Note: "Romeo & Juliet: The Remix" is only a tentative title.
So, some of you might remember quite a few months back, my students and I made a modern-day adaptation of The Odyssey, as we were studying that at the time. Well, the next thing we went into was Romeo and Juliet. And, despite the craziness I went through with making that first movie, I decided to do it again.
Now, I've been working on this one for over a month (maybe two) now. The reason it's taking so long could be any number of reasons... students unable to stay after school being the main one. There have been issues with purposeful screw-ups for the sake of creating bloopers, making us lose time. There have been issues with casting and re-casting of characters due to external issues. There have been so many problems during the production of this film that I feel like Terry Gilliam... just not as good.
However, with only about a week and a half of classes left before Finals begin, we really have to rush to finish this. At the point of writing this, we're still missing one major scene from Act 1, a few scenes from Act 2, and we have not filmed anything from Acts 3, 4, and 5. But I did come up with a way to shorten those last 3 Acts into roughly 4 scenes in the context of my story. Will it be rushed? Yes. But I'd rather have a rushed final product than a forever-incomplete one.
On the upside, I learned from all my mistakes of the first film, and I believe my filming techniques have gotten a bit better. The dialogue and editing isn't as choppy... mostly thanks to a mix of filming more than one line at a time (due to making them memorize more than one at a time) and a new editing software (Final Cut Express 4).
All this being said, I wanted to finally show some footage. I thought about putting together a trailer, but I don't think I have enough footage to make a good trailer. Therefore, I uploaded a scene that I feel is pretty dang good... and it's one of the most famous scenes from the story: The Balcony Scene. So... lemme know what you think!
Well, I can certainly see some progress. Quality-wise, on the whole, it's much better. Having them memorize more than one line at a time is HUGE.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I must disagree on the editing; it's super choppy. It's obvious you tried to have them be on their marks when doing multiple takes, but it makes for a weird effect. And that music - wow, corn city. :P It's also a bit hard to hear them sometimes, but still, that aspect is better than last time.
Really? You think the editing is super choppy? Compared to the previous movie, I think it's far ahead. And I'm not sure what you mean by "weird effect."
ReplyDeleteAs for the corniness... yeah, I know. But I want a lot of aspects of this to be really cheesy and corny, because, hey, it's Romeo and Juliet. In fact, in more than one occasion, I told the guy playing Romeo to ham it up and make it really silly.
There are spots, for example right about the 1:03 mark and another at the 2:00 mark, where there's a super quick cut, maybe a quarter of a second. That's what I'm talking about with the weird effect.
ReplyDeleteYeah, he did a good job making it silly. Love the "shh" move he puts on her...