Whenever we read behind-the-scenes stories or interviews, we now know what they’re talking about because we’ve lived through it ourselves! Needless to say, making a movie can be quite an experience. Here, we will attempt to bring this experience to you.
The Concept
Star Wars: Macbeth... who would have thought? Looking back, of course, there were many similarities between Shakespeare’s epic drama and Lucas’s epic movie. They’re both based on rather classical story types, they both contain largely dysfunctional families, and they both have headstrong heroes and powerful villains. In Macbeth, of course, the emphasis was placed on the villain, while Star Wars concentrated mostly on the hero.
So why did we choose to combine the two? Simple—we wanted to make a Star Wars video, and we were studying Macbeth in English class. Bienvenido C. came rushing into the chemistry room after the bell to tell me that we were making a movie called “Star Wars Macbeth.” The rest was history. (...or should I say Chemistry?)
The Odyssey Begins
The core crew of the movie was assembled within a matter of hours. Bienvenido C. and Michael M. were set to play two of the leads, and the rest of the cast followed. With about two weeks to winter vacation, we decided to film on our week off from school.
Yep... we would be spending our high-school vacation INSIDE the high school.
We got permission from the principal and the custodians to film inside the building under the condition that we wouldn’t break anything with our fake lightsabers. Michael M. wrote a script, which we adhered to rather effortlessly. The concept was simple: there was a fight between good and evil. Macduff was good; Macbeth was evil. Macduff became Luke, and Macbeth became Darth. The dialogue would be an amalgamation of Shakespeare and Lucas. Many sections were unchanged from the text; others advanced the plot or included a Star Wars reference. With a script, actors, a location, and a vague idea of what we were getting into, we set out to make the movie.
On Location
On Day One, we trooped across two blocks and a busy thoroughfare to cart three boxes of video equipment and props from Bienvenido C.’s house to the high school. Half dressed in our costumes, we must have looked like complete idiots. Among our extensive selection of equipment we had:
- A Darth Vader mask and black cape, and a yellow “Luke Skywalker” jacket.
- A Sharp Viewcam camcorder.
- Two white plastic rods—through the magic of television these would soon become lightsabers.
- A bedsheet that would become Malcolm’s cape.
- A rather dangerous halogen lamp. Yep, that’s right. ONE light.
- Two power converters. (Just kidding!)
We were lucky enough to obtain a fan on location, which added some pizazz to our final scene on the high-school stage. Red and blue lighting!
It was hardest for Bienvenido C., who had to wear a rather uncomfortable costume for half the day. Not only was he sweating through the plastic, but it was rather difficult to order people around with a muffled voice and a Darth Vader outfit that looked somewhat silly. Directing duties had to be shared, seeing as Bienvenido C. sometimes had to concentrate on not falling down. :-)
Many times we had onlookers gawking at our production. We let them stay and watch. Our crew was well fed—we had pizza sometimes for lunch, and there was a soda machine on location. Check out the end credits for its cameo appearance!
On the second-to-last day, Raymond P. came up with a great idea: let’s use the Millennium Falcon to escape from the Death Star / High School! We decided the spaceship would be housed in the gym and added later through special effects. We had two hours before they closed the school, and there was only one problem—the gym was in use.
We walked in to find fifteen cheerleaders practicing for an upcoming game. We had no time, so we went ahead with the shoot. We told them we’d be running around in Star Wars costumes for a couple of minutes, grabbed a camera, and got a shot of four of us running toward the Millennium Falcon. You can look for the cheerleaders in the video, but you won’t find them. They’re behind the composited toy spaceship!
Post Production
Four or five days later, we had enough footage to make a movie. By this point we were wishing we had spent our winter vacation elsewhere. :-) We didn’t think we had enough footage to make something even vaguely understandable, much less the epic we desired.
As Bienvenido C. began to edit, however, things began looking up. Scenes were coming together. The pacing began to work. The music helped immensely. Kudos to John Williams, one of my favorite composers. As music editor, it was my job to take fifteen or so cues from John Williams’s Star Wars trilogy and track the video with them. This involved some rather crude editing, but the result was a synergy between music and video that electrified the proceedings.
The special effects, especially the lightsabers, took forever. They had to be rotoscoped frame by frame. Rotoscoping basically means adjusting a video image one frame at a time—in this case drawing over the image with laser fire or a lightsaber’s glow. How many frames are there per second? 30.
You do the math.
In any case, Bienvenido C. made it happen. I don’t think he got much sleep that week. The final scene was coming together as well. We took the awards ceremony from A New Hope and placed the characters from Star Wars: Macbeth into the festivities. This took a massive blue screen draped across Bienvenido C.’s bedroom and a lot of time spent getting it right. In the end, four of us walked down the aisle as if we were part of the movie.
As the video, music, and sound effects came together, we saw that we had something very cool on our hands. It was fun to watch—especially for us, because we knew how each scene was made and the anecdotes and stories that go along with any film production. We hoped our class would like it too.
We Held the Tape in Our Hands...
We held a cast-and-crew screening the night before school began. Don Fitz-Roy, Bienvenido C., Michael M., Robert F., Raymond P., Rebekah H., and Carl Erik F. were there. We watched ourselves attempt to act in front of a video camera and bowled over with laughter—and pride, because we had begun something and seen it through to completion. The video was exciting, easy to understand, funny, and yes, even a little bit epic. Star Wars: Macbeth wasn’t going to change the world, but it would be an experience we’d never forget.
And that’s why you’re reading this now. We wanted to share Macbeth with all Star Wars fans and film fans. We wanted you to see how we spent winter vacation. We wanted to give you some new Star Wars footage to tide you over until the prequels. :-)
So you wanna try and make a video? An old Jedi friend of mine once gave me some interesting advice:
DO OR DO NOT. THERE IS NO TRY.
Get out there and do it!