Persona Poems (ENTRY 10)

My initial impression on Lady Macbeth was that she's a really strong woman. The adjectives I use in this poem portray her as a powerful person.

Lady Macbeth

Affectionate, Seductive, Passionate

Intense, Ambitious, Persistence 

and Indestructible

A Spirited Soul

who loves greed, power and manipulation

who detests losers, cowards and failures

who wants to see a true man, 

a successful murder 

and a crown of King

Resident of her own evil

A Lady in red

"Red is the warmest colour of all
but the downside of red is that 
it corresponds with desire, domination, aggression and thirst for action.
Lady Macbeth fits well in red."

After reading the whole story, this is what I think of Lady Macbeth.

Lady Macbeth

As fragile as glass,

As aimless as wind,

Not as happy as expected

A Depressed Soul

who once loved the feelings of success

and the satisfaction gained from power

who once hated no as an answer

who denied her true nature

who now terrified by her own evil,

who wants to get rid of the spot of guilt

and wash away the shame

Resident of guilty conscience

who ends her life without saying goodbye

What a pity Lady in purple 

"Purple is colour of royolty 
but it is also the colour of bruise.
As long as she's alive,
the bruise in Lady Macbeth will never heal.
Only in death 
she frees herself from drowning in purple."

Just for Sharing (3)

Hello ~

From my previous blog, I have stated that we will act on Act 1 Scene 1 and Scene 3 right? Oohhh…unfortunately we could not make it as Sammy faced problems when she was translating the script. Furthermore, she worried that we (Shiau Yin and I) might face troubles when we pronounce the words in Cantonese. It’s like tongue twister! Or I should say it is harder than tongue twister! Hahaha… However, we did a great rehearsal around 10pm in Sam’s room just now. I wonder our neighbours were annoyed with our high-pitched voice. Can you imagine…the opera singer? Oh NO……I myself could not stand for it when I listened to the opera on Youtube.  

I am not sure about Sam and Shiau Yin but I enjoyed the rehearsal very much. Shiau Yin was a bit shy although we practised in Sam’s room. But I am pretty sure she’ll do well in the movie. And she’ll be the prettiest witch in the movie. In this scene, each of us has to only speak for 3 lines and lastly we speak together which is our 4^th line. It is a very short and simple scene. Back to our rehearsal, I considered it as a dress rehearsal as we wore the red cloth and Shiau Yin with her fan and we played the music too during rehearsal. We’ll shoot our movie on the next day and I hope it runs smoothly as we planned.

Stay tuned for my next post! :)

~ Emily Yoong Ai Nee ~ 154565 ~ Entry 3 ~

FARAH NABILLAH MIOR YUSUP (154096)

#3^RD ENTRY#

Assalamualaikum and hello Miss Dzeelfa and friends...

For the first video, my group members chose act 1 scene 7 as our reference.  Actually at first we considered to do from act 1 scene 5 until act 1 scene 7. But then, when we think of the time limitation, then we decide only to act on scene 7.

The reason why we choose this scene is because we think that this scene plays the most important part for the story. This scene emphasizes on how women can influenced their men so badly.  I am a bit confused because I think that women back in those times have no power or right in their life.  They just deserve to be men’s followers. But here, in Macbeth, as reader, I can see how powerful the role played by Lady Macbeth in influencing her husband.  She knew how to influence the husband to follow what she wanted. She even knew how to play with words to trick Macbeth to do the murder.

Actually the important of this scene, is where it shows how weak men can be when they are under women’s control. I think that Macbeth is not a bad person actually. Maybe he is just anxious about the prophecy, but he never think of committing a murder. However, after he had been “psycho” by the wife, then only he got the courage to do so. From this line “he’s here in double trust: first, as I am his kinsman and his subject, strong both against the deed; then as his host, who should again his murder shut the door, not bear the knife myself. Besides, this Duncan hath borne his faculties so meek hath been so clear in his great office, that his virtues will plead like angels, trumpet tongued, against...”  it gives me the strong evidence that Macbeth is not really cruel at the first place. Sometimes, I think Macbeth really loves his wife. That’s the reason why he commits all the bad things just to make his wife happy. I don’t know... Well... it is just my interpretation...

Anyway, the recording went quite well with some helps from the outsiders. At first we decided to take Zulaikha and I to act for this scene. Zulaikha will be Macbeth while i will be playing the role of Lady Macbeth... However that night; we changed our plan after we met this cute Chinese guy named Alex. After we heard his slang and the accent, straight away we agreed to make him as our Macbeth. We were very lucky to have Alex in our video recording. He helped us a lot and the recording went pretty good too.  I felt so relief too because i don’t have to memorize those tongue-twisted words... hahaha... for me, I feel that is not really easy to pronounce those “alien” words.  And here, I was really amazed to see how Zulaikha and Alex used the language smoothly that night.

I think that’s all for tonight.. good night Miss Dzeelfa and friends... see you tomorrow .=)

The Making of 'Chincantonese' Witches (ENTRY 9)

Seriously, our first video was really a SERIOUS production. I wonder the audiences in our class except Ms. Dzeelfa understood those lines being uttered by our actors. I love scene 7 a lot. I appreciate the language especially the lines from Lady Macbeth. I'm quite a serious person myself. So, I have no problem with 'serious' stuffs. I guess our group lacks creativity as compared to other groups. We could have thought of something else to make it more interesting. Not many will appreciate 'serious' production. A comedic way of doing the videos is always more acceptable. To conform or not, I guess it's pretty clear that our group has chosen the less taken road. Thanks Ms. Dzeelfa for giving us high mark despite the fact that we did it in a more theatrical way!

But for second video, the idea of using our own mother tongue/dialect to act out the scenes from Macbeth alone is already very hilarious. The reason I suggested to use Cantonese instead of Mandarin is because Emily and Shiau Yin both speak Cantonese in a way that I will say it's unique. They were not exposed to Cantonese but they learned through watching Hong Kong series. Because I know Cantonese, I think they really sound very funny and I actually imitate the way they speak..Haha! By the way, it's Malaysian Cantonese not Hong Kong!

I was the one who translated the text into Cantonese. I only translated scene 1 from Act 1. We are going to shoot only one scene. Both of them have problem in pronouncing the words but not serious one. We all need some practices before the real shooting. I did face problem in translating too, even though I have no problem in using the language in daily conversation. I took the modern translation(English) in No Fear Shakespeare, SparkNote and translated it into Mandarin in Google Translate knowing the fact that its translation has errors but it sped up the translation job. From Mandarin, I translated it into Cantonese by typing out the 'pin yin' which is the way we pronounce the words.

Emily bought red cloths which will be our attires. Shiau Yin being herself will think of ways to make us look nicer with the cloths. I will leave that for them. For our make up, we may want to ask help from Zara or we will do it ourselves. We did look through some pictures of Chinese opera singers. In terms of music, we may use utensils to produce the sound or we make the sound ourselves!

We recorded the 'floating' and 'flying' red cloth. It's going to be the background when we introduce the scene and also in the credits.

The next thing is PRACTICE!

Continuation of Entry 2

Besides searching for the name, Shiau Yin, Sam and I tried to act in Mandarin. We have decided to choose Act 1 Scene 1 and Scene 3 but we are not sure yet whether to include Scene 1 in this movie. If time allows us to do so, then we’ll include Scene 1 or otherwise.

Since this is Chinese version Macbeth, we thought of wearing cheong sam but unfortunately Shiau Yin and I do not have any. Hhmmm…I have one but it is my mom’s cheong sam. I wore it once during college event and that was the very first and last time I wore cheong sam. I told myself that I won’t wear it anymore because it makes me look so old! That is why I return it to my mom and keep it at home till now. For Sam, she has two or more than two if I am not mistaken but she also keeps them at home. Hahaha…

While we were discussing about the costume, suddenly Sam suggested an idea. Instead of just speak in Mandarin; we can make it funnier and enjoyable by doing it as an opera. In term of the language in opera, Cantonese would be more suitable compared to Mandarin. So, if Ms Dzeelfa allows us to do it in Cantonese, then we’ll start shooting on Sunday.

I enjoyed this discussion so much because we were rehearsing to speak and act like an opera singer. It was really funny. Even Fara sat beside us and laughed so much while looking at us spoke in Cantonese even though she did not understand what we were talking about. Haisyyy…I should take video and upload it here. Not only our group. Zue’s group was awesome too last night. They rehearsed some parts of the scene and all of us could not stop from laughing out loud. We did not care about the juniors who were watching the movie. Oh ya, by the way, we did our discussion at TV room. Hahaha…I love the way Nadia speaks. I love her strong accent and same goes to Nik. I’m looking forward to watch their video!  =)

I hope this time we can do better than last time in making the video.   

~ Emily Yoong Ai Nee (154565) ~ Continuation of Entry 2 ~      

Witches, Macbeth and Banquo (#6)

Ehemmmm.. Ehh... Who is that.........????

Huhu.. Actually my group (northern group) already shoot our video yesterday.. 

Yes.... It i actually quite hard to translate the Old English to Northern dialect..

Wow...!!!!!!! So..... We just try our best to convey the meaning in our own dialect..

And there is several difficulties that we face in order to complete the shoot.

Yes...........

first of all.. It is Maal and Nisah.. They are so cute. They do not really good in communicating in Northern dialect. Me, Faizah and Najmi do our best to help them and congratulation.... They made it.. :-)

Second is the place where we want to shoot. We try to find the place that portray the scene in the forest. But, we need to make sure that the shoot did not show the surrounding building and other people who come and jog at Bukit Expo.. Huhuhuhu... Luckily, we did it..

Thanks to our cute photographer Nik Musaini.... :-)

Ahaaaaa... And... This is the other picture behind the making of this video.. 

I think they look like Pahlawan Melayu... Hehehhehe...

Serious face.. yaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

So................. 

Just wait for our complete video....

Chayok...

Arigato gozaimas... :-)  

Siti Awatif Hamzah... :-)   

Full of Enthusiasm (2)

Today I am so motivated to write about Macbeth after I had discussion with my group members regarding our Major Assignment 2. But before that, I would like to apologize for having a ‘long vacation’ and ignore Macbeth for 20 days. Actually I don’t really ignore Macbeth until last week where I had to put it aside to finish other assignments. In all these while, I jotted down everything when I gone through Macbeth and I realized that I was too picky when I read the original text. Huh…Never mind. Forget about this first. I will talk about this in my next entry because I want to express my feeling towards our video discussion and preparation in this entry.  :)

Shiau Yin, Sam, and I met for video discussion just now. As assigned by Ms Dzeelfa, we have to do on any witches’ scene in Chinese. It was the greatest discussion I ever had on Macbeth. Firstly, Sam and I discussed about the translation name of Macbeth. Normally in Mandarin, people translate their names according to the nearest sound of the original names. So for Macbeth, we tried several names which sound very funny. I thought of McDonald’s when we were creating the name. In Mandarin, ‘McDonald’s’ is ‘mai – dang – lao’. So for Macbeth, I suggested ‘mai’ for ‘Mac’ and Sam suggested ‘bu’ for ‘beth’. ‘mai – bu’ will be the temporary name for Macbeth while we are searching for a better name. Ok…let me search for another name.

I’m back. Yeay! I found another name for Macbeth! It’s ‘mai – ke – bai’. I found this at http://en.bab.la/dictionary/english-chinese/macbeth , an English – Chinese online dictionary. ‘mai – ke – bai’ really sounds better. My group-mates don’t know about this yet and tomorrow I am going to tell them this new name. Wahhh…so excited! I think this name is more suitable since it is recognized in the dictionary. 

Oh no…it’s 4.53am! No wonder I am so sleepy and could not think of my next point. Hahaha…I think that’s all for today. I shall continue this tomorrow. Good night everyone! Sweet dream!     

~ Emily Yoong Ai Nee (154565) ~ Entry 2 ~