Hi, My Name is Timmy Troubadour and I'm Starring in a Film

At the end of last semester, my friend Laural told me that she was going to be filming her senior project during January. Laural created her own major: Directing for the Stage and Screen. In her proposal for this major she said that her senior project would have something to do with Shakespeare's Hamlet in some way.

So, in December, she held auditions for her screen adaptation of Heiner Müller's six page play Hamletmachine. It’s a dense piece of work, but it's fantastic. I auditioned and was cast in the role of Hamlet, one of two speaking roles in the film (I know, right? Who wants to hear me talk?).

It's been an interesting and exciting experience but it's very different than my background in stage theatre. Unlike theatre, you spend a few hours rehearsing (in our case, about half an hour for each scene) and then simply do it. If you don't like it, you do it again. Even when you do get it right, you do it again. And again because the director wanted a different camera angle. And again because you flubbed a line. And again because the lighting needs to be changed.

But once you've finished a scene; once the director has said "cut" one final time, you can forget all of your blocking and all of your lines.

Filming is a new beast to me, and I can't yet tell if I'm doing it right or not, or if I'm doing it well. I haven't seen much of what we've filmed, and even the stuff I have is not anywhere near complete. Laural still has to edit everything together to create a cohesive whole, and she is doing a little bit of animation over the top of some scenes. For example, in one scene Ophelia will have a clock animated over her heart, and in another, three boxes will have video clips over them to simulate television screens.

We'll wrap up filming in the next two weeks or so and Laural will spend the next month or two editing, animating and working with the composer on a score. Sometime in April the final product will premier on campus. It will be just shy of twenty minutes long (probably; the script we're working from is seventeen pages long). At that time, Laural will get feedback from viewers and professors that she can, ideally, use later on in life. The actors (myself included) will be critiqued and examined in every way and that’s the end of it.

I'm still learning all of the parallels between film and theatre. I'm still learning what mistakes I can and can not make. I'm still learning just about everything. I'm even relearning how to act. This whole experience is new to me.