Xtranormal Taming of the Shrew

http://www.xtranormal.com/

My partner and I are going to use Xtranormal, a basic film making tool for this project. Our topic is Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew and we plan to let our students re-create some of the most impressive scenes of this play through Xtranormal to show their unique and creative understanding of the play. Every reader has his own Hamlet and this is true with every literature learning experience. I'm sure different students will have different understandings of the play and I value every opinion because the whole class is going to be benefit from diverse understandings. For example, the heroine "Katherine" might have totally different talking style in the beginning and end of the play and a dialogue created by student A is certainly not the same with that by student B. Owing to such differences, students might be evoked to think in depth of the characters they are trying to re-create. "Why is Petruchio (one of the main characters) considered as a loving husband who has built a happy marriage while what I'm thinking about him is that he is a chauvinist and materialist?" students might ask themselves like that. Therefore, the reason of using Xtranormal is to move the class toward a better grasp of the characters as well as the play.



Some guidelines:

Assume that there are 30 students in the class and the class time period is 40 minutes.

Students will work in pairs or individually and everyone is going to make a film of either 1 or 2 characters based on the scenes and acts they choose from the play. Each group or single person will have to come up with a short film, in which the character(s) they have chosen talk and move. Each presentation is about 2 to 3 minutes (might need more since voice producing in Xtranormal is not as quick as real conversations). Towards the end of the class, we will vote for the best short movie and the group that stands out will get extra credit for this class. We also thinks of giving students 2 weeks of preparation time for the project of the class which will be a more comprehensive demonstration of their reading skills gained through this class.