Page 87 - Student: dazed And Confused

SEEING IS BELIEVING

OR

THE ART OF VISUAL COMMUNICATION

One of the things I love about adapting fiction for film is that much of the hard work

is done for you. The story, plot, characters, dialogue and imagery have all been sussed.
Right?
Wrong.
However, the source text has provided you with the bare 'skeleton' for your writing;
a jumping off point if you will. It is now your job as a creative adaptor to add the 'flesh' and
bring your skeleton to life.

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This chapter will focus on the imagery aspect of adaptation; the visual part; how we
get things across without sound. But here, we start hitting some problems, because we
know that a film wouldn't be a film without sound. But even the name would be inaccurate
if it was a blank screen. If you adapt a book into film properly no-one will notice or question
or difficulties you may have had - and it can be done. We see such films frequently at the

cinema.
Take silent films as an example. So successful are they at getting the story across
without words, they may as well have been directly translated from books. The only speech
in them are small phrases written in as captions, though other sound is used to the full. We
see social conventions and cliches (bad guys always wear black, damsels in distress) used
fairly boldly. It works though, because we are shown the story. Writers of silent film are
masters of the art of visual communication.
Or, as many writers like to say - showing, not telling.

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