Films have been known to dominate throughout the world since time immemorial. They are also referred to as motion pictures or movies. A film is actually a series of motionless images that are contained on a plastic strip that when run using a projector and shown on a monitor creates the illusion of images that are moving. Filmmaking process is both an industry and an art. Films are essentially cultural artifacts that are created by particular cultures. These films reflect the concerned cultures and in turn affect them. Film is an imperative art form, a powerful medium that is used in indoctrinating or educating citizens, and a source of entertainment. The particular film visual basis gives it a general power of communication. In fact films have turn out to be popular global attractions by using subtitles or dubbing to translate dialog into the viewer language.
The early dances and plays had elements that are common to those of film. Among them include costumes, sets, production, script, actors, scores, directions, and storyboards. These are the terminologies that have been in use throughout the film history. Filmmakers in an effort to give value to their works or give these works specific changes, employ certain recognizable film techniques. This can actually include each and every aspect that is used in making a particular film. To cut the long story, these are film styles that must be used by the film editors for their films to have more quality. A film director possesses a filmmaking style that is distinctive, which differs from the style of other directors. By analyzing the film techniques, there emerge differences between the styles of filmmakers.
The subject matter of any artwork whether abstract or concrete, must be expressed with a given form. This is actually a set of conventions belonging to patterned relationships that are used to evaluate, define, and perceive an artwork. Filmmakers in their movies, have at their disposal two basic senses that they explore. Elements which stimulate the two senses are truly innumerous. As a result, the combination of these senses generates infinite varied stories and styles. We find all these diverse possibilities in the three possible forms of a film. These are documentary form, narrative form, and experimental form. The documentary form exposes the realty, the second form tells stories and the third form experiments on a particular medium.
Film adaptation refers to the transfer of a certain written work, in part or whole, to a feature film. This is actually a kind of derivative work. The use of novels as basis of feature films is a general form of film adaptation. However, when the screenplay of a film is original, it can be a foundation of derivative works like plays and novels. Films have been adapted into various plays. All representational films adapt a prior conception. This term representation suggests existence of a certain model. Therefore, adaptation delimits the representation through insisting on the model cultural status. Film making from an earlier text is in fact virtually as old as cinema machinery itself. In reality, over a half of the commercial films originate from the literary originals.
The possible modes of the relation between the text and the film include intersecting, fidelity and transformation, and borrowing. Borrowing is the main mode of adaptation. In this mode, the artist uses more or less broadly the idea, material, or an earlier form of a successful text. The bible stories miracle stories and medieval paintings that feature the biblical iconography drew on exceptional text whose authority they borrowed. In later secular ages, the earlier generation artworks might be used by the current generation as sacred in their own rights. Here the various adaptations types from Shakespeare readily come into our minds. The adaptations in these cases have hopes in winning the audience by its borrowed subject or title prestige. Adaptations from the literature to the opera, paintings, or music are essentially of this nature.
In the intersecting mode, the original text uniqueness is preserved or conserved to an extent that it is left intentionally unassimilated in adaptation. The cinema records its confrontation using ultimately intransigent texts. The modern cinema is currently more interested in this form of intersecting. Intersecting insists that analysts attend to the original specificity within the cinema specificity. The costs associated with film adaptations in one way or another have made film to become part and parcel of the commercial entertainment industry. The creation and circulation of these film adaptations are enhanced by the reduced costs that are met by the filmmaker.
However, fidelity and transformation is the most tiresome and most frequent discussion of adaptation. Here the adaptation task is essentially the reproduction in cinema of an essential thing concerning the original text. In this case we get a clear cut case of the film trying to actually measuring up to a certain literary work, or the audience expecting to compare. Adaptation fidelity is conventionally treated in relation to letter and to the text spirit.
The film we have watched that is, “A cock and Bull story (Michael Winterbottom, 2005),” was said to be really an un-filmable novel. Film industry being one of the commercial entertainment industries has made it possible for this novel to be adapted due to the profit considerations associated with this artistic work. Michael Winterbottom needs a lot of praise for his willingness to try and take chances. There is also a need to thank him for giving the film industry in Britain a vitality injection where he produced edgy films, which flirt between niche and mainstream, art house cinema. Winterbottom has made a competent movie that is endearing and funny not to mention the new audience story. Maybe the word adaptation in this case should really become “adaptability.” The creation and circulation of this film adaptation is contributed to a large extent by the growth of the commercial entertainment industry.
Hitchcock is among the greatest inventors in the cinema history in “Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941).” His first American film is superbly polished Daphne du Maurier’s story adaptation that is a story about a young bride whose marriage is actually haunted by her first husband wife spirit This wife was called Rebecca. The demands of the modern entertainment industry being one of the economic considerations have played a significant role in creation and adaptations of film adaptations.
“The tempest (Derek Jarman, 1979),” is also another film which has been adapted. This film is Derek Jarman’s who is a director adaptation and the interpretation of what is considered the Shakespeare’s final play. This film is a rather earlier retelling of the classic play by Shakespeare. Derek radically reinterprets the presentation of Shakespeare dramatic text.
Film adaptation may sometimes become very costly. It involves bringing written literature from books into the world of films. Novels are very lengthy and sometimes the setting very expensive to be transformed to more realistic world of films. Characterization in the novels is also quite different from the films. Films are tangible and very different from the world of literature that involves virtual characters. If at all the entire world in the novels could be transformed into the world of the film, then it can be very expensive. It actually beats the logic of film adaptation, which is making money.
For a successful film adaptation, there should be economic considerations. However, it is also true that a good film adaptations should not loose the original intention and uniqueness of the novel. For instance, it would not be sensible to adapt Shakespeare novels and leave out the work of poetry in his novels. The common form of film adaptation is the context employed in the moving of the written literary works from the books to film through bringing the theme of the film in the context that is understandable to the general audience, and teach them a particular lesson.
The film industry and the concepts communicated in the films plays a crucial and vital role in the enhancement of the cultural practices communicated over decades and centuries ago into the present and in a manner that is most digestible to the audience. This is because the film media serves the crucial role in the entertainment industry to educate the people on the various aspects and culture being one of them. The film industry does present the various talents in the entertainment scenes well brought out by the individuals in the most creative professional skills which inculcates art and the various cultural adversities well depicted in a manner that is quite presentable to the audience.
A quite vivid adaptation of the film created from the books is well expressed by Brain McFarlane who has adapted the various literary texts into the most digestible contents in the films. This ensures that they are friendly to the audience and in marketable in the entertainment industry. An example is the novel to the film: an introduction to the theory of adaptation (1996). The book focuses and brings out vividly on the various alterations that the literary work is subjected before it is presented to become a film and meet the particular requirements such as the studio and the vision of the film maker.
The content of the film presented by the form of a novel should be ranging and in the context that can be well understood by the audience concerned. The film adaptations should be in the context to be able to develop the plot of the literary text being adapted. Most of the film makers in the entertainment industry have been adapting the literary works from diverse sources to bring the cultural prestige in those written works. The context of plot of the film should be preeminently presented in the form of the narrative medium.
Despite the crucial role that the film, makers are presenting to the audience, diminutive methodical and sustained concentration has been given to the whole process. The many writes of these literary works have found it more enthralling. This is because the literary precursor finds brings a clear reflection of the literary work in the context presented. It also makes the works serious and inconsequential from complex to simple. And on the also on the same note it also helps in the selling and consequently marketing the literary work in the market.
The adaptation concept has drawn critical attention for over sixty years in the manner that has made the concept bring the various contexts presented in the books to be simple to the common view that can not have the time to sit down and read through the literary works. The various aspects of this cinematographic field have been diversified in a manner that helps depicts the various old scenes and characters in the literary works written in the old age to be viewed in the present age and well appreciated.
The concept of adaptation of the films and being developed from the literary works has also enhanced the various talents in the entertainment industry. Due to the specific qualities of the composers and lyricists in the various films do get the mutual, profit and make use of their talents since the various aspects of the plot of the films need the directors and also the musicians whose music is used in the particular directing of the film. Others such as the cinematographers and actors of the film due use their technical skills in the context of directing the film and use the diverse range of camera angles in the context of developing the plot of the films in the various scenes. Na example is the tilt camera angle that acts to attract the viewers of the film.
Another context, under which the adapted films become of more vital importance to the audience being presented, is when it helps to picture out the context presented in the film to the various scenes read in the literary text adapted. This brings out the mental image created to the viewer and the reader of the book. An example is Joseph Conrad whose famous statement “my task which I am trying to achieve this is, by the powers of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel it is, before all to make to see”(1897). This brings out the percept of visual image and the mutual relationship between the two media in relation to the mental image.
The economic consideration that does arises from the circulation of the adapted films to a larger extent helps in the adoption of various range of markets and the economic development of the industry. An example of the book of classic literature called ‘Approaches to Teaching by Mody Dick” was adopted to the Cold War American films (1956). This expounds on the various topics in the book and brings it out in the most comfortable way to the audience viewing the films.
On the other context Shakespeare literary works of the 1590s has been widely conveyed and adopted in the film industry and consequently and other writers also got attracted to the industry. An example Kenneth Rothwell’s “ A History of Shakespeare on Screen” (1999). This has provided a readable and a wide resourceful survey of the topic of the concept of adoption of the various literary works into films.
Generally the concept of adaptation of the films from the literary written works are of great economic importance in the film and the general entertainment media fraternity in general and opens large markets to both the films and the books.
Works cited
Gerald Mast, A Short History of the Movies (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1981, p. 185
Geoffrey Wagner, The Novel and the Cinema (London: Tanting Press, 1975, p. 223.
Henderson, Brian. “The Searchers: An American Dilemma.” In Movies and
Methods: An Anthology, Berkeley: University of
California Press 1985.
Dudley Andrew, ‘The Well-Worn Muse: Adaptation in Film History and Theory,’ in Syndy Conger
Janice R. Welsch, Narrative Strategies (1980), pg.10. West Illinois University Press,
Michael Klein and Gillian Parker, The English Novel and the Movies (New York: Frederick
Ungar Publishing, 1981, pg.9–10.
. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation 2005
Hatchuel, Sarah. Shakespeare, from Stage to Screen. 2004.
