, transitioned through like TV static.

Good news is that I already have a program for stop motion, called Framebyframe, and it allows me to take a picture of an object, move it a bit, take another picture, and so on and so forth, until I have a moving picture, resulting in a movie. I will have to find the correct dolls, and dress them accordingly to the play, and that will be quite difficult. I will also probably make a set, with little props and realistic materials that will be used in the cartoon. The program used the built in webcam on my computer, so I have to connect a external camera, get a working tripod, and make sure nobody touches it. I think this will be a long and hard process, but it will be fun working with tech like this. I am always interested in working with things I’m interested in.