MACBETH the Documentary Feature

For this project, I worked with my good pal Aracely

One of the greatest questions of Macbeth was, what was the real truth behind it? Before we get to that let me introduce you to Macbeth, by William Shakespeare. In a nutshell, it is about a Lord turned King who made some wrong choices on his way to the top. It is a tragedy, thriller and sometimes a comedy, you egghead! Keeping that in mind and that burning question we asked in the beginning, we decided to do a documentary, a Macbethamentary!

The purpose of the Macbethamentary was so we could answer, what was the real truth behind Macbeth. We also decided that to add a twist of comedy to it, so it could not all be just grey, like most of the settings in the book. What was the end product was a film that embodied both the main characters in the book and the actual life of the people.

We achieved this by interviewing the characters and the real life version of the characters, for example we interviewed Macbeth, the main character of the book and Mac Bethad mac Findlaích, the real King of Scotland that actually lived. To add that twist of comedy we reenacted some scenes that we thought were important and most importantly, funny.

Together, we had all types of ups and downs in our decision making, with decisions that stuck and some the crumbled. Some of the decision we kept that stuck like a leech were the interviews. Which we added to answer the main question and let the audience know what the real and fake version of the character thought about the book and aspects of it. As a team we added the comedic and important scenes so we could lighten the mood. Also, while reading the book we saw comic relief in a serious book, which reminded us about a certain show, the Office! That is why we added both the interviews and the scenes, which made a dynamic duo in our film.

When you watch the film, keep the question in mind and when you finish it, try to answer it based on what was shown. Try to think about how the real characters felt about being portrayed a certain way. Do not though try to be serious throughout the film, because the other main goal was to add a comedic twist you egghead!

Blog post by Aracely

Video editing by Jane

For our creative project Jingyu and I made a poster and playbill acting like Macbeth was being played at a theater. We made it as if William Shakespeare was still performing Macbeth and included the actual location where one of them took place. Our playbill includes a plot summary, actors, and key scenes of the play. Our main inspiration for the poster was Macbeths soliloquy “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow”. We felt that this pretty much summarizes the whole play which is that everything that Macbeth did ended with him being left with nothing. In the poster is displayed different recurring motifs and major themes of the play going through an hourglass representing loss.

We thought is was best to use and hourglass for this poster because people can easily associate it with loss of time or just loss in general, which is what we want people to see. In the little bubbles are displayed the motifs and themes. The eye goes back to Macbeths quote “Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires”. The heart represents a tainted heart and how he is no longer noble or kind. The z’s show Macbeths lack of sleep. The other three are self explanatory showing witches, Dunsinane hill, and being king. The biggest part is where it shows a hand getting stabbed with a dagger. The dagger is supposed to be the one that killed the king. This shows how Macbeth has “stabbed” or hurt himself by killing King Duncan. The background with the splattered blood just builds off of this and show how things for Macbeth got really messy. Overall we just really wanted to show that what Macbeth had done and sacrificed was not worth it in the end through art. By looking at this a whole and not in individual pieces Macbeths losses can be seen on a bigger scale.