Shakespeare Project
Project Description |
Project Reflection |
In this project we worked between multiple departments to produce a shadow puppet version of the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night's Dream. We started by studying the play Romeo and Juliet to get the basic knowledge and experience to make the final production possible. We then split up into various departments to split up the work load and to get all of the individual aspects done.
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I do not believe I really connected to this project that well. I don’t enjoy audio editing or Shakespeare very much, so this project was not very enjoyable for me. This doesn’t mean I didn’t work hard on the project, as I did all of my own work because I knew the rest of the class relied on my job getting done. One of the points where I worked hardest was on Monday night before the performance, where I was up late doing the final edits. At this point, I really worked hard to do many of the final edits so the play could go smoothly. I did not want to be working late on this, but knowing that the final performance relied on it I worked really hard that last day to finish it all up during the final performance my hard work really showed, though there was a lot to do. At that moment I was stressed out, barely knew what I was doing and from where I was sitting the play did not seem to be going anywhere. Despite this, I knew at that moment it was all in and I had to make that final push to complete the project even though I wasn’t having a good time.
By far the most difficult aspect of the project was editing the audio. It was difficult in the way that I had to be extremely precise, editing the sound effects into the exact right places and cutting the mistakes out. In the middle part of the project, I had to go through scenes listening to every piece of them, and individually removing every mistake. Many of these scenes recordings were at least 50% unusable. All of this required highlighting and deleting lines and oftentimes individual words would need to be cut. This was extremely precise work that took a lot of intense focus. When it came to adding the sound effects this was slightly easier due to there being less to do but it was still difficult. The sound effects were necessary not only to make the play less boring, but also to act as cues for the puppeteering crew. This made the job more important and therefore more stressful. That fact that I had to put them in very specific locations with a very specific length only increased this. During this project, I grew as an effective communicator by working between departments of production and dividing work among the sound group. In this project, I had to collaborate the vast majority of the time with the directors, especially during the recording piece of the project. If they had not been there the creative direction of the play would have been skewed. This is something I’ve used in the past but used it in a new way by having the directors present to ensure everyone was “in on” what was going on in the play. I collaborated with the other sound guys by dividing up work evenly to ensure maximum efficiency and to decrease the workload on the individuals. The idea of working in a group within a group was a new idea to me, really making me grow as a collaborator. Through my work in this project, I grew as an adaptable individual, by having to learn new technology and work with different, oftentimes difficult people. Before this project, I was completely inexperienced in Audacity and audio recording. I had done some work before but I really did not know what I was doing at first, but by the end, I really knew what I was doing and was able to do the necessary sound edits quickly and efficiently. Learning audacity didn’t take all that long, but being able to make this entire project much easier. Many of the people doing voice acting did not want to be in the recording studio and would try and avoid working by asking to do their lines first or outright refusing to record “because they had other work to do” despite them really have been doing nothing. After having recorded a few scenes I grew to know how to deal with these people and was able to finally finish the project. I believe Shakespeare is still celebrated because his stories are relatable and because it has not only been around for centuries, but been taught for years. Most people can relate to the idea of being in love, a common theme in his plays. His plays cover timeless ideas and concepts making them truly relatable to all generations. Being around for such a long time has lead to Shakespeare’s plays being deeply ingrained into our culture. On top of plays, there are movies and books adapted from his works. This means that even if you’ve never seen a play, you most likely know of his plays, either from cinema, a book, or your education. |
This I Believe Essay
I think the greatest piece of personal growth I showed during this project was when I
restarted my essay. I got up to the podium during the All School Exhibition run-through and realized that I was not proud of my work and that it wasn’t fit for presentation. I went home and restarted it entirely, I even used a different I believe statement. This new essay is more concise, the statement represented what I believe even better, and the anecdotes supported the statement far better. The piece of my essay that I am most proud of was the amount of time it took me to write it. I thought of it in around 30 minutes while in the audience during the All School Exhibition run-through and wrote in about an hour that night. Despite this, it turned out really good, and as stated above I think it represented the idea of This I believe far better. “I’ve spent time both at my first job to learn this and with the people around me to realize that people around me are more important than they might seem, both to me and everyone else.” I think this quote exemplifies the first piece of the rubric, that the belief essay your essay shows your true beliefs. If I had to refine my essay I would make it longer. I could have added more details to the stories, just to connect it more to the main idea. My essay was on the short side and barely reached 350 words. As well as adding more details I definitely could have summed up the idea of the essay more in the Introduction and Conclusion. Both of these were only one sentence so they did not provide much information individually. . |
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