Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet Group Presentation

Group Members: Kristin Boyd, Joe Distefano, Jessica Johnson, Joan Sutton,

Lindsay Peyton, Jungmin Lee, Kathy Yowell, Carter Chipley,

Andrea Singletary, Heather Martin, Arlinda Louh,

Kylie Sklennik, Eddie Exline, Dave Mattas, Stacy Toth,

Amanda Varela, Nick Liappis, Valerie Mascari, and

Craig Fordney

Date: April 24^th, 2001

Question for Presentation: How do Luhrman’s filming techniques contribute to characterization in this adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and how do the characterizations from the film relate to the text?

The main theme of Baz Luhrman’s film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet seemed to our group to be that it is possible to take the concept of this tragic love story that William Shakespeare wrote almost four hundred years ago and put it into a very modern, “pop culture” context without losing the point of the story. The scene that we chose to show to the class is where Mercutio’s character is first introduced to the audience and convinces Romeo to come to the Capulet ball with him. We believe that this scene is representative of the rest of the film in the ways that it both uses film techniques and changed or perhaps merely exaggerated characterizations in an effort to modernize this story. As the class will see, the setting of the play has been changed from Venice, Italy to Venice Beach for this film and this setting is very important in the modernizing of the story. Also the film techniques add to the fast-pace of this adaptation and appeals to a modern audience.

Because we had such a large group we broke into two subgroups, and after we watch the scene, the first subgroup will begin by discussing the film techniques of this scene. This group consisted of Nick Liappis, Craig Fordney, Andrea Singletary, Carter Chipley, Dave Mattas, Eddie Exline, and Kylie Sklennik as researchers and Jessica Johnson and Joe Distefano will be the speakers during our presentation. They will discuss such film techniques as the abrupt cutting in this scene, the music (which also plays a very important role in this film), camera angles, and costumes (since they are going to a masquerade ball but these costumes seem to directly relate to the character wearing them. This subgroup will also discuss the “gangster film conventions” that are employed in the audience’s introduction to the Capulet family. This will create a nice segue into the next group that will begin by discussing the characterization of the Capulet family in relationship to Shakespeare’s text.

The characterization group consisted of Kathy Yowell, Joan Sutton, Jungmin Lee, Heather Martin, and Valerie Mascari as researchers while Stacy Toth, Lindsay Peyton, and Amanda Varela will be speaking during the presentation. After comparing the heads of the Capulet household to the text, the group will discuss how the glimpses of Tybalt that we receive in Romeo’s drugged state at the beginning of the party scene add to the way we view him as the “devil” later in the film. Likewise the character of Mercutio is set up in a different way in the film than in the text, and the group will discuss the accuracy of this choice that the director made in staying true to the text.

In conclusion, our presentation will discuss how Baz Luhrman changed the story of Romeo and Juliet so that a more modern audience would understand it. We will discuss the aspects of pop culture today, namely – drugs, sex, and rock’n’roll (music of any fashion really). We will discuss how these aspects are all shown in the scene that we have chosen and we will speculate on how the audience interprets these aspects of modern culture within the classic story of these tragic lovers.