7 Ages

Act I – Intro/The Infant

Date: 2008
Posted by: SuperMegaActionPlus
Credits: Produced by Andrew Smaje, handmade by SuperMegaActionPlus
Cast: none
Duration: 2.25

This is the first of a series of seven trailers produced for the 2008 Unplugged Shakespeare festival at the Theatre Royal Bath, each dedicated to one of the ’seven ages’ from Jacques’ speech in As You Like It. The video production company behind the series describes its work thus:

Our brief was to create a silent short film for each of the seven ages of man from the ‘All the world’s a stage…’ speech in ‘As You Like It’. Each film had to appeal to its featured age group, and work as both a silent film (to be shown in shop windows around Bath during the festival) and with audio for a showing at our local independent cinema, the Little Theatre Cinema, Bath.

The videos are dynamic amalgams of animation, cut-out images, archive film, performance, sounds and wry references to Shakespeare’s words, giving them a stylish contemporary twist. They are well worth checking in their widescreen through the direct YouTube links below (or see the higher resolution copies, hosted by Vimeo, available on the SuperMegaActionPlus site – they look terrific full screen). The opening video (above) introduces the ’seven ages’ theme before a brief but imaginative take on infancy as the first age. Each ‘age’ in the series is then expressed in a different visual style, from computer games (The Schoolboy) to rap (The Soldier) to total silence (The Pantaloon). Marvellous stuff, which just goes to show how much of an inspiration Shakespeare is to the creative filmmaker. Be sure to catch them all.

Links:
Act I: Intro/The Infant (2.25 mins)
Act II: The Schoolboy (2.48 mins)
Act III: The Lover (6.38 mins)
Act IV: A Soldier (3.35 mins)
Act V: The Justice (2.57 mins)
Act VI: The Pantaloon (6.02 mins)
Act VII: Sans (4.37 mins)
SuperMegaActionPlus site
SuperMegaActionPlus’s Vimeo pages

Stage

Date: 2006
Posted by: RobbieDingo
Credits: Story, animation, props, camera work and original music by Rob Wright, a.k.a. Robbie Dingo
Cast: Second Life animated figures
Duration: 3.27

This unusual and rather haunting animation was made as a Machinima movie (filmmaking within real-time, 3D virtual environments) in Second Life. It takes as its inspiration the ‘All’s the world’s a stage’ speech from As You Like It (Act 2 Scene 7), and calls itself Stage because of its stage-like setting, its reflection on the stages of life, and ‘The Seven Ages of Man’. Apart from the opening quotation and the expressed intentions of the author (whose Second Life identity is ‘Robbie Dingo’) there is little that connects the film with Shakespeare’s work, but inspiration is as important as interpretation to BardBox. A succession of fathers and sons play a circular tune on a piano, the boys growing up to be men and accompanied by their sons in their turn. All the while a toy train circles round and round endlessly. The figures may verge on the creepy, but the film has something.

The was Winner of the Best Film award in the June 2006 Alt-Zoom festival.

Links:
YouTube page
Internet Archive page
My Digital Double, Robbie Dingo’s blog

The Ages of Man

Date: 2007
Posted by: jrsherrard
Credits: Filmed by Jean Sherrard
Cast: 5th and 6th graders
Duration: 1.46

More from the Hillside Student Community (see the American school’s spirited group rendition of “To be or not to be“, posted earlier), as individually and collectively the fifth and sixth graders recite the ‘Seven Ages of Man’ speech from As You Like It, Act 2 Scene 7. A vigorous spirit and attention to meaning is evident in each shot of the children in an appropriate woodland setting.

Links
YouTube page