Romeo and Juliet Project Reflection
This is a reflection on a soundtrack project for Romeo and Juliet. Here’s a link to the project before you read the reflection:
Music gives more life, soul, and emotion in a production, making some type of soundtrack integral to the process and its completed form. Romeo and Juliet is no exception. Longing, love, fate, and rebellion are all integral as well to the success of Romeo and Juliet, which is why the soundtrack for the play also contains these themes. We picked songs that described occurrences in the play where an emotion the song displayed was relevant. Though there were some spot-on lines about the tragedy, each song had emotion with its words that expressed the play as much as the lyrics.
I adore music. Who doesn’t? It’s the ultimate light and dark of life; you may not even realize it, but it is always there, in good and bad times alike. Out of different projects we could have done to project our understanding of Romeo and Juliet, music stood out to me because of its capability to push and pull the tides of emotion, seamlessly transitioning between love, desire, and sadness. This trait of music is just like the play; Romeo and Juliet dances between light and dark, life and death, love and hate; music is a reliable tool to show that.
The finished product is… disorganized. It’s just a list. Well, it is a playlist; but, all these songs relate to the play in a way that can be directly pointed at in the story. Having them chronologically organized so that they tell the story would be more pleasing to ponder.
As for the actual standards... beauty? I mean, the beat to Keith Sweat’s “Make It Last” is pretty sexy. But really, we took a basic approach to the project. By putting more thought into the songs, we could make it relevant in a way that might not have been strikingly intriguing, but still unique in the selection. So, we spent less time on the presentation of the project, yet gave the viewer the links to go out and experience the music on their own so they can relate to it. Poignancy of the project depends on the viewer’s reaction to the music; if they love the songs, understand our explanation, and can really see its connection to the play, it might leave a more lasting remark.
Picking out the songs was a blast. I love R&B and ballads, and it was a party trying to figure out which songs to use. It made me realize that I come home, do homework, and then in my free time just do things that make me happy, like listen to music. But then, I wake up and go to school the next day; by the time I walk in the building, my mood drops and continues to drop the whole day. I want to have more fun in school. I want to have more fun learning and not have the daily classwork kill my mood. A project like this felt like a leap towards that.
