Date: 2009 Posted by:AMPPP-lifier Cast: Patrick Han, Pearlyn Lii, Melissa Ma, Peter Yang, and Andrew Yeh Credits: Not given Duration: 0.59
Not much information is given on this schools project billed as being “Othello Trailer for Cordero’s Sophomore English Honors Class. Period 4″. Just before he is executed, Iago looks back on his life in flashbacks, to the accompaniment of melodramatic music. There is no dialogue, only messages on computer screens and print-outs and the four players shown at crisis point, before the video ends with the execution. As a burst of creative energy, it is not at all unimpressive.
Date: 2007 Posted by:pulsetv.ir Credits: Created by Alireza Alborzi Cast: The Simpsons Duration: 1.46
One doesn’t expect to find Shakespeare parodies on an Iranian web TV channel, but that’s where this video resides (specifically on Pulsetv.ir, which is a channel on Blip.tv). It’s a mash-up of scenes from assorted episodes of The Simpsons to produce the world’s favourite American family’s interpretation of Othello. Homer is Othello, Marge is Desdemona, Sideshow Bob is Iago – it all just falls into place. The humour is doubled by the portentous trailer commentary, cheekily lifted from the trailer for Oliver Parker’s feature film Othello (as are the closing titles). Silly stuff, but done well.
Date: 2009 Posted by:John Carson McCarthy Credits: Created by John McCarthy Cast: None Duration: 0.54
A striking animated intepretation of Othello, without characters or any action from the play. Instead, and using the Maya and After Effects animation programmes, the filmmaker illustrates Othello’s turmoil and self-destruction through images of a house collapsing and turning into a prison. A few quotations appear as signposts. Brief and rudimentary as it is, this is a startlingly imaginative piece of work.
Date: 2008 Posted by:ishakespeare Credits: Directed by William Mann Cast: William Mann (Othello), Christopher Lynch (Iago) Duration: 3.18
More intensity from the Chamber Shakespeare Company, or ishakespeare (see previous post on the Company’s Hamlet), this time with two video extracts from its stage production of Othello. In othello’s perspective we experience a flat-toned Iago tormenting Othello, who is holding the camera. So we witness Othello’s fevered despair by seeing it literally from his point of view. While the kneeling Iago is all stillness, Othello ranges about all over the place, the mobile camera incoherently taking in floor, ceiling, lights, darkness, Iago. The result is barely audible, and certainly not all that intelligible as the recording of a stage performance, but it works well in the form of an experimental video, where the world that this Othello sees – that is, the theatre in which he is performing – turns into a bewildering mélange of colours, shapes and indistinct sounds as his own world collapses about him.
Date: 2008 Posted by:ishakespeare Credits: Directed by William Mann Cast: William Mann (Othello), Christopher Lynch (Iago) Duration: 3.55
The video’s companion piece is iago’s perspective. Now we see the same action from Iago’s point of view (clearly not filmed at the same time, since Othello carries no camera). From Iago’s eyes we look down on Othello writhing upon the ground. Grainy, out of focus for much of the time, with Iago’s drab tones off-camera, the result is arguably not Iago’s perspective at all but rather another way of looking at Othello’s inner anguish. It is more conventional than the first video, but together the two pieces raise all sorts of interesting questions on how theatre may be filmed, what it means to film theatre, and how the camera – one way or another – is always a performer. In the final ’shot’ (the whole video, as with the first, is one take), Iago pans round to film himself in a mirror and tells us, “I hate the Moor”.
Date: 2006 Posted by:BuddhaRhubarb Credits: Created by Joe Boyce Burgess, for Blind Hill Pictures Cast: Emil Jannings (Othello), Ica von Lenkeffy (Desdemona) Duration: 1.26
A strange, borderline disturbing, mashup of the smothering scene Dimitri Buchowetzki’s 1922 silent film Othello with loops of music from an unnamed ‘garage band’ and sounds from the horror film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What is it meant to signify? Perhaps it is best not to think about that too deeply. Its creator, Joe Boyce Burgess, has created other such bizarre juxtapositions of film and alien sound, though only this one with a Shakespearean touch.
Date: 2006 Posted by:bhilldesign Credits: Film art direction, creation, music composition, recording, and film editing by Brandon R. Hill, production assistance by NNU Mass Communications Department Cast: Kirstin Irwin (Desdemona) Duration: 4.53
Othello seen from Desdemona’s point of view and then put into pop video form. Apart from from a few reverse-view shots which include Othello, we see only Desdemona, who sings, plays piano, looks sorrowful, and gets smothered. Soft focus photography, strawberries and white sheets abound. The song is the filmmaker’s own.
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:clanxmac Credits: Created by clanxmac (Liz), music ‘Nineveh’ by E.S. Posthumous. A Low Flying Kiwi Production Cast: Christian Bale (Othello), Emily Watson (Desdemona), Sean Bean (Iago), Angus MacFayden (Brabanzio), Tyne Diggs (Cassio), Sean Pertwee (The Duke of Venice) Duration: 5.29
This is really quite inspired. Its creator has taken footage from the 2002 film Equilibrium, starring Christian Bale, Emily Watson and Sean Bean, and recut it as though it were a trailer for an Othello. The original film is a science fiction drama, set in a future world controlled by a Fascistic regime which suppresses the emotions and the arts. Equilibrium has no connection with Othello (it owes rather more to Orwell), but by concentrating on the three characters, with some clever choice of shots, and with a good deal of the power of suggestion making our minds doing the rest of the work for her, the filmmaker does indeed create something like Othello (even if Othello himself is not black). It goes on a bit long, and the mispelling of ‘despair’ is unfortunate, but as a kind of mashup in reverse, this is a creative piece of work.
(The video opens with lines from W.B. Yeats’ “He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven” – Yeats’ poetry is a feature of the film Equilibrium).
Date: 2008 Posted by:CoreyAllenX Credits: Created by Corey Allen Cast: Corey Allen Duration: 8.28
YouTube is awash with audition pieces from hopeful actors showing off their Shakespearean party pieces. This selection of pieces from 2008 has been put together by New York actor Corey Allen, and features selections from Titus Andronicus, Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (plus others, non-Shakespearean), filmed in a cafe complete with background noises. What is compelling about such pieces is not so much the quality or otherwise of the acting, but of the intensity and intimacy of performances delivered in close-up.
Date: 2006 Posted by:sykesmarcus Credits: Filmed by Marcus Sykes Cast: Marcus Sykes (Othello) Duration: 1.02
Marcus Sykes delivers Othello’s impassioned speech “Think, my lord! By heaven, he echoes me, As if there were some monster in his thought Too hideous to be shown. -Thou dost mean something” (Act 3 Scene 3). Another fine performance, almost but not quite too much so close to the camera. One of a series of video monologues titled onscreen either Shakesphere in the Ghetto or Shakespeer in the Ghetto.
Posted by bardbox 
Posted by bardbox 
Posted by bardbox 