The next topic I want to cover is one near and dear to my heart – adapting media created for one medium (text, music, or photograph, etc.) into the audio-visual mediums of either film or television. What works are chosen and why? How does one go about the process of adapting them? What are the inherent differences between two mediums and how does that factor into its ultimate translation? All of these questions and more (though not necessarily in that order) will be answered below!
What is adaptation?
While I did manage to give the one-sentence summary above, I’ll admit that it does little to actually explain the exercise of adapting materials from one medium to another. So, let’s start at the beginning (for the purposes of this article, we will be discussing adapting from a print format – such as short stories or novels – into an audio-visual format such as film):
First, some incredibly talented person has to create an amazing story – a feat easier said than done! Nevertheless, this individual decides, for one reason or another to put pen to paper (or finger to key) and make the tale in their head manifest in a tangible (or digital) form. Perhaps they do this for a paycheck or perhaps it is only to fulfill their own innate need to create – whichever, it is the first step on our journey.
The next thing that must happen, is that said created work must then find its way into the hands of an audience – i.e. someone other than its creator. That audience must be able to experience the story and (hopefully) connect with it. They must then feel so passionate about that connection that a new desire arises – the desire to translate that feeling of connection across the barrier of the medium. It is at this point that a crucial decision happens – someone other than the creator, a former audience member, must contact the creator and begin a dialogue that will (optimally) result in both of them reaching some sort of agreement to allow for adaptation.
Why this work?
A fair question to ask at this point is: exactly why did the audience member decide that this particular work was so special? Why was it, amongst so many others, the thing that piqued their interest? And while it is true that the real answer to that question is inherently personal to each and every case, it is also somehow universal.
A work that begs to be adapted will, by its very nature, usually be something quite special. Perhaps it is in the world created, the characters and their interactions, or even just a basic premise. No matter how deep the well goes, the ultimate end is the same – something magically unique calls out to the artist. It reveals itself and the forms that it could take. It whispers sweet nothings into the ear, pleading to be made whole. To be made anew.
That is perhaps a flowery way of saying that the adaptor (the former audience member who will eventually create the adaptation) notes that something within the work in question can and will connect to a wider audience, if only given the chance. This is both a gut feeling and one that can be based on decades of experience as either a media creator or a media consumer. Whatever it is, it is rarely subtle.
The Differences between Mediums
Once a deal is in place, and the actual act of adaptation ready to begin, the first stop along the path is to determine where exactly the two mediums in question (the adapted and the adaptation) both converge and divert. What are their inherent strengths and weaknesses and how can they be combined to make a whole greater than the sum of its parts?
In the case of the written word, the case for strengths is nigh limitless. With a simple keystroke, an author can create a world full of anything they can imagine – dragons to spaceships, wizards to wonderlands. All of this – and quite literally everything else imaginable – is at the fingertip. Not only this, but these adventures can be created with no worry as to their inherent cost. After all, it is just as expensive to write the word battle as the word sleep. Both take up about the same amount of the page, and yet each occupies an entirely different area of human experience –and would cost vastly different quantities of money to bring to life for the screen. But this is not the concern of the author – his is only to create.
Of course, then, it only makes sense to question the virtues of the moving visual image, accompanied by sound. This medium, while in a sense more technically limited than its predecessor, allows for experiences and interaction in a way that the former could never. Eyes, attracted to movement and color. Ears, listening at the ready for a word, a sound, a song. Done correctly, the audiovisual medium can enrapture a viewer unlike anything else. But it is also because of these strengths that we find its weakness – audio visual mediums, by their very nature, can only really be concerned by what we can see or hear. Whereas books and the like can delve into the psyche and moment-to-moment decision-making of their characters (sometimes all at once), movies limit the viewer to only that which they can directly experience through sight and sound.
Narration aside, characters must convey themselves via action and dialogue. The stories must unfold in a way that lends themselves to the inherently visual nature of the medium – giving the eye something to look towards. To study. Giving the ear something to hear. Or to listen for. What may take place over the course of paragraphs or pages in literature, might be needed to be made to fit within only a few moments of screen time. It is because of this that the adaptor must be cognizant of which events – which moments – are translated. In most cases, this is done as a matter of practicality – audio visual mediums often come with inherent time limits (imposed either by the studio or by audience interest) that are rarely found in print. Books are built to read and put to the side when the need arises – unlike audio visual media, which is typically created to be experienced in one long string (as an individual episode of television or a singular movie).
How to Adapt
These differences force the adaptor to focus their attention – to narrow the gaze of the tale to those moments that best highlight the aspects that fall upon the strength of the medium. To be selective. Not just for themselves, but for the audience. To distill what it is exactly that makes a work so special into nearly to its component parts so that it may be rebuilt and reshaped into another form. This is both an imperative and maddeningly difficult process.
To the adaptor, removing bits and pieces of their love to better craft the Frankenstein’s monster of their adaptation, this can sometimes feel like heresy. How dare they deconstruct what made the thing so special – lest it be potentially ruined? Or, on the other hand, it can feel like freedom – the unburdening of themselves from the shackles of the lowest points of their creation. In both of these, a similarity. An opposition.
At its best, adaptation can present a cleaner and more focused version of the source material, more easily accessed by general audiences. It can help introduce and expand the original work into something even grander and expose entire swaths of the population that might have previously never seen it. It forces the adaptor to decide for themselves what the most integral parts of the machine are, and – like carving a statue from stone – slowly remove all but that which is most essential.
Why Adaptation is Important to Me
Putting aside that many of the greatest films of all time are the direct result of adaptation – The Lord of the Rings, JAWS, Jurassic Park – there is yet another reason that the concept of adaptation holds such a close place to my heart – my current film. Forbidden Dish is, at its core, the clearest example of adaptation I can imagine. The core concept and characters, while foreign to mainstream audiences, have (at least in my estimation) reformed to appeal to a wide audience. To, though my own interpretation of my experience with the original material, be transported to a world unlike any other they have seen on screen before.
As adapting the relevant short stories comprised the beginning of my experience in bringing to life my first feature film, there is no question how near and dear to my heart that process is. It allowed me – the former audience member, but a reader, an observer – to become an architect of this variant world. To use my own imagination to form the narrative and characters not always as they were, but how they could be – to reach the hearts and minds of many.
Conclusion
Why then, in a world filled with the potential for wholly original ideas, would one want to adapt? The reason, dear reader, is that adaptation is not merely the act of copying something that already exists – it is a methodology for remaking and rebirthing it anew. To recreate that magic inherent to one medium for another. To widen the audience and increase the reach of both this new work and the original. It is collaboration – creator and adaptor – at its most pure. Ideas and concepts, feeding off one another to create a new whole. Something both similar and different to what has come before – not to replace, but to extoll the virtues of what came before. To crystalize that intangible something that made it special and replicate it in a new format.
Adaptation is, then, more than just a skill. It’s more flowery than that – more ethereal.
Adaptation is art.
Chris
P.S. – Hope you enjoyed the more poetic bent that this particular entry took. While not the norm, the subject matter seemed to call for something a little different.