Disclaimer - This lesson plan is hypothetical and represents weeks 4 and 5 of an eight-week unit with the enduring idea of Representation.

Personal Thoughts and Information

When film was first made available for public viewing, the film rating system that we know of today did not exist. This rating system, known as the MPAA, didn’t make its first appearance until 1922 but has since been revamped. In the United States, film classification is a voluntary process with the ratings issued by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) via the Classification and Rating Administration (CARA). The system was established in 1968, but the version listed below is the most recent revision, having been in effect since 1990. An unrated film is often informally denoted by "NR" in newspapers and so forth. A drawback of the NR rating is that some locations will refuse to show said feature.

Having the option to rate one’s film or show it without seems like an interesting choice. Why would a producer choose to go through such a costly and sometimes time-consuming process? Money! The way a movie is rated has an influence on how well it does at the box office. If a movie is rated R, fewer people will view it, whereas if it is rated PG13, it could reach a larger audience and thus have a better opportunity to make more money.

How does one tell a story in a way that conveys the emotion the director is aiming for while being limited by the rating? What techniques do they use when shooting low/no-budget films? What can we do if we come up against a technology barrier? Sometimes directors will choose to release different versions of a film with adjusted ratings to fill their creative needs (such as Deadpool’s family-friendly cut, A Very Merry Deadpool). Others show their content in creative ways, such as Alfred Hitchcock famously showing grisly monsters and murder not in view of the camera but rather through shadow art.

        Of course, with Shakespeare as source material, my students will hardly be the first to reinterpret this script. As an example, we can look at the highly sanitized Gnomeo and Juliet on one end of the spectrum and Romeo Must Die on the other end. Somewhere in the middle lies my personal favorite interpretation, Romeo and Juliet (1996). This film perfectly captures the vision of the original stage production and reinterprets it for a modern audience. Of course, that may not be suitable for all audiences, which is why we can rely on Gnomeo to come to the rescue.

Behind the scenes