Thursday, April 30, 2020
Cinematic Sonnet Sequence :D
The second I read the prompt for this final assignment, I knew what I wanted to do. Nothing has filled me with more joy and meaning than reading and analyzing Shakespeare's sonnets, so I started thinking about how cool and enjoyable it would be to do short visual episodes of these sonnets that captures their essence and tell their story! Yes, this would be nearly impossible and VERY different than the original, but isn't that part of the nature of a remix? I would either do live action or animation, depending on the sonnet of course (like in The Wall, there is a combo of both to capture the album's vision). I think this would be so cool because so much of the product would rely on an intense analysis, so it really sounds like a dream lol. ALSO, I am always wanting to share the beauty of these sonnets with other people, but it is hard to do an analysis of a sonnet explaining its beauty to someone who is not used to that language or those ideas. So this video series would be like a way of translating the beauty of these sonnets to people who would otherwise not enjoy them. I would try to somehow capture the audible and structural beauty of the sonnet in a visual way, which would be challenging but so exciting and rewarding. They would be kind of trippy but the ultimate goal is to capture the sonnets original 'feel'. I would do all 151 sonnets, and the episodes would probably be between 10-15 minutes I'm guessing. This idea has me so excited I wish I could actually make it come to life in the way that I see it. Anyways, what do ya'll think?
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Would your episodes be scripted or not, like a skit? What visual aids would you use? You can help the sonnets be easier for everyone to understand, but creating something accurate may be difficult. I directly thought of synesthesia. Words can convey meaning as well as images and colors.
ReplyDeleteMaybe sonnets that are more like a conversation between two people could be portrayed as a skit. Visual aids would be like any animations or stuff like that. I think that creating something accurate might be nearly impossible as a lot of it is subjective, but that would be where my influence and my won analysis of the sonnets could come into play
DeleteI think the mix of live action and animation could be really cool. Language would definitely take a lot of effort, but I think you could translate the emotion of the original sonnets into modern language without losing much. Your idea reminds me of a really weird hand-me-down video from my childhood. The tape had several short retellings of Mark Twain stories, but took some pretty interesting visual turns. I was able to find an example (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpaRouocBes). This video uses kids in a time machine (?) as a framing device to keep the vignettes cohesive. Would you plan on keeping sonnets separate, or try to create a singular universe for them?
ReplyDeleteI'm chucking at the idea of Sonnet 130 - that could be hilarious. Don't scholars speculate that many of the sonnets were written for a male lover? That aspect is something that could add some alternative perspectives and experiences to the interpretations as well. I agree that using both live action and animation would be pretty neat - the media would reflect the "remixing" of the sonnets.
ReplyDeleteThis may be counterintuitive because Shakespeare's sonnets are so grounded in the power of language...but what if these visual portrayals didn't have any dialogue? Kind of like Pixar shorts. It would really force the audience to catch the feeling and essence of the sonnet through the music and visual components, giving them zero room to get confused in the language. And then, as the video is in its last few minutes, a narrator reads the original sonnet. It could be a cool experiment to see if audiences are more receptive to the language after already depicting for them the meaning and intended effect without forces their minds to immediately shift between modern language to Shakespearean.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of doing a film festival sort of like (don't hate me) Star Wars Uncut! You could put out a call and get people to do different renditions of the sonnets and let people vote on which ones would make it into the final sequence. That way YOU don't have to come up with all of the ideas yourself, but you could claim a sonnet or two that is really important to you for yourself. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI really like this idea-- and I think the best part is that your concept would bring the sonnets into pop culture so more people could appreciate them. With that being said, you could even expand this project to include other works of literature that often get looked over. Finally, I think this project will need a pretty amazing sound track, so maybe the collaboration would even be with artists in the music industry to create a song for each or a grouping of the sonnets.
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