The long road home.
Hello again everyone, bonjour, hola, salut.
It’s been a while since I blogged anything on the production of Julius Caesar as I have been m.i.a for sometime now on other ventures and productions. One of which you can see the gloriousness from the link below.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=m0jik2Vd88g
You can read more about it over on the main hub blog.
Right, so now that I have explained that, let’s talk Manga Shakespeare and what lies ahead in the tracks of March. Well ahead is about one hundred and twenty pages of finished narrative…That’s right, deadline looms, and it’s approaching ever so soon. In short I have to complete this by April. But now that I’ve finished up on my other endeavours for the time being, the way is paved so I can make it all happen without hurting myself too much and still sticking to that initial vision that came to me when thinking of a new take on the bards play.
Julius Caesar is by no doubts an epic parade, a beast of a machine, and so layered in subtext/implication that it just get’s me excited every time I read it. It really is a brilliant book to be on. Richard, our text adapter is doing a great job at editing down the vast array of dialogue into manageable chunks, but even still it’s tricky as the proceedings are very text heavy. I really wish I had some more pages, some slack and leeway to let the sequences breathe, but alas, like film or animation directing, you make a deal with the screenplay and just get on with problem solving it all. The trick is rather to flesh out the drama/action from what is being said by the characters, and try keep that fresh and new for the reader twenty pages later. For me on this, is and always will be the drive of making it all seem like it’s a world which has a history before these events portrayed, and a life after it happens. As Brad Bird says, story, story, story, and I agree whole heartedly.
The characters relationships should seem tangible, to make them believable, as real despite how unreal their setting/scenario might be. How do I do this? As always, personal experience is the key to understanding something. I draw on aspects of my own life, my own experiences and flesh/fuse them into all the characters and its world. There are symbols and pointers which tie people to one another, there are metaphorical interpretations of places which adhere to a certain memory or locale which reminds me of a time or place similar to what I believe the context of the play is suggesting.
I’ll leave you with this piece of artwork from the book, a look at some of my really loose thumbnails. Keep on dreaming dreamers, the moon she waits for you.
Mustashrik. Copyright 2008.
