Date: 2004 Posted by:soonest2turn Credits: Not given Cast: Not given Duration: 2.58
School project Shakespeare raps are scattered all over YouTube, and most are lame and annoying. This Grade 12 English project video from Canada stands out from the crowd by some realistic venom amid the goofy performance, and its strong language (a broadminded English teacher was involved, clearly). The lyrics show a strong engagement with the play, more than vindicating the exercise:
Straight Outta Denmark a crazy m———r named Hamlet
I’m a bad ass hero that’s tragic
Thoughts are pending, time’s not mending
Tragic means I die in the ending.
The full text is given on the YouTube page. Just a shame about the half-hearted lip-synching.
Date: 2007 Posted by:lpdisney Credits: Storyboard and animation by Liron Peer, background colouring by Shaul Dadon Cast: Shaul Dadon (Ophelia), Liron Peer (Hamlet) Duration: 0.48
An animation of Act 3 Scene 2 of Hamlet (‘Lady, shall I lie in your lap?’), made by a student in the third year of Animation Studies at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design. The animation is assured but conventional; the novelty comes in that the dialogue is in Hebrew (without subtitles). Title and credits are bi-lingual.
Date: 2005 Posted by: objredline Credits: Directed and edited by Long Lin and David Wu Cast: Annie Brown, Long Lin, David Wu Duration: 7.04
A curious cross-cultural mix, a karaoke Shakespeare of sorts. It is a mixture of music video and modern language version of Love’s Labour’s Lost, inspired by the pop song ‘Qing Fei De Yi’ by Taiwanese singer/songwriter Harlem Yu. The cast is Chinese-American, and the song which is performed for most of the video is their own rough (and painfully flat) rendition of Harlem Yu’s original. We are told that play and song were so similar in theme that it seemed logical to blend the two together. Produced as a high school literature project from Grindle Gifted Language Arts, Shakespeare Unit, 6th period.
Date: 2005 Posted by: ElMatadore88 Credits: Created by Edward Cast: Andrew Dexter, Casey Inouye, Edward Fan, Maki Hattori, Nolan Chung
Duration: 10.43
Posted on 18 December 2005, this must be one of the earliest original Shakespeare titles on YouTube. It’s certainly not a conventional production. Describing itself as ‘all the confusing themes of Shakespeare packed into one!’ the video is tagged with such terms as ‘blood’, ‘honor’, ‘ghosts’, ‘romance’ and ‘love’. It starts with Shakespeare’s name written out in what look like cushions, with a piano is played and voices mutter in the background. The images that follow include a church, a paper boat in water having rocks dropped on it (and then the film reversed), birds by a pond, schoolroom actors (mostly Chinese-American) with masks grimacing at the camera, a boy giving birth to a rock, a young woman with a moustache (‘this is what’ll you learn in Shakespeare’), an invisible man, ghostly figures (some of whom dance in the style of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’), blood, fighting, and snatches through out of Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and the sonnets. With snatches of music, messages written on hands, and voices played backgrounds, this is a puzzle, if not quite a paradox. To a degree, it’s just a silly student jape, but it’s a creative jape for all that.
Date: 2006 Posted by:johnrobinhartel Credits: Directed and photographed by John Robin Hartel, written by Trevor Emmett and Kyle Farrell, edited by John Robin Hartel and Kyle Farrell, produced by Kyle Farrell and Trevor Emmett, for the Filme Company Cast: Camron Crooks (Ulysses), Trevor Emmett (Thersites), James Warmles (Paris), Brandon Smith (himself), Rich Ward (Troilus), Adi Beged-Dov (Cressida), Travis (Pandera), Kyle Farrell (Diomedes), Jamen Lee (Hector), Mike Johnson (Achilles), The Clerk (The Clerk) Duration: 5.55
This is a truly odd interpretation of of Shakespeare’s oddest play. Set among American small town slacker youth, it start with two young men in a car, one silent, the other smoking heavily while complaining of the damage cigarette smoke can do to children. They stop outside a store where two more young men are standing. The man smoking gets out of the car and berates the two for smoking themselves (“babykillers”). A young man and woman come out of the store as he goes in. The couple speak lovingly to each other, then she leave him to get in a car, where a young man takes some money from her. Another man joins them in the car, and she pats him on the leg, while the man she has left looks on ruefully. Elsewhere a man is trying to read a map, and another one offers to help him. The latter then talks to one of the men standing outside the store, whom he criticises for upsetting their mother. A thief runs out of the store and the man who helped the map-reader gives chase. He stops the thief and berates him, only to be struck down by the thief when he turns his back.
What has all this to do with Troilus and Cressida? The filmmaker has this to say on the YouTube comments:
Trevor explained the plot of the play to me, then we worked out a script in about an hour. When he handed it in though (it was a final for his Shakespeare class, I believe) everyone in the class was quickly pointing out which characters in the film represented which characters in the play, so it worked for its purpose.
Since there is no way anyone (outside of that English class, perhaps) would recognise this drama as being derived from Shakespeare’s play without prompting, our only clues are the cast list, which we are informed shows the players in order of appearance. So, the two men in the car are Ulysses and Thersites, with Ulysses the one with the smoking obsession. The two outside the store are Paris (in a green shirt) and the unquestionably unShakespearean Brandon Smith. The couple who come out of the store are Troilus and Cressida. The man in the car is Pandera (i.e. Pandarus), and they are joined in the car by Diomedes. The map reader is probably unidentified, as it must be Hector who helps him and Achilles whom Hector chases and who then turns on him at the end. Obvious, really.
Is it any good? That depends on what you are looking for. Viewed without prior knowledge of intentions, it’s a rough, puzzling short film that doesn’t go anywhere. But the puzzle’s the thing. It’s being able – or not being able – to see Shakespeare’s own odd work encoded in the film’s off-hand conceit that challenges the viewer and makes us look again. So, is Thersites the passenger?
Date: 2007 Posted by:smathew3344 Credits: Filmed by Stephen Mathew Cast: Not named Duration: 10.52
Just how many American high schools are out there where the English teacher has set the class the task of producing a video parody of the Shakespeare play they are studying using some popular culture reference or other? From the evidence of YouTube, there are hundreds. Most are wearisome and would seem to have little instructional value; a handful amuse or intrigue; just one or two are exceptional. The Office Othello comes under the intriguing category – a moderately skilful but ultimately quite peculiar attempt to marry the style of the television series The Office to Shakespeare’s play. The effort is praiseworthy for the accuracy of some of the parody, and for not slavishly following the plot line of the play. But the light tone sits uneasily with jealousy and having Pam (the Desdemona figure) have her throat cut with a pair of office scissors. So, more marks for inspiration than execution.
The same filmmaker has also made Crouching Tiger, Hidden Macbeth, a juvenile romp redeemed somewhat by its title and the comic use of dubbing.
Date: 2007 Posted by:JesseMeza07 Credits: Written by Jesse Meza, animated by Jesse Meza and Nick Sampson, artwork by Nick Sampson Cast: Jesse Meza (voices) Duration: 3.50
Genuinely funny cut-down Flash animated version of Hamlet, apparently produced as a school project, though at times it looks too professional. A little more attention to the final scenes, where the filmmakers appear to have become a bit bored with their subject, would have turned it into a good film. The video skims through the ghost’s first appearace (“Casper? Is that you?”), ‘to be or not to be’, Hamlet’s questionable sexuality, the ghost telling Hamlet that he is his father (“Wow, you can recite Star Wars quotes”), a play performed by sock puppets entitled “How a King killed his brother and married his wife”, a bloodbath of revenge in which everyone dies, and Fortinbras becomes king (“Pretty dull, right?”). The result is not just a spoof of the familiar, but highlights those aspects of the play that might seem ridiculous, dull or simply not credible to a high school audience. It puts up to ridicule those absurdities all too evident to the indifferent.
Date: 2007 Posted by:sniglfritz Credits: Produced and edited by Nessa. Written by Nessa and Charlotte. Filmed by Nessa, Hannah and Charlotte. Music credits given at the end of the video. A Don’t Put This on Camera Production Cast: Hannah (Hortensio, Bianca, Grumia), Nessa (Gremio, Lucentio), Charlotte (Petruchio’s Mother, Lucentio’s Playmate, Baptista) Duration: 8.56 (the final 90 seconds are music only)
Lively parody of The Taming of the Shrew done as a Canadian school project, and presented in the style of a ‘Hollywood True Story’ TV programme. It intercuts rather well between its enthusiastic all-female cast (three of them, playing multiple roles) and stills of Kate (Angela Jolie) and Petruchio (Brad Pitt) – such wise choices – telling an everyday story of celebrity life.
Date: 2008 Posted by:yuetuo Credits: Animated by Yue Tuo Duration: 6.46
Exquisite six-minute interpretation of Hamlet, animated by Yue Tuo, a Chinese student at Maryland Institute College of Art. The simply animated but highly-stylised look is taken from the Chinese tradition of shadow puppets, and owes something to the silhouette films of Lotte Reininger. The ‘plot’ could probably not be followed by anyone without a knowledge of the play, but the striking title designs (“An unexpected DEATH of a FATHER”) break down the action into formalised tableaux, or ‘boxes’.
From the moment of birth, we are given a box prepared only for us. This box is called “character.” From this gift, we develop “personality.” It is with us every single minute of our entire life. We build a methodology or “pattern of behavior”; therefore, we live our lives inside an invisible maze. This interactive piece invites people from any culture to uncover the basic social-psychological tasks that people confront during their lives; issues of dependence and independence, selfishness and sacrifice, birth and death. In the piece she applies psychological analysis of personality characteristics to explore as well as experiment with a unique method for apprehending and dealing with daily occurrences. The piece aims to archive an interaction with viewers and unable them to apprehend the symbolic meaning from animated characters’ reactions based on people’s reactions toward various situations. She applies Hamlet as an armature for exploring universal experiences.
There are many Star War spoofs of Shakespeare out there. This is one of the better ones – a well-made enactment of the duel between Hamlet (with beard) and Laertes, with light sabres. Produced as a project for Damascus High School in 2003. Just a shame about the lame humour at the end.
Posted by bardbox 
Posted by bardbox 
Posted by bardbox 