[December meme] adapting books to screen
vonniek prompted: Do you have a favourite book(s) you'd like to see adapted to screen? If so, which format? (Big screen, miniseries, TV series). Have you done any fancasting in your head?
You know, I don't, really. I suspect this is mostly because, though I now watch quite a bit of TV, I am in many ways still much more attuned to text (both by temperament and by training), and so it kind of doesn't occur to me to think about translating fiction to the screen unless somebody else does it first (at which point I may have strong opinions!).
I think I also tend to gravitate toward books that would be challenging to adapt for screen. Most of the SFF I love would require quite a lot of work in terms of location filming and/or visual effects in order to look good, and much of the literary fiction I love has very specific textual qualities (such as the way it's narrated) that wouldn't translate well to a visual medium, even if the story would translate well.
I do find adaptations interesting; several of my favorite movies are adaptations of novels. I like thinking about other people's adaptation choices, casting choices, etc., for movies/series, for many of the same reasons that I enjoy thinking about theatrical production choices. But I don't really have a director's impulses.
That lack of directorial impulse arguably shows up in my vids as well; obsessive24 and I had a conversation about this, years ago now, in which we realized that she thinks like a director while I think like an editor. She typically treats source material as something to be remade, reinvented, reconceptualized; she often manipulates visuals, bends them to her will. That's never my first instinct. I mean, I can do a bit of it when the vid requires it, but I tend to approach vidding as a way of condensing or distilling what's already there -- finding what's essential rather than building something entirely new.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth
You know, I don't, really. I suspect this is mostly because, though I now watch quite a bit of TV, I am in many ways still much more attuned to text (both by temperament and by training), and so it kind of doesn't occur to me to think about translating fiction to the screen unless somebody else does it first (at which point I may have strong opinions!).
I think I also tend to gravitate toward books that would be challenging to adapt for screen. Most of the SFF I love would require quite a lot of work in terms of location filming and/or visual effects in order to look good, and much of the literary fiction I love has very specific textual qualities (such as the way it's narrated) that wouldn't translate well to a visual medium, even if the story would translate well.
I do find adaptations interesting; several of my favorite movies are adaptations of novels. I like thinking about other people's adaptation choices, casting choices, etc., for movies/series, for many of the same reasons that I enjoy thinking about theatrical production choices. But I don't really have a director's impulses.
That lack of directorial impulse arguably shows up in my vids as well; obsessive24 and I had a conversation about this, years ago now, in which we realized that she thinks like a director while I think like an editor. She typically treats source material as something to be remade, reinvented, reconceptualized; she often manipulates visuals, bends them to her will. That's never my first instinct. I mean, I can do a bit of it when the vid requires it, but I tend to approach vidding as a way of condensing or distilling what's already there -- finding what's essential rather than building something entirely new.
Originally posted at Dreamwidth || Read
comments on Dreamwidth