Adaptions

[chrisgreen]

For a projet im doing at the moment i'm adapting "The Tell Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe (pretty grovy little story really). To do so i've been reading heavily into what goes into adaptations (and more importantly what doesn't) and i was wondering if any one else has taken to adapting anything yet?

It's a difficult process but 3 quarters of all films released are adapations of some kind which leads you to think that the difficulty must be worth something. Many people seem to have issues with film adaptations saying that they're lesser copies of the origional just because parts of the story are left out. What some people don't seem to realise is that a 2-3hour movie cannot possibly contain the same amount as a 200-500 page novel. Also the large factor in this is that novels/short stories are a completly different medium to Film/television and therefor cannot really be compared.

I'll post my adaptation of "The Tell Tale Heart" when i'm done for you to look at, if anyone else can post any thoughts on adaptations or any adaptations of their own i'd be really interested to see what other people come up with.

[Mr.Anderson]

i would love to see an a adaption of "The Fall of the House of Usher".

[chrisgreen]

write one then, lol

[Mr.Anderson]

haha i could i suppose, itd prob never get made lol. I actually rather like adaptations myself, its just that its risky. Because people only like adaptations if you stick to the source materiel. ive been waiting for them to do a film version of "Animal Farm", yet at the same time, im worried they could mess it up some how. Get alot of peoples opinions as to what parts of the story are vital, at least it would give you an outline for what to edit out and what to keep. I say just poll people who are fans of poes work.

[UFProductions]

T.V. & Film

PS: I believe the word you were looking for was "adaptation", by the way.

[chrisgreen]

Yeah sorry, i typo just about anything and everything (the single greatest problem in any of my writing).

I haven't yet seen either of the Animal Farm adaptations, but i really want to. It was an amazing book written by someone who was way ahead of his time. I've seen the 1984 adaptation but that just ended up being very boring. The book took on first person narrative which heavily focused on Winston's (i think that was the main characters name, i read it ages ago) thoughts and the transistion of this too screen is often a very messy process... either that or it just ends up being rather boring.

The main issue with adaptations is its faithfulness to the origional text and as i said, an adapatation shouldn't be compared with the origional as it is a seperate text on a different medium. But i big problem is, if all the publicity surrounding an adaptation launch concentrates on the fact that it is an adaptation of a popular text (and its using the origional text's name) then its going to get compared.

Has any one read "The sum of all fears" (Tom Clancy) and watched the Hollywood blockbuster directed by Phil Alden Robinson (2002)? In terms of feidelity it wasn't very good. Characters were changed, omited, killed and so was the setting and storyline, and a lot of hardcore Clancy fans found it to be a bit of a joke. I agree that it was disapointing that they changed to much of the story line, yet if you watch it and forget that the film was based on the novel, it is really quite good. And if you get chance listen to Clancy's comentary on it, its hilarious, you can tell he hates the movie.

[Mr.Anderson]

haha. i always thought it looked kind of bad. I would love to hear what Clancy himself had to say about it. The film just looked farrr too overdone. Hell, the preview had Ben Affleck running in slow motion with firey explosions nipping his heels. cheesy. lol.

I heard stephen king hated the film adaptation of The Shining. (The Kubrick version, not that insultingly awful god forsaken mini-series). He said the focus was too heavy on Jack. But most people think its just because Jack Nicholson played the character so stupendously that you couldnt help but focus on him.

[chrisgreen]

I've not read the origional of the Shinning, but watching the film i can see what you mean. Nicholson does play that part amazinly well, i'd probally go as far as saying he made the movie what it was (as well as Kubrick obviously).

One thing i just thought was that movies are actually adaptations from the scripts as well so the journey from page to screen is a long and heavily filtered one. Are there any novelists who approve of their adaptations?

Just an update, "Tell Tale heart" is nearing completion.