To Be or Not To Be

Date: 2007
Posted by: fenian47ronin
Cast: Voice by Tamo Noonan
Credits: Produced by Tamo Noonan
Duration: 2.12

Tamo Noona aka fenian47ronin describes himself “writer–film critic, journalist, novelist”. As far as the world of online video is concerned, he’s a producer of reveries into the modern state of things, often laced with passages of Shakespeare. His videos bring together portentous imagery heavily treated with Photoshop and Affect Effects, with unclear music and his distorted voice laid over the top. When it works well, as it rather does here, the effect is kind of a stream-of-visual-consciousness with jazz overtones. The Hamlet soliloquy is spoken with heavy echo, with images of cities, skeletons, statues, basketball players, armed forces, the Titanic, and Noonan himself, and a jazzry drumbeat muttering underneath.

To Be or Not to Be is part four of a five-part video series he calls Empire not Liberty as describes as

five “pieces of work” made in response to the war in Iraq and how rampant consumerism began matching the insane military spending…

So now you know. The other five parts are Othello11tamo, Rogue & Peasant Slave, Drop ’till ya Shop!, and Piece of Work. They’re not going to stop war or consumerism (especially if so few people have actually viewed them so far), but they do show the visual power of Shakespeare’s words, whether heard or half-heard, and the efficacy of using distorted images to portray a world gone wrong.

Rogue & Peasant Slave

Links:
YouTube page
fenian47ronin YouTube Channel
fenian47ronin website

Caliban

Date: 2011
Posted by: Prospero
Cast: Prospero (himself), Roxana (Ariel)
Credits: Prospero, camera, editing, piano; music – Penderecki, String Quartet no. 2; Arvo Pärt , Magnificat
Duration: 4.08

A strange experimental work by a photographer (it appears) hiding under the name Prospero. None of his other video work indicates any Shakespearean interest, but presumably the choice of name led to some compulsion or other and to this work, named Caliban. It consists of a collection of varied, seemingly unconnected shots (though some refer to The Tempest, including sea, footprints on a beach, and maybe one of Prospero’s books) overlaid by a modern language dialogue between Prospero and Ariel, in which the fear is not of Caliban learning the language of words but rather that of images (he has been taking pictures on his cellphone, we learn). The weakness of the video is that it doesn’t take this concept much further than that, so that it serves as something for personal introspection rather than something to be shared with anyone else. But, as is the way with online video, we share these things anyay. Make of it what you will.

Links:
Vimeo page
Serendipitious Garden (Prospero’s blog)

Juliet must die

Date: 2009
Posted by: P.M.
Cast: P.M. (presumably)
Credits: Produced in association with the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. Adaption by P.M. Voice by András Cséfalvay. Photography by Matúš Bence, Martina Slováková. Editing by Peter Kotrha. Grip, Vladimir Biskupský. Music, Samuel Barber ‘Adagio for Strings’, Richard Wagner ‘Liebestod’
Duration: 4.52

After a period of unenforced silence, BardBox returns with a new look but the same purpose: to locate, document and present new forms of Shakspearean production that are being produced as online videos. This distinctive reverie inspired by Romeo and Juliet is a fine example of the genre, helped by having a great title (echoing the feature film Romeo Must Die). This is a highly personalised take on Shakespeare’s heroine, with whom the filmmaker clearly feels a strong affinity. She calls the film “a short self- portrait based on the last lines of Romeo’s character” (actually a mixture of lines spoken by Romeo in Act 1, “O brawling love! O loving hate!”, and his last words, ending “I still will stay with thee/ And never from this palace of dim night / Depart again: here, here will I remain”). It is Romeo’s word we hear, quietly spoken, while we see a woman lost in thought in some woods, caught between memories and intimations of death. The filmmaker describes her interpretation as

… a melancholic story of struggle set in the dully dreamscape that witnesses unabled emotional states of longing and despair. At given time a rush towards reconciliation to death reveals a brief, fleeting moment of connection between ‘star-crossed’ lovers until the dream to dwell is shattered.

Starting point of self-stageing [sic] fiction is using the concept of the cinematic fundamental apparatus based on intensive, emotional and cognitive relationship of the spectator with the spectacular female body coded as “to- be- look- at- ness”.

Interpret that how you will, but what we seem to get is Juliet’s predicament as a jumping of point for personal reflection rather than any precise correlative to Shakespeare’s character, with the images ultimately defying textual intepretation because they are intended to linger in the mind as images. The video is beautifully shot, and the production Slovakian in original, with Romeo’s words appearing as Slovak subtitles, as well as being spoken in English (“O brawling love! O loving hate!). As with the many Ophelia videos and photo-montages to be found, this is evidence of the deep identification with Shakespeare’s doomed heroines that is finding heartfelt expression in the online world.

Links:
Vimeo page

Impressionist Does Shakespeare in Celebrity Voices

Date: 2011
Posted by: jimmeskimen
Cast: Jim Meskimen
Credits: None given
Duration: 3.46

A tour de force. American impressionist Jim Meskimen recites Clarence’s speech from Richard III, “O, I have passed a miserable night …” in the manner of assorted celebrities. Helpfully, for those of us not familiar with some of the American famous, or just those looking at this video a few years from now who may wonder who on earth these once celebrated people were, the names of those he is impersonating are given throughout. In order, they are Ricky Gervais, Ron Howard, Richard Burton, Jimmy Stewart, George W. Bush, William Shatner, Arnold Schwarznegger, Woody Allen (surely a natural for playing Clarence), Boris Karloff, George Clooney, Tom Brokaw, Harvey Keitel, Casey Kasem, Garrison Keillor, Craig Ferguson, Droppy Dog, Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro, Johnny Carson, Paul Giamatti, Christopher Walken, Simon Cowell, Jack Nicholson and Barack Obama. And all this to advertise his stage show.

Links:
Applied Silliness (Meskimen’s personal site)
YouTube page

“Will”

Date: 2011
Posted by: Will Goss
Cast: Will Goss
Credits: Directed by Will Goss, painting by Dexter Dalwood, music by Nirvana
Duration: 2.32

This is a striking video interpretation of Shakespeare’s sonnet no. 135, “Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will” i.e. the one with all the ‘will’ puns. The punning is all the more since the filmmaker is another Will, Will Goss, who describes himself as “an experimental videomaker, musician, and writer”, and a graudate student at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The video places Will as he recites the sonnet within a series of gaudy paintings of interiors, with a cut-out quality that echoes the collage work of Richard Hamilton. Possibly Shakespeare’s words become a little lost in the visual detail, but this is nevertheless witty, confident and original, correctly bending Shakespeare to the filmmaker’s own design – his will, in fact.

Links:
Vimeo page
Will Goss’ personal website

The Tempest Animation

Date: 2010
Posted by: Jamie McDine
Cast:(voices) Denice Hicks (Ariel/sailor), Amanda Card McCoy (Miranda/sailor), Joseph Robinson (Boatswain/Ferdinand/Stephano), Robert Marigza (Antonio/Alonso/Caliban), Brian Russell (Gonzalo/Prospero/Trinculo)
Credits: Filmed by Jamie McDine; Bill Crosby, sound engineer
Duration: 5.39

It is Shakespeare’s birthday, and let’s celebrate this august event by posting one of the most inventive Shakespeare videos this site has come across, certainly as far as school projects are concerned. It was made Year 7 students at Matravers School in Westbury, Wiltshire UK, with some help from artist in residence Jamie McDine. Its subject is The Tempest, and it looks like no other Shakespeare video you are likely to have seen.

Perhaps inspired by Tom Phillips’ A Humument (the pages of a book individually remade as works of art), McDine has taken the page of The Tempest and treated them with smears and blotches, then overlaid this with drawings produced by the children inspired by scenes from the play. The video takes us through the pages as the narrative progresses, with voices reading out snatches from the play (and not necessarily the usual familiar quotations). The jerkiness of the pseudo-animation can be a little wearing, but what impresses is the sense of invention and discovery, which draws you into thinking about the play afresh. And that is what the best of these online videos do – like the best stage productions, and the best Shakespeare films, they make the play new again. It doesn’t matter if it’s the ‘full’ play, an extract or a condensation, as here. What matters is the sense of discovery, of a new world.

“Is this the best school film ever made?” asks the filmmaker on the accompanying notes. Perhaps not quite (the Hillside Student Community’s interpretation of Hamlet‘s ‘To be or not to be’ still feels like the best to me), but it is well worth experiencing.

The post is a contribution to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust’s Happy Birthday Shakespeare project. Do follow the link and find posts from other bloggers taking part.

Links:
Vimeo page
Happy Birthday Shakespeare site

Cardenio trailer

Date: 2011
Posted by: theRSC
Cast: Oliver Rix (Cardenio)
Credits: Not given (but from theatre production directed by Gregory Doran)
Duration: 0.56

We haven’t included many theatre trailers here on BardBox, but the chance to include something on Shakespeare’s lost play Cardenio is not one to miss. Of course, Cardenio remains very much lost, but a play by Lewis Theobald said (without any clear evidence to back this up) to have been based on the the lost manuscript, The Double Falsehood; Or, The Distrest Lovers, was produced in 1727 and was optimistically included in the Arden Shakspeare in 2010. Now this has been adapted by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company and billed as Cardenio for audiences in 2011. It’s more marketing than theatrical archaeology, one may think, but of course we will want to see for ourselves rather than have the pleasure withheld from us.

The RSC has issued this teaser trailer, and it is fascinating. Just a minute long, it uses the visual (and the aural) to make up for the limitations for the verbal. The words are spoken as being filled with Shakespearean insight and moment, which they rather lack on the printed page. But it is the sounds of the words that matters, not their import. They sound like Shakespeare is supposed to sound, blended as they are with noises that conjure up an imminent storm with background effects denoting disturbance. While all of this is going on our attention is focussed on the sight of Cardenio oppressed by thought, turning to the camera for just a second, to give a look full of reproachfulness and dread, before the title of the play comes up. What comes next? You’ll have to go and see. Cardenio may be a double falsehood in itself, but it can be made to look and sound like Shakespeare, with the help of the camera. It feeds on our expectations. It makes us want to look deeper, brief as the trailer may be. It’s the perfect tease.

Gregory Doran’s production of Cardenio runs at the Swan Theatre, Stratford from 14 April – 6 October 2011.

Links:
Gregory Doran’s Cardenio blog
RSC page on Cardenio
YouTube page

Klingon Hamlet: taH pagh taHbe’

Date: 2009
Posted by: klingonhamlet
Cast: Brian Rivera (Hamlet)
Credits: Cinematographer, assistant editor and director, Amir Sharafeh; capture editor and sound, Suzanne Tyler; costume, make-up designer and editor, Brian Rivera. A Still Picture Production.
Duration: 3.25

Firstly, I must admit to a strong aversion to all things to do with Star Trek and indeed to any cultish science fiction. Secondly, if anything were to make me change my mind and see virtue in what on most occasions is mere childishness, then it would be a sincere and effective rendition of the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy in Klingon. And here one is.

Claiming to have been coached by Jane Lapotaire, no less, Brian Rivera gives an intense and expressive rendition of Hamlet’s speech in pure Klingon (the language of the villainous race of beings in Star Trek which has been constructed by addicts of the television series and films). As invented languages go, it is convincing and rich in tone, while for those of us whose feet remain on planet Earth, there words are given in English subtitles. And who would have thought there would have been a Klingon word for ‘contumely’?

The location is a little strange: a road bridge at night, with a tree overhanging the speaker (with full Klingon make-up), one of whose branches hangs distractingly over his face. Such minor details aside, this is something to watch with interest, then to listen to alone with increased interest. Truly, as Gorkon says (in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, naturally), “You have not experienced Shakespeare until you have read him in the original Klingon”.

Links:
YouTube page
Hamlet in Klingon (the text, that is)
Klingon Hamlet MySpace

Hamlet Rap

Date: 2007
Posted by: BloodOctopus
Cast: not given
Credits: Music by Mathew Letersky
Duration: 1.55

Another year, another Hamlet rap, but this is one of the better ones to be found on YouTube. It’s a Canadian student rapping the ‘to be or not to be’ soliloquy for his English class. It’s captured handheld from a mid-classroom viewpoint in the plainest of styles, but what makes the video is the performer’s conviction and astute use of emphasis (note the punch of ‘give us pause’ followed by ‘respect’). This is Hamlet as a rap because it was meant to be rapped, not because it might be funny to do so.

Links:
YouTube page

Shakespeare (“Shayla” by Blondie)

Date: 2010
Posted by: historyteachers
Cast: Not given
Credits: Not given
Duration: 3.18

History for Music Lovers is a YouTube channel put together by a couple of history teachers from Honolulu with the intention of making the teaching of history of fun. They take historical events and figures, and put them to re-worded versions of pop songs with appropriate vidoe to match. Goodness knows how it is resourced, but the results are great fun indeed: Leonardo Da Vinci and the Beatles’ ‘Dear Prudence’, Roman history told to ‘Mambo no. 5′, the French Revolution to Lady Gaga’s ‘Bad Romance’, Elizabeth I to The Zombies’ ‘She’s Not There’, and – sure enough – William Shakespeare sung to a version of Blondie’s ‘Shayla’. It’s not one of the best of the series, and it doesn’t tell prospective students much beyond the titles of plays, but what the heck?

Also in the series there’s Marianne Faithful’s version of ‘As Tears Go By’, rewritten to tell the story of the Battle of Agincourt, with scenes from Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V:

Links:
YouTube page