0merged Doc

Cinematic Adaptation
HSS F325
I Sem 2020-21
BITS Pilani Prof Devika

Pilani Campus
Why study humanities courses
I’ll list here nine arguments that the humanities are important. While you read them,
try to think of what you would fill in as number 10.
1. The humanities help us understand others through their languages, histories
and cultures.
2. They foster social justice and equality.
3. And they reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual and intellectual
sense of the world.
4. The humanities teach empathy.
5. They teach us to deal critically and logically with subjective, complex, imperfect
information.
6. And they teach us to weigh evidence skeptically and consider more than one
side of every question.
7. Humanities students build skills in writing and critical reading.
8. The humanities encourage us to think creatively. They teach us to reason
about being human and to ask questions about our world.
9. The humanities develop informed and critical citizens. Without the humanities,
democracy could not flourish.
https://curt-rice.com/2014/02/25/here-are-9-reasons-why-humanities-matter-whats-your-number-
10/#:~:text=The%20humanities%20help%20us%20understand%20others%20through%20their,
sense%20of%20the%20world.%20The%20humanities%20teach%20empathy.BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Course requisitions
• Aim (a result that your plans or actions are intended to

achieve; aim adds to the implications of effort directed toward
attaining or accomplishing)
• Objective (something that you plan to do or achieve;
objective implies something tangible and immediately
attainable)
• Learning output (Output is the product of learning - the
demonstration that learning has occurred; it helps to show that
students are able to take the knowledge that they have learned
and apply it)
BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Lecture 1
Premeditation (Chapter 2)
On Literary Creation (Chapter 3)
Before the Beginning: Understanding the

Study of Literature to Understand the Role
of Literature in Our Lives (Chapter 4)

Cinematic Adaptation:
Various forms
• Novels
• Dramas
• Short stories
• Ballads
• Videogames
• Memoirs, biography, autobiography
• Nonfiction
• Graphic novels
• Comics
• Folk tales
• Movies
BITS Pilani
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Premeditation
(Chapter 2)
Premeditation
Beginning – somewhere in the middle of the story -

Middle thread – media res (Shutter Island (2010), Wuthering
Heights (1970) V for Vendetta (2005 – 7:10)
– Exceptions - chronological and ending (Mother India)
Individual ways, individual approaches
dare what you don’t dare (Ch, writer, director), it is there that you
will take pleasure, never make you’re here anywhere but there,
and rejoice, rejoice in the terror, follow it where you’re afraid to
go, go ahead, take the plunge, you’re on the right trail!
(HP Azkaban 33:33, 35:58)(TLOTR) (PJ&LThief 1:21:25)
Helene Cixous “Coming to Writing”
Worksheet: Dare – example
Animal: horse, chimera
Chs with SPECIAL powers: Rupenzal, the

sleeping beauty, maleficent, snow white,
lady Shrek, frozen, Aslan, …
Places: Wessex, Malgudi, Si-Fi, zootopia,

galaxy, asgard, …

Pegasus, Unicorn, Griffin, Buckbeak
Dare: class worksheet
Pick up one character from Mythical world
People: one specific oddity – attitude

People: one specific oddity – behavior
People: the distinguishing characteristic
Lord Ram:
– He wants to fulfil his father’s order. /He thinks that an army can be made with all odd
creatures.
– He goes to an exile for 14 years. / He leaves his wife./He kills Ravana.
– He sets the highest standard of life as per the duties of a king.

Dare: class worksheet
• Learning feedback
• Attitude and behavior should clearly stand out – if they do not –
learning needs brushing up
• Distinguished characteristic should be the most significant one of
the person specified
• Examples should be the most apt ones – readers/
viewers/listeners should immediately understand and relate to
• Let us check have you understood the difference

between attitude and behavior!!!

Attitude/thinking or behavior/doing
It is good to greet people.

He smiles respectfully.
I find it funny to respect people.
He touches the feet of his elders.
I wonder why do people indulge in such practices.
I never touch the feet of people.
It is just pompous.
Perhaps, according to me, people just try to please others
unnecessarily.
How amusing!
“Why can’t they just act normal?”, I shouted loudly.

Purpose of the worksheet
Helps you identify the personality of the

characters with specific reference to
– Strong/weak
– Circumstantially placed/initiative
– Grow/dwindle
– Success/failure

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On Literary Creation
(Chapter 3)
The role of literature
On Literary Creation:
Literature offshoots
Invention
–Not out of void but out of chaos
(character or author or director)
• (Anna Karenina, Fight Club, Shutter Island) – confusion/tussle/angst
–Seizes on the capabilities of a subject

(source lit or media)
• Power of moulding and fashioning ideas –
versatile
• (LOTR, The Pianist, A Walk to Remember, Casino Royale, Around the
World in 80 Days, Dracula)
Strategy and Process
– Varied but a strategy and a process (genre, elements, theory)
• Sh – caliban and ariel; Silence of the lamb; TGWTDT;
– Complex and multiplicitous –
• killers – un/justified
– Not merely a product of imagination
• Details about time, ch, place, costume, manners - correlate
– Captured and explained by language (TIOBEarnest) (Vs film)
• Explanations, descriptions, dialogues
– you have no idea; wow, you are an eloquent speaker … you know the way to it –
go to hell
– Inadequacies of explanation begin to unravel
• Right choice of words and the right chance to speech or
silence
– GWTW

Worksheet: process and strategy
Process (a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a

particular end)
Strategy (a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall
aim)
– Your want to show that your character is strong but this is a wrong decision that
s/he has made
• P&S
– Thematic representation of any idea (war)

• Anti; Pro; Neutral
– P&S

Facets of creation
– CHARACTER, PLOT, LANGUAGE
– Individual way of creation
• the character of Bond, Holmes, other spies
• JK Rowling – hippogriff, elves different – LOTR
– Unreachable and inexplicable
– (Sir Walter Scott – Jane Austen) (hit/flop)

• (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832) a Scottish - December 16,
1775 - July 18, 1817- English)

Elements of literary creation
• Imagination
– Ch
• create/dev; present,/select; strong /weak; grow –
dwindle/expand
• NCFOM, OFOTCN, GWTW, CR, SL, LOTR – dwarves, elves,
kings, women, FG
– Plot
• Main – sub; flashback – foreshadowing, explicit –
suggestive; result – origin;
• SI, SOTL – forward and backward,
– Theme
• War – pro war, anti war, just war (totality of a situation)
• TBITSP, War and Peace

Lived experience
– Product of the events in their lives
– The societal and familial influences
– SOTL/COAS; FG/TBITSP - soldier;
TP/ABM/Osky/TIGame;

– Literary influences
• TMWSH Ferrari; a monk?????
• JC Oates (Kafka, Joyce); love for money ???
• Jamaica Kincaid (Bible, Dictionary); answers with God ?????
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Woolf); why just inside mind ????
• Ernest Hemingway; a rare combination of many positives
– (Mark Twain, Flaubert, Stendhal, Bach, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky,
Chekhov, Andrew Marvell, John Donne, Maupassant, the good Kipling,
Thoreau, Captain Marryat, Shakespeare, Mozart, Quevedo, Dante, Virgil,
Tintoretto, Hieronymus Bosch, Brueghel, Patinir, Goya, Giotto)

Critical analysis
– Moby Dick – ex metaphor
– TSELiot – Ezra Pound – power of suggestiveness
– Stream of c /Joyce, Woolf – A B mind
– War – which category
– Language – why this way – straight-suggestive;
bland-aesthetic;
– Elements – villain-antagonist; hero-protagonist;
powerful-weak
– FIND IT OUR FOR YOUR OWN MOVIE

Strategy
– Keep running/just imagine (emotive reflective);
– know till the end/know nothing
– Try all possible ways to break a character; divine
intervention? (Hardy)
– Light romance ?? – COAS-TGWTDT-SOTL
– Challenges – level and type of conflict- opposing
forces - level of realization

Cultural inferences
– Jamaica Kincaid; Toni Morrison
– Tolkien, JK Rowling
– Ian Fleming, Sir Arthur Canon Doyle
– help/mocking bird; TG/GF; rural/urban;

Plot
– The determination of the novel’s (any work)
– Plots; sub plots; digressions (Middlemarch)
– Sin City – VfV; LOTR – GWTW – GoT;
– organization, structure and revision (time travel,
science fiction, first ending then action)

Understanding of the process of creation

– Through critical analysis
• What do the experts say – chs, reader/audience/listener, experts
– Creation of words and sentences
• Narrative, a text, a being (GWTW 26:55; V 7:10 )
– Driving force (GWTW 11:44)
• Character, setting, lived experiences
– Beautiful/money/job/family/personal satisfaction
(tdwtp)/nation (cr)/stars, flying (atwied), speed, light, falling
fruit (os, tig)/marriage (sd)/position/politician/
immortality/righteousness/ cosmic order, shopping
(coas)/power (lotr, th), etc.

Cinematic Adaptation:
the beginning and the challenges
Gaps
– Change in the medium
– Applying the same rules for different art sets
Adaptation
– A complex operation
• Can’t be simplified and minimized
Ways
– Liberty for diversified and individual an interpretation of text
Either create or be created (Homer / Coleridge/ Thomas de Quincy)
Go forth and prosper (TLOTR, HPotter, Twilight, THGames/SF)

BITS Pilani
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Before the Beginning: understanding

the Study of Literature to Understand
the Role of Literature in Our Lives
(Chapter 4)
Samuel Johnson (British,18th cent)
– First to publish detailed commentary on the works of a single author
– Earlier only Bible or religious texts
Analyzing the works of each other and those outside their own
circle – literary (practical) criticism
Wordsworth – Preface to the Lyrical Ballads – 1800
– Poetry should be close to the language of prose
– One of a number of significant critical works in literary theory whose immediate aim is to
provide a rationale for the critic’s own work, and to educate audiences for it – Peter Barry –
Beginning Theory
Coleridge
– lit should entertain through its fictional, or fantastical qualities, and should produce an
aesthetic effect

Percy Shelley – A Defence of Poetry (1821)
– Poetry compels us to feel that which we perceive, and to
imagine that which we ‘know’
– Focuses not only on how poetry is created but the nature of
the poet
– Poets are blessed with ‘best and happiest minds’ (Keats?
– Anticipates Freud’s notion of mind made up of conscious
and unconscious elements
– (Shutter Island, Fight Club, A Beautiful Mind)
T S Eliot - “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
– Distinguishes between the author and the writer
– The person behind↓ the work and the person↓ in the work
(Gatsby – Fitzgerald) (Cuckoo – drug addict)
– A pioneer in the literary theory
The Rise of English, Leading to the Rise of
Literary Theory (LiberalHumanism/TraditionalLiterary Theory)
1826 - University College established in London

1828 - Study of English language first taught
1831 – English literature first taught
An English course
– 1894 – begun at Oxford
– 1911 – begun at Cambridge
Changes and development in the study of English

– I A Richards, William Empson, F R Leavis
– Richards broke up the established connection between literature and language –
Practical Criticism – his book
1920s – why English was worth studying at all

1930s – why waste the time on anything at all – Barry

Ten tenets of Liberal Humanism
1. Good literature is of timeless significance (MDick - 1956 1:38:52)
2. Literary text contains its own meaning and doesn’t require
place it in a certain context (Ivanhoe/TTM/GWTW/TP)
3. For proper understanding text must be detached from any
socio-political, literary-historical, and autobiographical
contexts and studied in isolation
4. Human nature is essentially unchanging; continuity more
important and significant than innovation (MDick – adventure,
Bond – Action, Holmes – suspense) Don C
5. Individuality is our unique essence; can change and develop

but not transform (TCONarnia 1:59:00)

Ten tenets of Liberal Humanism
6. Literature purpose – the enhancement of life and the
propagation of humane values, but not in a programmatic way
7. Form and content in literature must be fused in an organic
way; so the one grows inevitably from the other
8. Sincerity (comprising truth-to-experience, honesty towards self, and capacity for
human empathy and compassion NCFOM) is a quality that resides within
the language of literature
9. What is valued in literature is the ‘silent showing’ and
demonstrating of something, rather than the explaining,
or saying of it (GWTW – impulsive, composed, WH, AK)
10. The job of criticism is to interpret the text, to mediate
between it and the reader (ch, plot, theme)

Foundational elements of
literary theories
Many of the basic notions – gender identity, individuality,
literature – fluid and unstable – no fixed and reliable
essences – no establishment of overarching fixed truths
(Ivanhoe, The Firm,)
No existence of objectivity – all thinking and investigation
necessarily affected and largely determined by some
prior ideological commitment (one’s past experiences, one’s beliefs
and one’s ideology) – only work counts – abject denial of one’s
own ideological commitment, biases, own interests that
motivate them (DWPrada 22:00 – 25:15)

literary theories
Language itself conditions, limits, and predetermine what
we see – language does not record reality, it shapes and
creates it, so that the whole of our universe is textual.
For the theorist, meaning is jointly constructed by reader
and writer. Thus, rather than being creators of language,
we are products of language. (TSOTLambs 1:07:30)
Any claim to offer a definitive reading would be futile – all
texts are necessarily self-contradictory – there is no final
court of appeals in these matters, since literary texts,
once they exist, are viewed by the theorist as
independent linguistic structures whose authors are
always ‘dead’ or ‘absent’

literary theories
There is no such thing as a ‘total’ theory, one which
explains every aspect of an event – thus, the appeal to
the idea of a generalized, supposedly inclusive, human
nature is likely in practice to marginalize, or denigrate, or
even deny the humanity of women, or other
disadvantaged groups (Eragon 21:30)

Barry’s “Theory Before ‘Theory’”
Politics is pervasive, (all encompassing)

Language is constitutive, (forming reality)
Truth is provisional, (temporary, conditional)
Meaning is contingent, (dependent)
Human nature is a myth. (fairy tale)
Look for dictionary meaning in the class.

Worksheet: theory before theory
Pick up three incidents from your movie where each of the

following statements brings out a different aspect each time
(diversity adds depth)
Politics is pervasive
Language is constitutive
Truth is provisional
Meaning is contingent
Human nature is a myth

Politics is pervasive
Many of the notions which we would usually regard as the basic
'givens' of our existence (including our gender identity, our individual
selfhood, and the notion of literature itself) are actually fluid and
unstable things, rather than fixed and reliable essences. Instead of
being solidly 'there' in the real world of fact and experience, they are
'socially constructed', that is, dependent on social and political
forces and on shifting ways of seeing and thinking. In philosophical
terms, all these are contingent categories (denoting a status which is
temporary, provisional, 'circumstance-dependent') rather than
absolute ones (that is, fixed, immutable, etc.). Hence, no
overarching fixed 'truths' can ever be established. The results of all
forms of intellectual enquiry are provisional only. There is no such
thing as a fixed and reliable truth (except for the statement that this
is so, presumably). The position on these matters which theory
attacks is often referred to, in a kind of shorthand, as essentialism,
while many of the theories discussed in this book would describe
themselves as anti-essentialist.

Language is constitutive
Theorists generally believe that all thinking and investigation is
necessarily affected and largely determined by prior ideological
commitment. The notion of disinterested enquiry is therefore
untenable: none of us, they would argue, is capable of standing
back from the scales and weighing things up dispassionately: rather,
all investigators have a thumb on one side or other of the scales.
Every practical procedure (for instance, in literary criticism)
presupposes a theoretical perspective of some kind. To deny this is
simply to try to place our own theoretical position beyond scrutiny as
something which is 'commonsense' or 'simply given'. This contention
is problematical, of course, and is usually only made explicit as a
counter to specific arguments put forward by opponents. The
problem with this view is that it tends to discredit one's own project
along with all the rest, introducing a relativism which disables
argument and cuts the ground from under any kind of commitment.

Truth is provisional
Language itself conditions, limits, and predetermines what

we see. Thus, a reality is constructed through language,
so that nothing is simply 'there' in an unproblematical
way _ everything is a linguistic/textual construct.
Language doesn't record reality, it shapes and creates
it, so that the whole of our universe is textual. Further, for
the theorist, meaning is jointly constructed by reader and
writer. It isn't just 'there' and waiting before we get to the
text but requires the reader's contribution to bring it into
being.

Meaning is contingent
Hence, any claim to offer a definitive reading would be

futile. The meanings within a literary work are never fixed
and reliable, but always shifting, multi-faceted and
ambiguous. In literature, as in all writing, there is never
the possibility of establishing fixed and definite
meanings: rather, it is characteristic of language to
generate infinite webs of meaning, so that all texts are
necessarily self-contradictory, as the process of
deconstruction will reveal. There is no final court of
appeal in these matters, since literary texts, once they
exist, are viewed by the theorist as independent linguistic
structures whose authors are always 'dead' or 'absent'.

Human nature is a myth
Theorists distrust all 'totalising' notions. For instance, the notion

of 'great' books as an absolute and self-sustaining category is
to be distrusted, as books always arise out of a particular
sociopolitical situation, and this situation should not be
suppressed, as tends to happen when they are promoted to
'greatness'. Likewise, the concept of a 'human nature', as a
generalised norm which transcends the idea of a particular
race, gender, or class, is to be distrusted too, since it is
usually in practice Eurocentric (that is, based on white
European norms) and androcentric (that is, based on
masculine norms and attitudes). Thus, the appeal to the idea
of a generalised, supposedly inclusive, human nature is likely
in practice to marginalise, or denigrate, or even deny the
humanity of women, or disadvantaged groups.

The History of Films
Chapter 15
Films
• An art and a medium for disseminating meaning
and significance
• Action movies or entertaining movies – too many
and overlapping categories
• Not adequate critical methodologies for teaching
analysis process – can be an eye opening and
fascinating study or analysis
• Basics first – the genesis and evolution of films
Films
• Four major areas focused on
– Technological development of the equipment that makes
the filming possible
– Filmmakers who can make it possible by becoming adept
at using those equipment
– An industry concerned with
• production of the film,
• distribution of the film, and
• presentation of the film
– Role of the audience and spectators who create the
response and have the power to affect the receptivity of
the film (TGTR) (Hugo) (1:08:30; 1:30:00)
Evolutionary changes in the camera
• Chronophotographic
• Biophantascope
• Kodak
• Kinetoscope
Chronophotographic
Running, by Étienne-Jules Marey, 1883
Gussie Moran performing a power serve, by Harold E. Edgerton, 1949

Chronophotography
• an old technique which captures some frames of a
movement, combined into a single image
• invented by Étienne-Jules Marey
• used by some of the most iconic photographers
including Harold Edgerton
– who invented the electronic flash and created
breathtaking photos of rare moments
Biophantascope
• LPCC Type-16
• LPCCP Type-1 MkII
• Back view of Le Prince's single-lens Cine Camera-Projector
MkII opened (Science Museum, London, 1930).
Biophantascope
• On September 8, 1886, British portrait photographer
and inventor William Friese-Greene created an
enhanced magic lantern called a Biophantascope.
• This was one of the earliest motion picture cameras
and projectors to project photographic plates in rapid
succession.
• While capable of taking up to ten photographs per
second using perforated celluloid film, his camera met
with limited success.
• While it is often Thomas Edison who is credited as the
father of cinematography, Friese-Greene was the first
man to ever witness moving pictures on a screen
Perforated celluloid film
Kodak
• 1885: George Eastman bought David Houston's patents for roll film and
developed them further. These were the basis for the invention of motion
picture film, as used by early filmmakers and Thomas Edison.
• September 4, 1888: Eastman registered the trademark Kodak.[50]
• 1888: The first model of the Kodak camera appeared. It took round pictures
6.4 cm (2.5 in) in diameter, was of the fixed focus type, and carried a roll of
film enough for 100 exposures. Its invention practically marked the advent
of amateur photography, as before that time both apparatus and processes
were too burdensome to classify photography as recreation. The roll
film used in the first model of the Kodak camera had a paper base but was
soon superseded by a film with a cellulose base, a practical transparent
flexible film.[51] The first films had to be loaded into the camera and
unloaded in the dark room, but the film cartridge system with its protecting
strip of opaque paper made it possible to load and unload the camera in
ordinary light. The Kodak Developing Machine (1900) and its simplified
successor, the Kodak Film Tank, provided the means for daylight
development of film, making the dark room unnecessary for any of the
operations of amateur photography. The earlier types of the Kodak cameras
were of the box form and of fixed focus, and as various sizes were added,
devices for focusing the lenses were incorporated.
Kodak
• An original
Kodak
camera,
complete
with box,
camera, case,
felt lens plug,
manual,
memorandu
m and
viewfinder
card
Kodak
An
advertiseme
nt from The
Photographi
c Herald
and
Amateur
Sportsman (
November
1889)
Kinetoscope
• The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. The
Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual
at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the
device. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but introduced
the basic approach that would become the standard for all
cinematic projection before the advent of video, by creating the
illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film
bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed
shutter. A process using roll film was first described in a patent
application submitted in France and the U.S. by French
inventor Louis Le Prince. The concept was also used by U.S.
inventor Thomas Edison in 1889, and subsequently developed by
his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and
1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab also devised
the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with
rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph
movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial
Kinetoscope presentations.
Kinetoscope
• By early 1891, however, Dickson, his new chief
assistant, William Heise, and another lab employee, Charles
Kayser, had succeeded in devising a functional strip-based
film viewing system. In the new design, whose mechanics
were housed in a wooden cabinet, a loop of horizontally
configured 19 mm (3/4 inch) film ran around a series of
spindles.
• By autumn 1892, the design of the Kinetoscope was
essentially complete. The filmstrip, based on stock
manufactured first by Eastman, and then, from April 1893
onward, by New York's Blair Camera Co., was 35 mm (1
3/8 inches) wide; each vertically sequenced frame bore a
rectangular image and four perforations on each side. Within
a few years, this basic format would be adopted globally as
the standard for motion picture film, which it remains to this
day
Kinetoscope
• Interior view of
Kinetoscope with
peephole viewer
at top of cabinet
• In 1895, Edison
introduced
the Kinetophone,
which joined the
Kinetoscope with
a cylinder phonog
raph.
Kinetoscope
• A San Francisco Kinetoscope parlor, ca. 1894–95.

Kinetoscope
• Charles Kayser of
the Edison lab
seated behind
the Kinetograph.
Portability was
not among the
camera's virtues.
Pre 1990s
• 1882
– Etienne Jules Marey develops a gun shaped camera, a
chronophotographic camera. It was also known as
shotgun camera as it could click twelve back to back
pictures or images per second.
• 1886
– William Friese-Greene develops a Biophantascope
(connected with living things or human life), one of the
earliest motion-picture cameras and projectors which
could click ten pictures per second, using perforated
celluloid film.
– He became the first man to see the moving figures on
screen.
Pre 1990s
• 1888
– George Eastman introduces a lightweight, inexpensive Kodak
camera.
– It used paper photographic film wound on rollers.
• 1890
– William K L Dickson, commissioned by Thomas Edison, builds
Kinetoscope (of or produced by movement), the first modern
motion-picture camera
– The first motion picture filmed on photographic film in US is
Monkeyshines No. 1.
• 1891
– Thomas Edison and William K L Dickson invent Kinetoscope, a
single –viewer peep-show device in which film passes over a
light.
Pre 1990s
• 1896
– The Edison Company buys the Vitascope, the first
commercially successfully celluloid motion-picture
projector in the US
Adaptations
• 1899
– French magician George Melies makes King John, the
first known Shakespearean adaptation, in US
• 1908
– William Selig’s 16 min Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – first
horror film
• 1909
– An American court rules that unauthorized films infringe
on copyrights, and as a result, film companies begin
buying rights to books and plays.
Adaptations
• 1910
– Hollywood purchases right to adapt a novel for the first
time
• Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona
• Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
• 1915
– Thomas Dixon’s The Clansman results in D W Griffith’s
The Birth of a Nation
• Three hour civil epic
– introduced historical epic and period piece
• 1921
– D W Griffith’ film Dream Street
• First feature film to use sound (with experimental sound)
Adaptations
• 1922
– Little Red Riding Hood – the first Walt Disney cartoon
• 1924
– Greed (Dir - Erich von Stroheim) (McTeague – Frank Norris)
• 1926
– Don Juan – Warner Brothers debut
– Talkie with synchronized sound effects and music, but no dialogue
• 1927
– The Jazz Singer musical drama
– With dialogue (at places)
• synchronized recorded music score, lip-synchronous singing and speech
Adaptations
• 1927
– Wings (Dir William A Wellman) (author John Monk
Saunders) – only silent movie to win an Oscar
• 1928 – not an adaptation
– The Lights of New York – first 100 % all talking movie
• 1931
Adaptations
• 1939 – the greatest year in film history
– Gone with the Wind
– The Hunchback of Notre Dame
– Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
– Ninotchka
– Stagecoach
– The Wizard of Oz
– Wuthering Heights
Story and plot
Story and Plot
• Plot, in fiction, the structure of interrelated actions, consciously selected and
arranged by the author. Plot involves a considerably higher level of narrative
organization than normally occurs in a story or fable.
• According to E.M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel (1927),
• a story is a “narrative of events arranged in their time-

sequence,” whereas
• a plot organizes the events according to a “sense of
causality.”
Plot
• Novels and dramas
• More than simply explaining the sequence of events
• Plot suggests
• A pattern of relationship among events
• A web of causation
• Novel – a string of events happening to the same person – only a

rudimentary form of plot
Plot
• Aristotle – Poetics
• Revelation of character an essential element in plot (opening SC stray incident, another time also)
• Reversal of hero’s fortunes/ PERIPETEIA – old man dies – SC – 1:54:10
• Either suffers failure (tragedy)
• Or success (comedy)
• Usually happens at the CLIMAX or CRISIS in the plot
• At such moments, the protagonist may experience ANAGNORISIS
• The sudden discovery of the truth of the experience
• Suspense – vital – entertaining (SC- opening) – 1:57:00
• Readers made to want to know what is going to happen
• Surprised by new events yet satisfied that they grow logically out of what they already know
• Proper sense of ending
• A story that finishes without tying up the various threads of narrative seem desperately unsatisfactory
• Unless some specific message is to be emphasized by that kind of ending
Plot
• Subplot of Elizabethan drama in comparison to 21 century complex/ intertwining
novels is much simpler
• Unity
• Time
• Place
• Action
• The plot, a story with a beginning, middle and end, with its various parts bound
together by cause and effect, exhibiting a view of morality or a version of typical
experience, is an ARTIFICE which has entertained and satisfied man in all ages
and countries.
Plot
• In the history of literary criticism, plot has undergone a variety of interpretations.
In the Poetics, Aristotle assigned primary importance to plot (mythos) and
considered it the very “soul” of a tragedy. Later critics tended to reduce plot to a
more mechanical function, until, in the Romantic era, the term was theoretically
degraded to an outline on which the content of fiction was hung. Such outlines
were popularly thought to exist apart from any particular work and to be
reusable and interchangeable. They might be endowed with life by a particular
author through his development of character, dialogue, or some other element.
The publication of books of “basic plots” brought plot to its lowest esteem.
Plot
• In the 20th century there have been many attempts to redefine plot as
movement, and some critics have even reverted to the position of Aristotle in
giving it primary importance in fiction. These neo-Aristotelians (or Chicago
school of critics), following the leadership of the critic Ronald S. Crane, have
described plot as the author’s control of the reader’s
emotional responses—his arousal of the reader’s interest and anxiety
and the careful control of that anxiety over a duration of time. This approach is
only one of many attempts to restore plot to its former place of priority in fiction.
AK – opening
Plot
• The novel is propelled through its hundred or thousand pages by a device known
as the story or plot. This is frequently conceived by the novelist in very simple
terms, a mere nucleus, a jotting on an old envelope: for example, Charles
Dickens’ Christmas Carol (1843) might have been conceived as “a misanthrope is
reformed through certain magical visitations on Christmas Eve,” or Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) as “a young couple destined to be married
have first to overcome the barriers of pride and prejudice,” or Fyodor
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment(1866) as “a young man commits a crime
and is slowly pursued in the direction of his punishment.” The detailed working
out of the nuclear idea requires much ingenuity, since the plot of one novel is
expected to be somewhat different from that of another, and there are very few
basic human situations for the novelist to draw upon. The dramatist may take his
plot ready-made from fiction or biography—a form of theft sanctioned by
Shakespeare—but the novelist has to produce what look like novelties. - TDWTP
Plot
• The example of Shakespeare is a reminder that the ability to create an interesting
plot, or even any plot at all, is not a prerequisite of the imaginative writer’s craft.
At the lowest level of fiction, plot need be no more than a string of stock devices
for arousing stock responses of concern and excitement in the reader. The
reader’s interest may be captured at the outset by the
promise of conflicts or mysteries or frustrations that will
eventually be resolved, and he will gladly—so strong is his desire to be
moved or entertained—suspend criticism of even the most trite modes of
resolution. In the least sophisticated fiction, the knots to be untied are stringently
physical, and the denouement often comes in a sort of triumphant violence.
Serious fiction prefers its plots to be based on psychological situations, and its
climaxes come in new states of awareness—chiefly self-knowledge—on the parts
of the major characters.
• BHD – opening
Plot
• Melodramatic plots, plots dependent on coincidence or improbability, are
sometimes found in even the most elevated fiction; E.M. Forster’s Howards
End (1910) is an example of a classic British novel with such a plot. But the
novelist is always faced with the problem of whether it is more important to
represent the formlessness of real life (in which there are no beginnings and no
ends and very few simple motives for action) or to construct an artifact as well
balanced and economical as a table or chair; since he is an artist, the claims of
art, or artifice, frequently prevail.
• Twilight – ending – imagination – known to only two – shown to all
Plot
There are, however, ways of constructing novels in which plot may play a desultory part
or no part at all.
• The traditional picaresque novel—a novel with a rogue as its central character—like
Alain Lesage’s Gil Blas (1715) or Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), depends for
movement on a succession of chance incidents.
• In the works of Virginia Woolf, the consciousness of the characters, bounded by some
poetic or symbolic device, sometimes provides all the fictional material.
• Marcel Proust’s great roman-fleuve, À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–
27; Remembrance of Things Past), has a metaphysical (extending or lying beyond the
limits of ordinary experience) framework derived from the time theories of the
philosopher Henri Bergson, and it moves toward a moment of truth that is intended to
be literally a revelation of the nature of reality.
• Strictly, any scheme will do to hold a novel together—raw action, the hidden syllogism
of the mystery story, prolonged solipsist contemplation—so long as the actualities or
potentialities of human life are credibly expressed, with a consequent sense of
illumination, or some lesser mode of artistic satisfaction, on the part of the reader.
SC – opening – 12:45 – 26:20 – 47:00 – 1:26:10 – 1:56:20 – 1:57:25
Worksheet
SN Event Mention How does it affect the
the plot (provide 3 reasons
incident for each incident )
1 Pick up an incident where the curiosity 1
of the readers/ onlookers is best 2
captured 3
2 Pick up an incident where the emotional 1
response of the readers/ onlookers is 2
best captured 3
3 Trace anagnorisis in your movie 1
2
3
OTHER READINGS
• VLADIMIR PROPP - Morphology of the tale, Leningrad 1928 – online – 31 functions – an
order maintained with a causal follow-up
• After the initial situation is depicted, any wonder tale will be composed of a selection of the
following 31 functions, in a fixed, consecutive order
• Functions:
• 1. ABSENTATION: 2. INTERDICTION: 3. VIOLATION of INTERDICTION. 4. RECONNAISSANCE:
5. DELIVERY: 6. TRICKERY: 7. COMPLICITY: 8. VILLAINY or LACKING: 9. MEDIATION:
10. BEGINNING COUNTERACTION: 11. DEPARTURE 12. FIRST FUNCTION OF THE DONOR:
13. HERO'S REACTION: 14. RECEIPT OF A MAGICAL AGENT: 15. GUIDANCE: 16. STRUGGLE:
17. BRANDING: 18. VICTORY: 19. LIQUIDATION: 20. RETURN: 21. PURSUIT: 22. RESCUE:
23. UNRECOGNIZED ARRIVAL: 24. UNFOUNDED CLAIMS: 25. DIFFICULT TASK: 26. SOLUTION:
27. RECOGNITION: 28. EXPOSURE: 29. TRANSFIGURATION: 30. PUNISHMENT: 31. WEDDING:
Some of these functions may be inverted.
• ARISTOTLE – Poetics – online – episodising (Humphry House) – beginning, middle and end –
elements of inevitability/probability/necessity – elements of pity and fear – inclusion –
catharsis – three unities – time place action – two elements – peripetia (the outcome other or
reversed than the intended or expected), anagnorisis (ignorance to knowledge) – poetic justice
(preferred by Shakespeare)
Plot Structure DHANANJAYA Dasarupa
Elements:
bija (“germ”), bindu (“expansion”) pataka (“sub plot”) prakari
(“episodical incident”) karya (“fruit”)
Stages:
Arambh (“Beginning”) prayatna (“Effort”) praptyasa (“Prospects of
success”) nitatapti (“certainty of success”). Palagama (“Attainment
of Fruit”)
Junctures:
Mukh (“Opening”) pratimukh (“Progression”) garbh
(“Development”) avamarsh (“Pause”) upsamhrati (“Conclusion”)

Margaret Atwood : 7 Types of Plots
The nature of the dramatic question informs the plot and what kind of story it will
be. Are the characters threatened by something external or internal? What genre
will the story be?
1. Tragedy
2. Comedy
3. Hero’s Journey
4. Rags to Riches
5. Rebirth
6. Overcoming the Monster
7. Voyage and Return
Conflict
EXTERNAL
• Unforeseen powers
• Nature
• Society
• Institutions
• Family friends
INTERNAL
• Self
Readings on plot
• John Truby’s Anatomy of Story
• Stephan King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
• Robert McKee’s Story
• Larry Brooks’ Story Engineering
• Larry Brooks’ Story Physics
• James Scott Bell’s Plot and Structure
• Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story
• Renni Browne and Dave King’s Self-Editing for Fiction Writers
• Steven James’ Story Trumps Structure
• John Hough, Jr.’s The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Dialogue
• Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird
Characterization
Class 11
Character
• Character, IN BIOLOGY, any observable feature, or
trait, of an organism, whether acquired or
inherited. An acquired character is a response to
the environment; an inherited character is
produced by genes transmitted from parent to
offspring (their expressions are often modified
by environmental conditions).
• A mature writer tends to be engrossed with the

convolutions of the human personality, under the
stress of artfully selected experiences
Characterization
• Types
• Characteristics
• Portrayal and Presentation
Types
• Major (primary secondary)
• Minor (secondary tertiary)
• Protagonist - Antagonist
• Dynamic - Static
• Round - Flat
• Stock
• Anti hero
• Foil
Types
• Flat and round characters, characters as described
by the course of their development in a work
of literature. Flat characters are two-dimensional in
that they are relatively uncomplicated and do not
change throughout the course of a work. By
contrast, round characters are complex and
undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to
surprise the reader.
• A static character in literature is one whose
personality, attitude and values generally remain
constant even in light of plot evolution, tribulation
and life experiences. - Brutus
Types
• Static Characters: Essentially, a static character is
largely the same person at the end of the story as he
was in the beginning. Any character in a compelling
story experiences some life changes and variation in his
environment, but what distinguishes a static character
is usually his existing persona, confidence and appeal
to readers. More compelling, heroic and charismatic
characters often work better as static characters than
ones who must undergo change to appeal to the
audience and to significantly affect a story. – S Holmes
• Foil, in literature, a character who is presented as a
contrast to a second character so as to point to or show
to advantage some aspect of the second character. –
Watson
Types
• Stock character, a character in a drama or fiction that
represents a type and that is recognizable as belonging
to a certain genre. - Fool
• Antagonist, in literature, the principal opponent
or foil of the main character, who is referred to as
the protagonist, in a drama or narrative. The word is
from the Greek antagnistḗs, “opponent or rival.” –
Ravan
• Protagonist, in ancient Greek drama, the first or leading
actor. The poet Thespis is credited with having invented
tragedy when he introduced this first actor into Greek
drama, which formerly consisted only of choric dancing
and recitation. The protagonist stood opposite the
chorus and engaged in an interchange of questions…
Types
• A dynamic character is often easier to build a
compelling story around. Dynamic character might
go through a major life transition, have a coming-of-
age experience, pull through trials and tribulations,
mature, have a change of heart or develop more
likeable qualities -- or take a turn for the worse. A
common misconception is that a dynamic character
has an electric, charismatic personality. In fact, the
term "dynamic" doesn't define the character's
qualities, but rather refers to how those qualities
change over time.
Characteristics
• Human
• Convincing –Developed
• Distinguished feature
• Physical features –
• Background
• Locale
• Environment
• Personality
• Attire
• Willpower
CMIYC – 19:15 GWTW – (1:12:00 - 1:29:25 – 1:54:00 – 1:59:50 –
2:02:45)
Portrayal and presentation
• Responses realistic (Actions or Reactions)
• Conflict – (EXT vs INT)
– Unforeseen powers
– Nature
– Society
– Institutions
– Family/friends
– Self (INT)
• Identifiable trait – SC 1:54:10
• Complexity (two contradictory forces simultaneously
applicable)
Presentation
• Direct (shown - clear)
• Indirect (told - hinted)
Worksheet - character
SN Name of His/her actions/reactions (STAR) Other Your
the S – situation/s they are caught in characters (critic)
character T – task/s they accomplish reaction reaction
A – action/s they take to them to them
R – result/s they get (STAR) (STAR)
1 1 1 1
2 2 2
3 3 3
2 1 1 1
2 2 2
3 3 3
Ch
• "a character" refers in the first instance to a fictional
individual within a larger imaginary situation.
• In theater, to be a character in this sense of the term is
to be among the dramatis personae (Latin for "roles in
the play").
• what makes each of them identifiable beyond their
proper name (“Dom") or some descriptive tag ("the
older waiter") is their distinctive way of
behaving, "behind" which we postulate (as their
enabling condition) some persisting personality, or
"character." We have then an separate sense of the
term "character": an hypothetical "self" or "nature"
expressed by a given individual's actions.
physical traits
• Importantly, physical traits do not, of themselves,
constitute what we are calling character traits ??????
IS IT TRUE WHEN PICKING UP THE CH FOR MOVIE
• tall or short
• blind or short-sighted or far-sighted or possessed of
20/20 vision
• healthy or ill
• pimpled or smooth-complexioned
• spindly-legged or stout
• female or male
• 16 years old or 60 years old
• has nothing in principle to do with that person's
"character."
Type
• A static character does not undergo important change
in the course of the story, remaining essentially the
same at the end as he or she was at the beginning.
• A dynamic character, in contrast, is one that does
undergo an important change in the course of the
story. The changes are not changes in circumstances,
but changes in some sense within the character in
question -- changes in insight or understanding
(of circumstances, for instance), or changes in
commitment, in values. The change (or lack of change)
at stake in this distinction is a change "in" the character
(nature) of the character (fictional figure).
Another distinction
• Thus a character who is portrayed as a "mover and
shaker," and is that way throughout the story, is
a static character, in the literary-critical sense of the
term.
• A fictional character with an "inspiring
personality" would qualify as a dynamic character,
in the literary-critical sense of the term, only if she
became that way -- or ceased being that way! -- in
the course of the story.
Static-dynamic
Character Character undergoes
remains constant important change
("static character"). ("dynamic character").
Trial or temptation Progress:

What happens (i.e.,
withstood:
change or lack of it)
the character rises to
qualifies as a good thing,
the character retains clarity insight, achieves requisite
approvable.
or integrity. courage.
The test is failed: Fall:

What happens (i.e., the
change or lack of
the character is "stagnant" the character falls into
it) qualifies as
"hung-up," "prisoner of illusion, descends into
a bad thing, regrettable.
illusion," etc. delusion, or loses integrity.
Ch
• Character is a text- or media-based figure in a
storyworld, usually human or humanlike.
narratological analysis of character
Three forms of knowledge in particular are relevant for
the narratological analysis of character:
• (a) the basic type, which provides a very fundamental
structure for those entities which are seen as sentient
beings;
• (b) character models or types such as the femme fatale
or the hard-boiled detective;
• (c) encyclopedic knowledge of human beings underlying
inferences which contribute to the process of
characterization, i.e. a store of information ranging
from everyday knowledge to genre-specific
competence.
Feedback
Your observations!!!
Theme
How to identify themes – human nature
• Begin with self – character – specific to you/him/her
• Shift to family – in the context of family primarily
• Shift to society – norms, rituals, institutions, etc.
• Come to humanity at large – existence of mankind, its reasons, patterns,

meanings, challenges
How to analyse theme
• Fearless
• What in fearlessness (naïve/ knowledge

• What does it do –hold them back (action)
• What does it achieve – catch them – help (results)
• Fearlessness amidst the most challenging circumstances – reacts as per his

and the opponents' position – composed – see through – pick up the most
viable option at the moment to defeat the enemy
Theme
• an idea that recurs in or pervades a work of art or literature.
• TSL – 14:00
• W&P – 2:50; 2:57:45
• TKAMB – 1:09:15
Types of themes ???
• Redemption
• Resurrection
• Prodigal Son
• Transformation
• Vengeance
• Innocence
• Justice
• Sacrifice
• Jealousy
• Friendship
• Fate
• And the biggest one of all: Love??? FEAR
Diversity
• American literature, English literature, German literature, Greek
literature, Latin American literature, and Scandinavian literature.
Various other Western literatures—including those in
the Armenian, Bulgarian, Estonian, Lithuanian,
and Romanian languages.
Ancient Literature
• Five ancient civilizations—Babylon and Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and
the culture of the Israelites in Palestine—each came into contact with one or
more of the others.
• Babylon produced the first full code of laws
• Egypt’s mystical intuition of a supernatural world caught the imagination of the
Greeks and Romans.
• Hebrew culture exerted its greatest literary influence on the West because of the
place held by its early writings as the Old Testament of the Christian Bible; and
this literature profoundly influenced
Ancient Literature
• The Greek epic of Homer was the model for the Latin of Virgil;
• the philosophical writings of Plato and Aristotle in those of any ancient Roman,
for the practical Romans were not philosophers.
• Whereas Greek writers excelled in abstraction, the Romans had an unusually
concrete vision and, as their art of portraiture shows, were intensely interested in
human individuality.
Ancient Literature
• St. Augustine concentrated spirituality
• Though influenced by the religious myths of Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and
Egypt, Greek literature has no direct literary ancestry and appears self-originated.
Roman writers looked to Greek precept for themes, treatment, and choice of
verse and metre.
• All of the chief kinds of literature—epic, tragedy, comedy, lyric, satire,
history, biography, and prose narrative—were established by the Greeks and
Romans, and later developments have for the most part been secondary
extensions.
Ancient Literature
• In sum, the work of these writers and others and perhaps especially that of Greek authors
expresses the imaginative and moral temper of Western man.
• It has helped to create his values and to hand on a tradition to distant generations.
• Homer’s epics extend their concern from the right treatment of strangers to behaviour in
situations of deep involvement among rival heroes, their foes, and the overseeing gods;
• the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles are a sublime expression of man’s breakthrough into
moral awareness of his situation.
• Among Roman authors an elevated Stoicism stressing the sense of duty is common to many,
from Naevius, Ennius, and Cato to Virgil, Horace, and Seneca.
• A human ideal is to be seen in the savage satire of Juvenal and in Anacreon’s songs of love and
wine, as it is in the philosophical thought of Plato and Aristotle.
• It is given voice by a chorus of Sophocles, “Wonders are many, but none is more wonderful
than man, the power that crosses the white sea. . . .” The human ideal held up in Greek
and Latin literature, formed after civilization had emerged from earlier centuries of barbarism,
was to be transformed, before the ancient world came to its close, into the spiritual ideal of
Judeo-Christianity, whose writers foreshadowed medieval literature.
Middle Ages
• Medieval, “belonging to the Middle Ages,” is used here to refer to
the literature of Europe and the eastern Mediterranean from as early as the
establishment of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire about AD 300 for
medieval Greek, from the period following upon the fall of Rome in 476 for
medieval Latin, and from about the time of Charlemagne and the Carolingian
Renaissance he fostered in France (c. 800) to the end of the 15th century for
most written vernacular literatures.
Christianity and the church
• The establishment of Christianity - the systematic approach to life, literature, and
religion developed by the early Church Fathers.
• In the West, the fusion of Christian and classical philosophy formed the basis of
the medieval habit of interpreting life symbolically. Through St.
Augustine, Platonic and Christian thought were reconciled: the permanent and
uniform order of the Greek universe was given Christian form; nature became
sacramental, a symbolic revelation of spiritual truth.
• Classical literature was invested with this same symbolism; exegetical, or
interpretative, methods first applied to the Scriptures were extended as a general
principle to classical and secular writings.
• The allegorical or symbolic approach that found in Virgil a pre-Christian prophet
and in the Aeneid a narrative of the soul’s journey through life to paradise (Rome)
belonged to the same tradition as Dante’s allegorical conception of himself and
his journey in The Divine Comedy.
Vernacular works and drama
• The main literary values of the period are found in vernacular works. The pre-Christian literature of Europe
belonged to an oral tradition that was reflected in the Poetic Edda and the sagas, or heroic epics, of Iceland, the
Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, and the German Song of Hildebrand.
• These belonged to a common Germanic alliterative tradition, but all were first recorded by Christian scribes at
dates later than the historical events they relate, and the pagan elements they contain were fused with Christian
thought and feeling.
• The mythology of Icelandic literature was echoed in every Germanic language and clearly stemmed from a
common European source.
• Only the Scandinavian texts, however, give a coherent account of the stories and personalities involved.
Numerous ballads in different countries also reflect an earlier native tradition of oral recitation.
• Among the best known of the many genres that arose in medieval vernacular literatures were the romance and
the courtly love lyric, both of which combined elements from popular oral traditions with those of more scholarly
or refined literature and both derived largely from France. The romance used classical or Arthurian sources in a
poetic narrative that replaced the heroic epics of feudal society, such as The Song of Roland, with a chivalrous tale
of knightly valour.
• In the romance, complex themes of love, loyalty, and personal integrity were united with a quest for spiritual
truth, an amalgam that was represented in every major western European literature of the time. The love lyric has
had a similarly heterogeneous background. The precise origins of courtly love are disputed, as is the influence of a
popular love poetry tradition; it is clear, however, that the idealized lady and languishing suitor of the poets of
southern and northern France were imitated or reinterpreted throughout Europe—in the Sicilian school of Italy,
the minnesingers (love poets) of Germany, and in a Latin verse collection, Carmina Burana.
Status of theme: role of church
• The church not only established the purpose of literature but
preserved it. St. Benedict’s monastery at Monte Cassino in Italy was
established in 529,
• The classical Latin authors so preserved and the Latin works that continued to be written predominated over
vernacular works throughout most of the period. St. Augustine’s City of God, the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, the Danish chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus, for example, were all written in Latin, as were most
major works in the fields of philosophy, theology, history, and science.

Status of theme: Medieval drama
• Medieval drama began in the religious ceremonies that took place in
church on important dates in the Christian calendar. The dramatic quality of the
religious service lent itself to elaboration that perhaps first took the form of
gestures and mime and later developed into dramatic interpolations on
events or figures in the religious service. This elaboration
increased until drama became a secular affair performed on stages or
carts in town streets or open spaces.
• The players were guild craftsmen or professional actors and were hired by towns to perform at local or religious festivals. Threetypes of play developed: the mystery, the miracle, and the morality. The titles and themes of medieval drama remained
religious but their pieces’ titles can belie their humorous or farcical and sometimes bawdy nature. One of the best known morality plays was translated from Dutch to be known in English as Everyman. A large majority of medieval literature was
anonymous and not easily dated. Some of the greatest figures—Dante, Chaucer, Petrarch, and Boccaccio—came late in the period, and their work convincingly demonstrates the transitional nature of the best of medieval literature, for, in being master
commentators of the medieval scene, they simultaneously announced the great themes and forms of Renaissance literature.
The Renaissance
• The name Renaissance (“Rebirth”) is given to the historical period in
Europe that succeeded the Middle Ages. The awakening of a
new spirit of intellectual and artistic inquiry,
which was the dominant feature of this
political, religious, and philosophical
phenomenon, was essentially a revival of the spirit of ancient
Greece and Rome;
• in literature this meant a new interest in and analysis of the great classical writers. Scholars searched for and translated “lost” ancient texts, whose dissemination was much helped by developments in printing in
Europe from about 1450.
Stages
• Art and literature in the Renaissance reached a level unattained in any previous
period. The age was marked by three principal characteristics: first, the new
interest in learning, mirrored by the classical scholars known as humanists and
instrumental in providing suitable classical models for the new writers;
second, the new form of Christianity, initiated by the Protestant
Reformation led by Martin Luther, which drew men’s attention to the individual
and his inner experiences and stimulated a response in Catholic countries
summarized by the term Counter-Reformation; third, the voyages of the
great explorers that culminated in Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America in
1492 and that had far-reaching consequences on the countries that developed
overseas empires, as well as on the imaginations and consciences of the most
gifted writers of the day.
Trend
• To these may be added many other factors, such as the developments in science
and astronomy and the political condition of Italy in the late 15th century. The
new freedom and spirit of inquiry
• in the Italian city-states had been a factor in encouraging the great precursors of the Renaissance in Italy, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The flowering of the Renaissance in France appeared both in the poetry of the poets making up the group known as the Pléiade and in the
reflective essays of Michel de Montaigne, while Spain at this time produced its greatest novelist, Miguel de Cervantes. Another figure who stood out above his contemporaries was the Portuguese epic poet Luís Camões, while drama flourished in both Spain and Portugal, being
represented at its best by Lope de Vega and Gil Vicente. In England, too, drama dominated the age, a blend of Renaissance learning and native tradition lending extraordinary vitality to works of Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, John Webster, and others, while Shakespeare, England’s
greatest dramatic and poetic talent, massively spanned the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th.
Development of humanism
• In the 16th century the Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus typified the
development of humanism, which embodied the spirit of critical inquiry, regard
for classical learning, intolerance of superstition, and high respect for men as
God’s most intricate creation.
• An aspect of the influence of the Protestant Reformation on literature was the number of great translations of the Bible, including an early one by Erasmus, into vernacular languages during this period, setting new standards for prose writing. The impetus of the Renaissance carried
well into the 17th century, when John Milton reflected the spirit of Christian humanism.
The 17th Century
Challenging the accepted
• The 17th century was a period of unceasing disturbance and violent storms, no
less in literature than in politics and society. The Renaissance had prepared a
receptive environment essential to the dissemination of the ideas of the new
science and philosophy. The great question of the century, which confronted
serious writers from Donne to Dryden, was Michel de Montaigne’s “What do I
know?” or, in expanded terms, the ascertainment of the grounds and relations
of knowledge, faith, reason, and authority in religion, metaphysics, ethics,
politics, economics, and natural science.
The questioning attitude
• The questioning attitude
• that characterized the period is seen in the works of its great scientists and philosophers: Descartes’s Discourse on Method(1637) and Pascal’s Pensées (written 1657–58) in France; Bacon’s Advancement of Learning (1605) and Hobbes’s Leviathan (1651) in England. The importance of
these works has lain in their
• application of a skeptical, rationalist mode of thought not only to scientific

problems but to political and theological controversy and general problems of
understanding and perception. This fundamental challenge to both thought and
language had profound repercussions in man’s picture of himself and was reflected in what T.S. Eliot described as “the
dissociation of sensibility,” which Eliot claimed took root in England after the Civil War, whereby, in contrast to the Elizabethan and Jacobean writers who could “devour any kind of experience,” later poets in English could not think and feel in a unified way.
Effects of conflict
• A true picture of the period must also take into account the enormous effect of
social and political upheavals during the early and middle parts of the century.
In England, where the literary history of the period is usually divided into two
parts, the break seems to fall naturally with the outbreak of the Civil War (1642–
51),
• marked by a closure of the theatres in 1642, and a new age beginning with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. In France the bitter internecine struggle of the Fronde (1648–53) similarly divided the century and preceded possibly the greatest period
of all French literature—the age of Molière, Racine, Boileau, and La Fontaine. In Germany the early part of the century was dominated by the religious and political conflicts of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) and thereafter by the attempts of German
princes to emulate the central power and splendour of Louis XIV’s French court at Versailles. The Netherlands was also involved in the first part of the century in a struggle for independence from Spain (the Eighty Years’ War, 1568–1648) that resulted not
only in the achievement of this but also in the “Golden Age” of Dutch poetry—that of Henric Spieghel, Daniël Heinsius, and Gerbrand Bredero.
Religious conflict
• The civil, political, and religious conflicts that dominated the first half of the
century were in many ways also the characteristic response of the Counter-
Reformation. The pattern of religious conflict
• was reflected in literary forms and preoccupations. One reaction to this—seen particularly in Italy, Germany, and Spain but also in France and England—was the development of a style in art and literature known as Baroque. This development manifested itself most characteristically in
the works of Giambattista Marino in Italy, Luis de Góngora in Spain, and Martin Opitz in Germany. Long regarded by many critics as decadent, Baroque literature is now viewed in a more favourable light and is understood to denote a style the chief characteristics of which are
• elaboration and ornament, the use of allegory, rhetoric, and daring artifice.
Metaphysical poetry
• If Baroque literature was the characteristic product of Italy and
Germany in this period, Metaphysical poetry was the most
outstanding feature in English verse of the first half of the century.
This term, first applied by Dryden to John Donne and expanded by Dr.
Johnson, is now used to denote a range of poets who varied greatly in
their individual styles but who possessed certain affinities with
Baroque literature, especially in the case of Richard Crashaw.
England trends
• Perhaps the most characteristic of all the disputes of the 17th century was that in which the tendency to continue to develop the Renaissance
• imitation of the classics came into conflict with the aspirations and discoveries
of new thinkers in science and philosophy and new experimenters with literary
forms.
• In France this appeared in a struggle between the Ancients and Moderns, between those who thought that literary style and subject should be modeled on classical Greek and Latin literature and supporters of native tradition. In Spain a similar conflict
was expressed in a tendency toward ornament, Latinization, and the classics (culteranismo) and that toward a more concise, profound, and epigrammatic style (conceptismo). This conflict heralded through the Moderns in France and the idea
of conceptismo in Spain a style of prose writing suitable to the new age of science and exploration. The Moderns in France were largely, therefore, followers of Descartes.
• In England a similar tendency was to be found in the work of the Royal

Society in encouraging a simple language, a closer, naked, natural way of
speaking, suitable for rational discourse, paralleled by the great achievements
in prose of John Milton and John Dryden.
The 18th Century
• To call the 18th century the Age of Reason is to seize on a useful half-truth but to
cause confusion in the general picture, because the primacy of reason had also
been a mark of certain periods of the previous age. It is more accurate to say that
the 18th century was marked by two main impulses: reason and passion. The
respect paid to reason was shown in pursuit of order, symmetry, decorum, and
scientific knowledge; the cultivation of the
• feelings stimulated philanthropy, exaltation of personal relationships, religious
fervour, and the cult of sentiment, or sensibility. In literature the rational
impulse fostered satire, argument, wit, plain prose; the other inspired
the psychological novel and the poetry of the sublime.
Areas
• The cult of wit, satire, and argument is evident in England in the writings of Alexander
Pope, Jonathan Swift, and Samuel Johnson, continuing the tradition of Dryden from the
17th century. The novel was established as a major art form in English literature partly
by a rational realism shown in the works of Henry Fielding, Daniel Defoe, and Tobias
Smollett and partly by the psychological probing of the novels of Samuel
Richardson and of Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy. In France the major characteristic
of the period lies in the philosophical and political writings of the Enlightenment, which
had a profound influence throughout the rest of Europe and foreshadowed the French
Revolution. Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles de Montesquieu, and the
Encyclopédistes Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert all devoted much of their writing to
controversies about social and religious matters, often involving direct conflict with
the authorities. In the first part of the century, German literature looked to English
and French models, although innovative advances were made by the dramatist and
critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. The great epoch of German literature came at the end
of the century, when cultivation of the feelings and of emotional grandeur found its
most powerful expression in what came to be called the Sturm und Drang (“Storm and
Stress”) movement. Associated with this were two of the greatest names of German
literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, both of whom
in drama and poetry advanced far beyond the turbulence of Sturm und Drang.
The 19th Century
• The 19th century in Western literature—one of the most vital and
interesting periods of all—has special interest as the formative era
from which many modern literary conditions and tendencies derived.
Influences that had their origins or were in development in this
period—Romanticism, Symbolism, Realism—are reflected in the
current of modern literature, and many social and economic
characteristics of the 20th century were determined in the 19th.
Romanticism
• The predominant literary movement of the early part of the 19th century was
Romanticism, which in literature had its origins in the Sturm und Drang period in
Germany. An awareness of this first phase of Romanticism is an important correction to
the usual idea of Romantic literature as something that began in English poetry
with William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the publication of Lyrical
Ballads in 1798. Moreover, although it is true that the French Revolution of 1789 and
the Industrial Revolution were two main political and social factors affecting the
Romantic poets of early 19th-century England, many characteristics of Romanticism in
literature sprang from literary or philosophical sources. A philosophical background was
provided in the 18th century chiefly by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose emphasis on the
individual and the power of inspiration influenced Wordsworth and also such first-
phase Romantic writers as Friedrich Hölderlin and Ludwig Tieck in Germany and the
French writer Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, whose Paul et Virginie (1787) anticipated some
of the sentimental excesses of 19th-century Romantic literature. Positive as it was, the
influence of Rousseau must also be seen as a partly negative reaction against 18th-
century rationalism with its emphasis on intellect.
Trend
• Belief in self-knowledge was, indeed, a principal article of Romantic faith. Late
18th-century French writers such as Fabre d’Olivet sought to explain the physical
world by an idea of a “breath of life” similar to the “inspiration” of Wordsworth
and Coleridge. The Romantics believed that the real truth of things could be
explained only through examination of their own emotions in the context of
nature and the primitive. Because of this emphasis on inspiration, the poet came
to assume a central role—that of seer and visionary. Simultaneously, such formal
conventions as imitation of the classics were rejected as binding rules. A new
directness of the poet’s role emphasized the language of the heart and of
ordinary men, and Wordsworth even tried to invent a new
simplified diction. Poetry became divorced from its 18th-century social context,
and a poet was answerable only to ultimate truth and himself. Two classic poses
of the Romantic poet were the mystic visionary of John Keats and the superman
of Lord Byron—indeed, satirization of the Byronic hero was to become a theme of
later novelists such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky, even though he himself had
Romantic antecedents.
Difference with basics
• The fact that Dostoyevsky was a Russian showed how the Romantic stream flowed
across Europe. In Spain and Italy, Hungary, Poland, and the Balkans, it took the form of
drama, which in England failed to produce great works. The early and middle 19th
century was a time of poetry and prose rather than of drama. The Romantic style in
poetry was seen everywhere in Europe—in José de Espronceda in Spain; Ugo
Foscolo and Giacomo Leopardi in Italy, where it became identified with nationalist
sentiments; Aleksandr Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov in Russia; Adam Mickiewicz in
Poland. In America, a Romantic thread also allied with the emergence of national
feeling could be seen in the adventurous stories of James Fenimore Cooper; in the
supernatural and mystic element in Edgar Allan Poe; in the poetry of Walt Whitman and
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; and in the Transcendentalist theories of Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, which, as Wordsworth’s pronouncements had
done, affirmed the power of “insight” to transcend ordinary logic and experience.
• The impetus of Romantic poetry began to slacken after about 1830 and gave way to
more objective styles, although many of its themes and devices, such as the
misunderstood artist or the unhappy lover, continued to be employed.
Post-Romanticism
• Arguably the first post-Romantic poet was a German, Heinrich Heine, but German
poetry in the mid-19th century mostly followed Wordsworth, though new tendencies
were to be found in August von Platen Hallermünde and an Austrian, Nikolaus Lenau.
The principal development was to be seen in France in the growth of a movement
known as Parnassianism. Originating with Théophile Gautier, Parnassianism in some
ways was an offshoot of Romanticism rather than a reaction against it. In concentrating
on the purely formal elements of poetry, on aesthetics, and on “art for art’s sake,” it
changed the direction of French poetry and had much influence abroad. Its most
illustrious representative was Charles Baudelaire, who believed that “everything that is
not art is ugly and useless.” Another branch of new development was the growth
of Impressionism and the Symbolist movement, a result of “borrowing” from
movements in painting, sculpture, and music. Paul Verlaine, foremost of the
Impressionists, used suggestion, atmosphere, and fleeting rhythms to achieve his
effects. Symbolism, a selective use of words and images to evoke tenuous moods and
meanings, is conveyed in the work of Stéphane Mallarmé and Arthur Rimbaud. The
advance of French poetry in the middle and later part of the century was an
achievement of individuals, based on invention of a personal idiom.
19 Cent
• The spread of education and, in England, of circulating libraries increased a
demand for novels. At the beginning of the 19th century Jane Austen had already
satirized the excesses of the Gothic novel, a harbinger of medievalizing
Romanticism in the latter part of the 18th century, in Northanger Abbey and the
conflict of sense and Romantic sensibility in Sense and Sensibility. In France the
conflict of intelligence and emotion appeared in the work of Benjamin
Constant (Adolphe, 1816) and most notably in Le Rouge et le noir (1830)
of Stendhal and later in Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857). The detailed
verbal scrupulousness and Realism exhibited in the work of Flaubert and
of Honoré de Balzac were carried forward by Guy de Maupassant in France
and Giovanni Verga in Italy; they culminated in the extreme Naturalism of Émile
Zola, who described his prose in novels such as Thérèse Raquin (1867) as “literary
surgical autopsy.”
Shift
• But Realism and nationalism seem irrelevant as descriptions of the great writers
of the period—for example, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Thomas Hardy in
England and Nikolay Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky,
and Anton Chekhov in Russia. In such writers there was a distinct bias toward
literature with a social purpose, stimulated by awakening forces of liberalism,
humanism, and socialism in many Western countries.
• A decline of the Romantic theatre into melodrama was fairly general in Europe,
and it was slower than the novel to take up problems of contemporary life. When
revival came, through the work of a Norwegian, Henrik Ibsen, Romantic conflicts
of visionary and realist, individual and society were restated, and this was true
also of the plays of August Strindberg in Sweden. In Russia a modern theatre
became a vital influence that could trace its beginnings back to
Gogol’s Government Inspector(1836) but was to be felt later in the century in
Turgenev’s Month in the Country (1850) and, above all, in the work of Anton
Chekhov, a great dramatist of the period.
The 20th Century
• When the 20th century began, social and cultural conditions that prevailed
in Europe and America were not too different from those of the middle and
late 19th century. Continuity could be seen, for example, in the work of
four novelists writing in English at the turn of the century and after. Joseph
Conrad, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, and D.H. Lawrence all demonstrated
in the progress of their work the transition from a relatively stable world at
the end of the 19th century to a new age that began with World War I. The
awakening of a new consciousness in literature was also to be traced in
such works of fiction as the first volume of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance
of Things Past (Swann’s Way, 1913), André Gide’s Vatican
Cellars (1914), James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), Franz Kafka’s Trial (published
posthumously in 1925), and Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain (1924).
Trends
• Various influences that characterized much of the writing from the 1920s were at work
in these writers. An interest in the unconscious and the irrational was reflected in their
work and that of others of about this time. Two important sources of this influence
were Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher to whom both Gide and Mann, for
example, were much indebted, and Sigmund Freud, whose psychoanalytical works, by
the 1920s, had had a telling influence on Western intellectuals. A shift away from 19th-
century assumptions and styles was not limited to writers of fiction. André
Breton’s first Manifeste du surréalisme (1924; “Manifesto of Surrealism”) was the first
formal statement of a movement that called for spontaneity and a complete rupture
with tradition. Surrealism showed the influence of Freud in its emphasis on
dreams, automatic writing, and other antilogical methods and, although short-lived as a
formal movement, had a lasting effect on much 20th-century art and poetry. The
uncertainty of the new age and the variety of attempts to deal with it and give it some
artistic coherence can be seen also in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies and Sonnets to
Orpheus (1923); in T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land (1922); and in Luigi Pirandello’s play about the
instability of identity, Henry IV (1922).
Contexts
• The international and experimental period of Western literature in the 1910s and
1920s was important not only for the great works it produced but also because it
set a pattern for the future. What was clearly revealed in the major works of the
period was an increasing sense of crisis and urgency, doubts as to the 19th
century’s faith in the psychological stability of the individual personality, and a
deep questioning of all philosophical or religious solutions to human problems. In
the 1930s these qualities of 20th-century thought were not abandoned but,
rather, were expanded into a political context, as writers divided into those
supporting political commitment in their writing and those reacting
conservatively against such a domination of art by politics. Nor did World War
II resolve the debate concerning political commitment—issues similar to those
that exercised major creative imaginations of the 1930s were still very much alive
during the last quarter of the century.
Developments
• It would be tempting to explain what seemed to be a relative scarcity of great writers in the
period after World War II as an inevitable result of the cumulative pressure of disturbing social
and technological developments accelerated by that war. Under such fluctuating and doubtful
circumstances, it would not seem altogether strange if writing and reading, as traditionally
understood, should cease. Indeed, in certain technologically highly developed countries, such
as the United States, the printed word itself seemed to some critics to have lost its central
position, having been displaced in the popular mind by a visual and aural
electronic culture that did not need the active intellectual participation of its audience. Thus
the communications media that helped to create something resembling an international
popular culture in many Western countries did nothing to make the question of literary value
easier to answer. Given the extraordinary conditions in which a modern writer works, it was
not surprising that reputations were difficult to judge, that radical experimentation
characterized many fields of literature, and that traditional forms of writing were losing their
definition and were tending to dissolve into one another. Novels might acquire many features
of poetry or be transformed into a kind of heightened nonfictional reportage, while
experimentation with typography gave poems an appearance of verbal paintings, and dramatic
works, shorn of anything resembling a traditional plot, became a series of carefully
orchestrated gestures or events. But formal experimentation was only part of the picture, and
to say that modern writing since World War II has been primarily experimental would be to
ignore other characteristics that writing acquired earlier in the century and that still continued
to be issues. Most good critics felt that there was no lack of good literature being written,
despite the lack of major reputations and despite the possibly transitional nature of much of
the period’s work in its variety of styles and subjects.
Romance languages
• Romance languages, group of related languages all derived
from Vulgar Latin within historical times and forming a subgroup of
the Italic branch of the Indo-European language family. The major
languages of the family
French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,
include
and Romanian, all national languages.
Create a worksheet on theme for assignment
Setting
https://www.britannica.com/art/setting
Setting
• Setting, in literature, the location and time frame in which the action
of a narrative takes place.
• Suitable scenery, costume and props should assist the audience to
recognize the setting straight away.
• CR: 6:55
• TBWTSP: 1:24:25
Setting
• The makeup and behaviour of fictional characters often depend on
their environment quite as much as on their personal characteristics.
• environment determines character
• Whatever the locale of his work, every true novelist is concerned with
making a credible environment for his characters, and this really
means a close attention to sense data—the immediacies of food and
drink and colour—far more than abstractions like “nature” and “city.”
- the inglorious bastards ?????
Aspects of setting
• The physical location – P&P, Dickens
• Time – LOTR – sci fi,
• The social milieu – restoration comedy
• Is the setting wealthy or poor? Homogenous or diverse? Are things improving
or getting worse?
• Change – over the period of time - the same place
Function of setting
• Give physical form to a theme that runs throughout the narrative.
• Opening of TIOBE
• Reflect or emphasize certain character traits belonging to people who inhabit

certain settings
• Indicate the social and economic statuses of their characters, as well as how
those characters do or do not conform to those statuses.
• Create a source of pressure or stress (conflict) that causes characters to act in a
certain way.
• Opening of COAS
Brainstorming
• Locale - a place or locality especially when viewed in relation to a particular event or
characteristic
• McDonald, restaurant, kitchen – do they mean the same
• Same education, same economic status, parents understanding and sympathetic/

parents strict and imposing – WHAT CREATES THE DIFFERENCE
• Same family, same parents, same status, two children (both boys/ girls) – ARE THEY
SAME – YES/NO – WHY
• Does difference mean bad – uneducated/educated – challenges and strengths - JOB

Point of view
Point of view
• Point of view is a reflection of the opinion an individual from real life

or fiction has.
• Point of view is the angle of considering things, which shows us the
opinion or feelings of the individuals involved in a situation. In
literature, point of view is the mode of narration that an author
employs to let the readers “hear” and “see” what takes place in a
story.
Types
• First person (WHO) • Omniscient (HOW MUCH) – TSOTL
• Second person • Limited – COAS, TBITSP
• Third person
• Objective (HOW) – WAP, GWTW • Direct – straightforward (IN WHAT WAY)

• Subjective – SL- GWTW, NCFTOM • Indirect – sub text – PIRATES, NCFOM
(2:45, 4:30) (21:00)
Function of Point of View
• Point of view is an integral tool of description in the author’s hands to
portray personal emotions or characters’ feelings about an
experience or situation. Writers use a point of view to express
effectively what they want to convey to their readers.
Viewpoint: the means of perception
• The means of perception defined – an old man, a student, a street vendor
• Variations in the means of perception – different people in the same situation
• First vs third person and the spectrum they represent
• The focus of the story
• The means of perception, person, and focus seen as the three basic options
• Revising and reviewing these options
Worksheet: perspective
Five Perception Person (ch) Focus (ch’s) Perception Person Focus
incidents (ch’s) (Your) (Your) (Your)
that catch
your
attention
1
5
Adaptation Studies
at a
Crossroads
Thomas Leitch
Adaptation Studies at a Crossroads
• After years of being stuck in the backwaters of the academy, adaptation
studies is on the move
• A decade’s worth of pioneering work by
– Brian McFarlane,
– Deborah Cartmell,
– Imelda Whelehan,
– James Naremore and
– Sarah Cardwell
• on the relation
– between film adaptations and their literary antecedents (all movies we will discuss in the class)
» culminated in the publication of Robert Stam’s three volumes on adaptation, two of them co-
edited with Alessandra Raengo, in 2004 and 2005.
• The monumental project of Stam and Raengo sought
– to reorient adaptation studies decisively
– from the fidelity discourse (characters and events)
• universally attacked by theorists as far back as George Bluestone to a focus on Bakhtinian
intertextuality
• — with each text, avowed adaptation or not,
• afloat upon a sea of countless earlier texts (we have read it somewhere else)
• from which it could not help borrowing
• — and this attempt was largely successful.
• If Stam and Raengo had any notion of settling the
fundamental questions (student’s response) of adaptation
studies,
– however, they must have been surprised to find that their impact
was precisely the opposite
– Instead of redrawing the field,
– they have stirred the pot,
– provoking a welcome outburst of diverse work on adaptation.
• This essay seeks to map this latest round of work in four
categories:
– collections of new essays, textbooks, monographs
– focusing on the relation
– between adaptation and appropriation (Acknowledgement???)
– and more general monographs on adaptation
• Much of this latest work,
– as might be expected of writers on adaptation,
– is not wholly new
• Ever since its inception half a century ago,
– adaptation studies has been haunted by concepts and
premises
– it has repudiated in principle
– but continued to rely on in practice
• The most obvious of these is prominently on display in the title
of anthology by Cartmell and Whelehan, The Cambridge
Companion to Literature on Screen.
• We might ask (specific to your movie)
– what is literature on screen?
– If it is on screen, is it still literature?
– If it is literature, how can it be cinema as well?
– And why would anyone want to claim that it is both?
• Contemporary critics of adaptation
– who enshrine literature at the heart of their subject
– increasingly find themselves grappling with the
consequences of that decision
• Cartmell and Whelehan assert in their Introduction

that
– ‘ it’s vital that literature and film be distinguished from
literature on film ’ (examples from the prescribed movie)
– and acknowledge that ‘ the latter, the subject of this
book,
– has historically privileged the literary over the cinematic’
• They salute
– the ‘ desire to free our notion of film adaptations
– from this dependency on literature
– so that adaptations are not derided
– as sycophantic, derivative, and therefore inferior (not but
different)
– to their literary counterparts ’ (1 – 2)
• Yet they seem not to recognize
– the extent of the logical problems
– the phrase ‘ literature on screen ’ evokes
• If Cambridge issued a companion to cinema in literature,
– readers would probably expect a collection
– or an analysis of stories that cited movies,
– and not a collection of prose fiction
– that was at the same time cinema in another form
• But ‘ literature on screen ’ suggests
– something more capacious and defining than citation
• : the possibility that literary adaptations are at once cinema and literature
• Beneath this contradictory notion of film adaptations
– as not merely hybrid texts
– but texts holding dual citizenship
– in two modes of presentation
– is an even more pervasive legacy
– that haunts adaptation studies
• : the assumption that the primary context within which adaptations are to be studied is
literature (does not suit to the medium)
• Even though a growing number of films eligible for Academy Awards for
Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
– borrow that material from print journalism,
– franchise characters, television series, comic books, video games and toys,
– academic studies of adaptation
– remain stubbornly attached to literature
– as cinema’s natural progenitor
• It is as if adaptation studies,
– by borrowing the cultural cachet of literature,
– sought to claim its institutional respectability and gravitas
– even while insuring adaptation’s enduring aesthetic and methodological
subordination to literature proper (different does not necessarily mean better
or worse)
• The most notable contributions to the 1999 anthology of Cartmell
and Whelehan Adaptation: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text
included Will Brooker’s essay on Batman films and Ken Gelder’s on
The Piano, which ‘ attracted the kind of sustained analytical
criticism which worked to designate it as “ literary, ” even though it
was not actually an adaptation ’ (157).
• But their new collection, which concludes with a section titled
‘Beyond the “ Literary, ” ’
– consistently balances cinema against literature,
– as if the two terms carried equal weight (individual identities)
• Because ‘ literature’, unlike ‘ cinema’,
– is already an honorific,
– however, any discussion of literature on screen,
– as opposed to journalism or comic books or video games on screen,
– will begin willy-nilly with a bias in favour of literature
– as both a privileged field (literary texts are what movies normally adapt)
– and an aesthetically sanctified field (aesthetic differences)
• (literary texts have already been approved by a jury whose verdict on their film
adaptations is still out)
• Finally, despite the best efforts of Cartmell and
Whelehan and virtually every other theorist of
adaptation past and present,
– the field is still haunted by the notion
– that adaptations ought to be faithful to their ostensible
source texts (why?)
• Reviewing a few of the many taxonomies
(classifications/nomenclature) of adaptation
– that seek to measure
– how closely the film follows the book, they acutely
observe
• : ‘ Hidden in these taxonomies are value judgements
• and a consequent ranking of types,
• normally covertly governed
• by a literary rather than cinematic perspective (why)
• What fascinates us here is
– not so much the taxonomies themselves …
– but this will to taxonomize ,
– which is symptomatic (indicative) of how the field
– has sought to map out its own territory ’ (2)
• There is no logical reason
– why a division of adaptations into borrowing,
intersecting and transforming,
– to take Dudley Andrew’s tripartite division (98) as
typical,
– must involve relative value judgements
• Certainly, Kamilla Elliott’s six approaches to adaptation
– — psychic,
– ventriloquist,
– genetic,
– de(re)composing,
– incarnational and
– trumping (133 – 83) —
• carry no implication that any of them are better than the others
• What is most remarkable in the will to taxonomize is
two other tendencies.
– First is
• the frequency with which it gets entangled
• with gratuitous value judgements
• that are not required by the taxonomy but sneak in under its cover,
• as if the will to taxonomize were only a mask for the will to evaluate
– Second is
• the continued determination of adaptation studies
• with the world all before it to define its field
• with primary reference to its closeness to literature
• Of all the ways to classify adaptations,
– surely the decision to classify them
– as more or less faithful to their putative sources,
– especially by critics who insist that Julia Kristeva, Mikhail
Bakhtin and Robert Stam
– have persuaded them that there is no such thing as a
single source for any adaptation,
– is one of the most fruitless (why classify it according to
the parameters of another medium??)
• The challenge for recent work in adaptation studies, has been
– to wrestle with the un-dead spirits
– that continue to haunt it
– however often they are repudiated
• : the defining context of literature,
• the will to taxonomize
• and the quest for ostensibly analytical methods and categories
– that will justify individual evaluations
• Adaptation theory
– cannot simply ignore these figures
• because they are to a great extent the material of the field,
• and new entrants cannot locate themselves without reference to them
(practical problem)
• So other strategies are necessary.
• Some recent theorists,
– seeking to turn their backs on these spirits
– by changing the subject,
– remain haunted by them
• Others accept their presence
– more or less willingly
– and find their work accordingly limited
• Still others attempt
– to manage the contradictions they raise,
• as Cartmell and Whelehan do with varying success in their Introduction and
the organization of their collection
• These contradictions
– between the desire to break new ground in adaptation studies
– and the constraints of a vocabulary
• that severely limits the scope and originality of new contributions
– are often frustrating,
• especially to readers
• who think that they are encountering the same essay over and over and
over
• with only the names of novels and their film adaptations changed
• Increasingly, however,
– the very same contradictions have generated productive debate
• Absent the silver bullet
– that will free adaptation studies from the dead hand of
literature, taxonomies (classification, nomenclature) and
evaluation, (impossible. Someone else would come and give
different names/words)
– the temptation to succumb to these orthodoxies
– is greatest in the essays commissioned for collections
• because the orthodoxies are built into the premise of each collection
• Just as The Cambridge Companion to Literature on
Screen promises
– a focus on adaptations of canonical literary texts,
• the titles of two volumes edited by R. Barton Palmer, Nineteenth-
Century American Fiction on Screen and Twentieth-Century American
Fiction on Screen ,
– strongly imply a disciplinary subordination of cinema to
literature (why??)
• Both the organization of each volume
– — the contributions are arranged chronologically
– in order of the literary originals ’ publication dates,
– not the dates of the films ’ release
– — and the focus of each essay on one or more
adaptations of a single canonical literary work
• reinscribe this subordination
• But it is not simply the organization of such
collections
– or the likely topics of the essays they collect
– that establishes a fundamentally conservative, based-on-
the-literary-text model for adaptation studies (why
should it be source specific ONLY?????/)
• The model goes far toward dictating the argument
of each individual contribution
• At the same time,
– a growing number of theorists represented in each of
five recent collections
– have been able to work within this model in ways
– that challenge its foundational assumptions
• It is especially revealing
– to categorize a representative selection of the
contributions
• to these five volumes
– according to the leading questions they raise, (what are
your questions related to your movie)
– from the least to the most interesting
1.
• 1. Does the movie in question betray its literary source?
• This is the question David Lavery asks about adaptations of
Moby-Dick , (TIOBE- opening) (TTM) (P&P)
– which he finds inadequate in fulfilling three prerequisites he lays
down
• : ‘ It must be humorous … .
• It must make Ishmael a prominent character and tell the story from his
point of view …
• it must be faithful to Moby-Dick’s metaphoric structure ’ (Palmer,
Nineteenth 101, 102, 103)
• and
• James M. Welsh asks about modern-dress Shakespeare
adaptations
– that jettison the Bard’s poetry on the grounds
– that ‘ a film that presumes to adapt poetic drama
– should at the very least be “ poetic ” in style and substance ’
(Welsh and Lev 112)
2.
• 2. Does a given adaptation seek to establish itself as
a transcription or an interpretation of its source?
(TIOBE – openings)
• Two contributions to
– Palmer’s Nineteenth-Century American Fiction on Screen
typify this approach: Paul Woolf ’s discussion of
adaptations of ‘ The Murders in the Rue Morgue’,
• which ‘ enter into debates over the issues raised in the original
texts ’ (57 – 58),
– and Brian McFarlane’s defence of Merchant Ivory’s The
Europeans (1979)
• as ‘ not so much tinkering with James but rather suggesting
another way of reading him ’ (185)
3.
• 3. Does the film depart from its literary source
because of new cultural or historical contexts it
addresses? (P&P; TTM - Ivanhoe)
• This very common approach,
– which excuses lapses in fidelity
• as expressions of changing cultural mores
• rather than concessions to a crass commercial medium,
• is best represented by three essays
– in Palmer’s Nineteenth-Century American Fiction on Screen : the
reconsideration of Martin Barker and Roger Sabin
» of the studio pressures that shaped the 1936 Last of the Mohicans
– Michael Dunne’s overview of film adaptations of The Scarlet Letter
– and Tony Williams’s account of adaptations of The Sea-Wolf
4.
• 4. If the movie transcends its original literary source,
– does that source,
– however fairly eclipsed by the movie,
– deserve closer consideration as interesting in its own right?
• Peter Lev’s reading
• of Boileau-Narcejac’s D’entre les morts (1954), the little-read source
of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958),
– uses its comparative reading to conclude
– that ‘ the most common paradigm for literature and film
adaptation studies
• [that is, adaptations of canonical literary works whose value can be
safely assumed]
– are not adequate to cover or explain many interesting cases ’
(Welsh and Lev 184)
5.
• 5. Is it possible for a film to recreate
– what might be assumed to be specifically literary aspects of its
source (is it essential??????????????)
– that challenge medium-specific models of adaptation
– by indicating unexpected resources the cinema
– brings to matters
– once thought the exclusive province of literature
• (almost always, in this case, the novel)?
• Wendy Everett’s analysis
• of Terence Davies’s 2000 adaptation of The House of Mirth contends that
Davies
– not only seeks to recreate the surfaces and dialogue of Edith
Wharton’s novel
– but also ‘ explores the silences and spaces of the novel ’ as well,
• even to the blank page separating Books 1 and 2 (Welsh and Lev 162)
6.
• 6. Is the movie as well as its source subject to cultural and historical
contextualization? (literal and visual have different reader/viewership )
• Two contributions to the collection of Welsh and Lev advance this argument
– : Linda Costanzo Cahir’s essay on adaptations of Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate (1959)
and
– C. Kenneth Pellow’s on adaptations of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (1955)
• The crucial distinction between this approach and that in #3 above
– is that contextual forces,
• from biographical circumstance to ideological assumptions,
– are assumed to play a pivotal role
• in shaping the source text as well as its adaptations,
• undermining its claims to stability and centrality
– in any debate about adaptations and their sources
• Lindiwe Dovey’s essay
• on Ramadan Suleman’s 1997 adaptation of Mdebele’s 1983 apartheid novella Fools
– explores this position further by contending
– that for many African filmmakers,
– the challenge of adaptation is
• ‘ not only … how to transfer literature to cinema’,
• but also ‘ how to represent a colonial past in a postcolonial present,
– thereby creating a history and identity ’ (Aragay 164)
7.
• 7. What questions about different kinds (which one)
of fidelity do adaptations of other sorts of texts
than canonical literary works raise?
• Four essays in the new collection
• by Cartmell and Whelehan
– focus on exactly this question
• : Judith Buchanan’s on silent adaptations of the Gospels,
• I.Q. Hunter’s on the particular sort of fidelity Peter Jackson and
his collaborators sought in adapting J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the
Rings (1954 – 55),
• Whelehan’s essay on adapting women’s novels like Olive
Higgins Prouty’s Now, Voyager (1941) to cinema and
• Cartmell’s on the ‘ rivalry ’ (179) between children’s books and
their film adaptations
8.
• 8. How do television adaptations
– challenge assumptions
– about the formal and institutional differences
– between verbal and audio-visual texts (audience
specific, more or less???)
– that might be overlooked in discussions
– that restricted themselves to literature and cinema?
• Sarah Cardwell,
• who had already argued warmly for the distinctive aesthetic
strategies of televisual adaptations in Adaptation Revisited
(2002),
– offers a bracing polemic on the same subject
• in her contribution to Cartmell and Whelehan
9.
• 9. How do adaptations
– based on non-literary or non-fictional sourcetexts
– similarly enlarge the range of adaptation studies
– by revealing the parochialism of theories
– that restrict their examples to films based on fictional
texts?
• Three contributors to Welsh and Lev
– offer three different approaches to this question:
• Joan Driscoll Lynch through biography, (which movie)
• Frank Thompson through history and, (which movie)
• most trenchant and provocative of all, William Mooney
through memoir (which movie)
10.
• 10. How are models of adaptation
– that assume the primacy of literary texts
– challenged by the phenomenon of novelizations
– based on cinematic sourcetexts? (which aspect are cinema
specific)
• Jan Baetens,in Cartmell and Whelehan, argues
– that novelization challenges
– all binary, text-tointertext models of adaptation
– and ‘ forces us to consider cinema and literature
– in the global (mass) media structure of our time
– and to tackle the various ways
– in which media complete and contaminate each other,
– without losing their specific features ’ (236 – 37)
11.
• 11. How must models of adaptation be modified (which models?????????)
– to account for movies
– that demonstrably draw on other sources than their putative sourcetexts,
– some of them perhaps even more important in determining its textual
strategies?
• Many recent essayists mention this problem, but three are especially
noteworthy.
– Stephen Railton reveals the debt film adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
owe to ‘ the “ Tom Shows” ’ (Palmer, Nineteenth 63), unauthorized dramatic
adaptations that shaped Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel to their own ends.
– John Style suggests that Dirk Bogarde’s ‘ queer performance as [Sydney] Carton
’ in Ralph Thomas’s 1958 Tale of Two Cities expresses an indeterminacy in the
hero’s character more fully than Charles Dickens does and so ‘ is more faithful
to Dickens’s main source, Carlyle’s account of the French Revolution‘, than the
novelist himself (Aragay 85).
– In his essay on Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), Donald Whaley
extends this argument still further in his demand that ‘ fully illuminating the
meaning of a text requires exploring all of the sources of the text, not only
earlier texts but social sources as well ’ (Welsh and Lev 48).
12.
• 12. When films self-consciously raise questions about
their own status as adaptation, (infusion????????)
– what general implications do they offer adaptation studies?
• This is the specific appeal of adaptations
– that incorporate figures or features of the author or the
author’s biography (e.g., Patricia Rouzema’s Mansfield Park ,
1998).
• Steffen Hantke uses David Cronenberg’s adaptation of Naked Lunch ,
• which combines adaptation and biography more slyly and radically,
• to explore the consequent challenges the film poses for
Cronenberg’s contradictory status as a filmmaker
• with ‘ high modernist ambitions ’
• who nonetheless ‘ work[s] within commercial cinema ’ (Palmer,
Twentieth 176)
13.
• 13. What implications do characteristic features frequently found in
adaptations carry for more general theories of intertextuality?
• Aragay’s collection includes three essays that address this question directly.
– Karen Diehl, extending the analysis of authorfigures in adaptations, concludes
– that such adaptations recanonize the canonical texts they adapt
– even as they enable a critique of the original author’s authority
• Aragay and Gemma López,
• in their examination of elements of contemporary romance in Simon Langton’s 1995 BBC
adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and Sharon Maguire’s 2001 adaptation of Helen
Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996),
– call adaptation ‘ a prime instance of cultural recycling,
– a process which radically undermines any linear, diachronic understanding of
cultural history ’ (201)
• Celestino Delayto’s essay on the cinematic narrators
• of Bridget Jones’s Diary and Stephen Frears’s High Fidelity (1999)
– poses questions about
• the fragmentary nature of film narrators and
• the different relations they have to genre imperatives and
• notions of identity that range far beyond adaptation studies
14.
• 14. How do concepts commonly treated by
adaptation theorists as universal change when they
cross national and cultural borders? (ex. Godfather?)
• Eckart Voigts-Virchow enlarges and complicates
– the notion of heritage cinema
– by contrasting
• the valence of heritage in English culture with the German
notion of Heimat ,
• which ‘ smacks of anti-internationalism, anti-Marxism, anti-
Enlightenment, anti-capitalism, anti-urbanism, and military
aggression ’ (Cartmell and Whelehan 126)
15.
• 15. How must models of adaptation change
– to accommodate novels
– that formally and economically usurp the place
– traditionally accorded movies?
• Cartmell and Whelehan attack this problem
– by considering the ways
– in which Harry Potter novels have made successful
adaptations virtually impossible
– because they ‘ have been marketed and constructed
– as if they were the films ’ and so have ‘ usurped the role of
the film even before the film was released ’ (Aragay 39, 48),
– opening fascinating new lines of inquiry
– about what constitute the cinematic qualities of cinema and
the bookishness of books
• Arranging these essays according to
– the increasingly pointed questions they raise
– suggests that the future of adaptation studies is
– best indicated by essays
– that either challenge the still prevailing model of book-into-film
• — a model which dictates most of the interchangeable titles of monographs
and collections on film adaptation —
– or raise more interesting questions,
• questions that are more productive of further, still more probing questions
• Essays that are organized around the question of
– whether or not a given film is better than the book on which it is based
– or whether its changes were dictated by concessions to a mass audience
– or expressions of changing cultural mores
– may be accomplished and persuasive in advancing their claims about
– the adaptation at hand,
– but they are unlikely to play a leading role in advancing adaptation
studies
– as it struggles to emerge from the disciplinary umbrella of film studies
– and the still more tenacious grip of literary studies
• They are limited
– not because they give incorrect answers to the questions they pose,
– but because those questions themselves are so limited in their general
implications.
• Is the movie as good as the book?
– Hardly ever, but even if it is,
– the question is still reducible to thumbs-up or thumbs-down
• Even if the book won a decisive victory in any given competition,
– the cost would be great,
– for, as Pedro Javier Pardo Garcia points out,
– ‘ very poor films … can make for very interesting adaptations ’ (Aragay 238)
– that could shed much-needed light on problems of adaptation
– if the films were not overlooked simply
– because they were unsuccessful
• Does the movie attempt to replicate or interpret the book?
– Almost never simply the first; more often than not, a combination of the two.
• Is the movie subject to contextual pressures that inflect its meanings?
–Of course it is. So is the book.
• If the future of adaptation studies is best illuminated
– by looking at the questions
– most likely to lead it away
– from its dependence
– on one-to-one comparisons between specific adaptations
and works of literature,
– a category that provides
• both a repository of privileged intertexts
• and a touchstone of value for new texts,
– it is hardly surprising to find that two recent textbooks on adaptation
aimed at undergraduate students more often
– look back toward this old model than forward to new
questions.
• Their titles — Adaptation: Studying Film and Literature by John M.
Desmond and Peter Hawkes and
• Literature into Film: Theory and Practical Approaches by Linda
Costanzo Cahir —
– accurately indicate their dyadic approach to adaptation
– as ‘ the transfer of a printed text in a literary genre to film’ (Desmond and
Hawkes 1)
• Both follow years of theoretical practice in dividing
adaptations into three categories —
– ‘ close,
– loose, or
– intermediate ’ (Desmond and Hawkes 3)
– or
– ‘ literal,
– traditional, or
– radical ’ (Cahir 17)
• — depending on the degree of freedom with which they treat
their sourcetexts.
• Both warn against
– the heresies of ‘ faithfulness ’ (Cahir 15)
• as an evaluative touchstone
– and encourage students to keep open minds in weighing
adaptations against their sources
• Both include material that
– enlarges the book-to-film model,
– Desmond and Hawkes brief chapters
• considering the narrative tropism of commercial cinema and
• reviewing common terms for the study of literature and film,
– Cahir more substantial chapters on the relation between
• literary and cinematic language,
• the collaborative nature of commercial cinema, and
• the different ways of writing about film
• Both provide
– many useful lists of adaptations and
– many questions for study or debate
• Yet because both
– are dominated by a transfer model that
– closes off alternative possibilities,
– neither offers
• either a model of adaptation superior to the fidelity discourse
they reject
• or a mode of inquiry likely to lead to better questions or better
models
• Desmond and Hawkes are at their best
– in discussions of
– what particular strategies filmmakers adapt
– when they attempt to put literature on screen
• Novels have to be made shorter,
• short stories have to be made longer and
• stage plays have to be opened up
• This much is obvious,
– but Desmond and Hawkes
– detail these processes in ways that are often illuminating
• Cinematic adaptations of short stories, for example,
– can expand their material to feature length by one of
three strategies
• Filmmakers who follow the ‘concentration strategy ’ (128)
– produce films like Robert Siodmak’s 1946 adaptation of The Killers ,
– which begins by following Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 story almost line by
line
– before going off for the rest of its length in a completely new direction
• Those who adopt the ‘ interweaving strategy ’
– retain the leading elements of the story at hand
– but ‘ disperse those elements throughout the film …
– and interweave either invented elements or expansions on already
existing elements ’ (133),
– as Frank Perry does in The Swimmer (1964)
• In the ‘ point of departure strategy ’
– exemplified by Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of his brother Jonathan’s
story ‘ Memento Mori ’ to Memento (2001),
– ‘ the filmmakers drop most of the narrative elements from the short
story …
– and … invent a new story ’ based on the remaining elements (136, 137)
• After outlining these three approaches,
– Desmond and Hawkes
– conclude with an enlightening discussion of the ways
– Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) & Michelangelo
Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966)
– combine them
• Their requisite chapters on adapting novels, stories and
plays
– are supplemented by welcome discussions of the challenges
– of adapting non-fiction to docudramas and literary texts to
cartoons, and
– they conclude with a splendidly contentious discussion
– of ‘ the failed adaptation ’ (231),
– the one chapter that seems likely to incite productive
disagreement
– about why adaptations fail and what counts as failure
• The certainty of Desmond and Hawkes about these
questions, however,
– points to the principal limitation of their book: its
conceptual timidity
• Although they do not take sides in defining
– close, loose and intermediate adaptations —
– ‘ we use fidelity not as an evaluative term that measures
the merit of films,
– but as a descriptive term
– that allows discussion of the relationship between two
companion works ’ (2 – 3)
– — they consider adaptations only in terms of
– their relationships to specific sourcetexts
– whose elements they simply ‘ keep, drop, or add ’ (51)
• Their laudable attempts
– to avoid categorical pronouncements about adaptation
– sometimes lead to waffling
– that undermines their authority
– without raising correspondingly provocative questions,
– as when they observe that
• ‘ [a]lthough these adaptations [of Merchant Ivory] succeed in
varying degrees,
– critics complain that some of them
– stress the visual splendor of costumes, houses,
furnishings, and grand settings
– at the expense of drama ’ (242)
• They offer a wealth of discussion questions,
– but many of these questions are coercively leading.
– ‘ Take a descriptive sentence from any literary text’, they
suggest. ‘
• Draw the scene … .
– Compare your version to other students ’ drawings.
– What do the various versions say about the possibilities
of faithful adaptation? ’ (47)
• Such questions make it unlikely
– that students will learn anything about adaptation
– that Desmond and Hawkes do not already know
• Cahir’s textbook has several advantages over that of
Desmond and Hawkes.
– It is more original, more literate and more ambitious in
its aim
• : ‘ to increase the skill with which its readers apprehend,
appreciate, and express themselves about film,
• specifically films that are based on literary sources ’ (7)
– She makes no bones about her own aesthetic critical
orientation,
• which provides both her book’s
– most appealing strength
– and its sharpest limitation.
• It generates a rubric of four criteria she urges
students to apply about every film adaptation :
– 1. The film must communicate definite ideas concerning
• the integral meaning and value of the literary text, as the
filmmakers interpret it
– 2. The film must exhibit a collaboration of filmmaking
skills …
– 3. The film must demonstrate an audacity to create a
work
• that stands as a world apart,
• that exploits the literature in such a way that a self-reliant, but
related, aesthetic offspring is born
– 4. The film cannot be so self-governing
• as to be completely independent of or antithetical to the
source material (263) (good points)
• This is admirably direct, but it raises two problems
– The first concerns several contradictions
• in which it ensnares Cahir
• when she fails to live up to the boldness of her own
programme,
– the second the most important word in the programme
itself
• Like Desmond and Hawkes, Cahir distinguishes
– three modes of adaptation — in her case,
– literal,
– traditional and
– radical — and
• like Desmond and Hawkes, she argues that
– each has its distinctive standards, rewards and pitfalls
• Cahir’s rubric, however, makes it clear that
– she favours traditional adaptations over literal adaptations
that
– lack ‘ the audacity to create a work that stands as a world
apart ’
– and radical adaptations that are ‘ so self-governing as to be
completely independent of or antithetical to the source
material’
• Hence, her analyses of
• both John Huston’s literal adaptation of Moby-Dick (1956) and
• Millard Webb’s radical 1926 adaptation The Sea Beast are both
– significantly more minatory than her more extended analysis of Franc
Roddam’s traditional three part 1998 adaptation for the USA Network
• In practice, Cahir’s rubric establishes
– traditional adaptation as a norm
– from which literal and radical adaptations depart at their
peril
• Cahir argues that
– ‘ [t]he first step in exploring the merits of literature-
based films is to
– see them as translations of the source material and
– to understand the difference between “ adaptation ” and
“ translation ” ’
• Adaptation involves
– the changes in structure or function a given entity
• makes to survive in a new environment,
– translation the generation of ‘ a fully new text — a
materially different entity ’ —
• through ‘ a process of language ’ (14)
• It is not clear, however,
– what bearing this distinction would have on adaptation
studies,
– because Cahir sometimes complicates or contradicts it,
– as when she observes that in the most successful
adaptations,
– ‘ the literary text is strip-mined
– for the riches the filmmakers can use
– to promote their own vision of the work ’ (97),
– a figure few translators would apply to their own labours
• Nor do most readers expect translations to a new
language to
– ‘ communicate definite ideas ’ about the work at hand, as
Cahir’s rubric demands
• Adaptations engage in
– a wider variety of cultural tasks than the metaphor of
translation can explain (the most powerful observation)
• The most distinctive feature of Cahir’s praxis, however,
– is not her preference for any particular mode of adaptation
– or the occasional inconsistency of her analogy between film
adaptation and translation,
– but rather her detailed demands about what adaptations
ought to do
• Her rubric, which she calls
– ‘ a theoretical framework for understanding & evaluating any
literature-based film ’ (9),
– is dominated, like Lavery’s essay on adaptations of Moby-
Dick , by the word must , and
– even Cahir’s most subtle and expansive analyses of individual
adaptations,
• from Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985) to Martin Scorsese’s The Age of
Innocence (1993),
• are everywhere informed by her judgements about whether they are
toeing the mark
• As a result, all the analytical skills she seeks
– to develop in students are subordinated
– to the comparative judgements
– she wants them to make more discriminatingly
• Not surprisingly, then, many of Cahir’s study questions
are
– simply evaluative, leading, or both
• : ‘ The opening shots of The Killers compose a sequence that is
generally regarded as one of the very best in movie history. Why? ’
(223)
• Like Desmond and Hawkes, Cahir is most doctrinaire in
her questions,
– which persistently lead backwards to aesthetic certitudes
– rather than forwards to more productive questions about the
dynamics of adaptation
• The logical place to look for these questions
– is not in essays commissioned for book-to-film anthologies
• (although it is gratifying to find so many of them arising there) or
– introductory college textbooks but in full-length monographs
• Several recent books hold the particular promise
– of exploring the relations between adaptation
– as a specific practice and
– the wide array of activities commonly included within the
notion of intertextuality
• — or, as Gérard Genette would call it, transtextuality
• Two of them, both responding to
– Dudley Andrew’s call for ‘ adaptation studies
– to take a sociological turn ’ (104),
– focus on the relation between adaptation and appropriation,
– though in profoundly different ways
• Julie Sanders’s Adaptation and Appropriation is best
thought of
– as a cornucopia of questions, terms, ideas, readings and
suggestions
– for further research
• Undergraduates searching its pages for the
definition of adaptation
– that might seem to be implied by its status
– as the latest entry in Routledge’s New Critical Idiom
series,
– or indeed by a chapter titled ‘ What Is Adaptation? ’,
– will search in vain
• Sanders brings up the notion of adaptations as
– ‘ cinematic versions of canonical plays and novels ’ (23)
– only to contend that
– the concept is far more elastic,
– encompassing non-cinematic examples
– from Shakespearean musicals
• like George Abbott’s The Boys from Syracuse (1938), with its score by
Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart,
– to the Darwinian model of evolution
• The one constant she finds in all adaptations is
– an ‘ inherent sense of play,
– produced in part by our informed sense of similarity and
difference
– between the texts being invoked,
– and the connected interplay of expectation and surprise ’ (25)
• But this sense of play, she readily acknowledges,
– is central to appropriations as well
• For Sanders, appropriation is
– a more general term than adaptation
• Unlike adaptation, which ‘ signals
– a relationship with an informing sourcetext or original’,
• appropriation ‘ frequently affects
– a more decisive journey away from
– the informing source into a wholly new cultural product
and domain ’
– that ‘ may or may not involve a generic shift ’
– and may or may not explicitly acknowledge this
relationship (26)
• Her distinction between ‘ embedded texts ’ (27)
• like Sam and Bella Spewack’s Kiss Me Kate,
• with its Cole Porter score (1949, filmed 1953 by George
Sidney),
• and the ‘ sustained appropriation ’ (32) of Graham Swift’s Last
Orders (1996)
– is less valuable as an act of categorization than as a
springboard
– for further ruminations about how ‘ Kiss Me Kate
• is both an adaptation and an appropriation ’ (29)
– and questions about whether
• Swift’s relation to William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (1930)
• is better described as appropriation or plagiarism
• As Sanders traverses examples from
• novels and plays, folktales and fairy tales,
• appropriations of Ovid and Shakespeare,
• and the novels of Graham Swift, to which she repeatedly returns,
– her argument, whose progression from chapter to chapter is
always clear,
– begins to shimmer and dissolve within individual chapters,
– each of them an endless stream of provocative examples and
apercus
– about the rewriting of master narratives from new points of
view,
• Peter Carey’s appropriation of the Victorian era in Jack Maggs
(1997),
– and the ways that the writing of history,
• itself ‘ a history of textualities’,
– depends on appropriation (146)
• Arguing that adaptation studies would do well
– to replace its preferred model,
• ‘ the rather static or immobilizing discussion of source or
influence ’ (154 – 55),
– with ‘ a more active vocabulary ’ (38),
– she proposes forward- looking models
• ranging from J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations
• to jazz riffs to the genetic code of DNA
• that emphasize recreation and regeneration
• Her sustained attempt to peer over the horizon is so
compelling
– that even her omissions become productive
– Why is there no mention of restagings or revivals of
dramatic works?
– What place do performance media like music and dance
have in her account of texts constantly renewed through
acts of appropriation?
– What is the relation between the copies of master
paintings apprentice artists produce and the copies or
inventions that forgers pass off as genuine?
– What place do adaptation and appropriation have in
disciplines that fancy themselves progressive, like
science and literary criticism?
• In raising questions like these, Sanders produces
– a stellar example of that rare species,
– a forward-looking handbook
• Sanders’s opposite number is Jennifer M. Jeffers,
– who ends by describing herself with some irony as
• ‘ dangerously veer[ing] toward the ledge of Conservative Right – reading ’ (233)
• The organization of Britain Colonized: Hollywood’s Appropriation
of British Literature is as far from Sanders’s fusillade of
provocations, passing observations and loose ends as any editor
could wish.
• The argument economically set forth in Jeffers’s subtitle could not
be clearer.
• Neither could her tone.
• From James Ivory’s Remains of the Day (1993) to Neil LaBute’s
Possession (2002), she finds that
– the American perspectives and values typical of contemporary
adaptations have
– colonized England and English literature,
– replacing the specifically nationalistic concerns of
• Bridget Jones’s Diary and Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity (1995)
– with American views of history, literature and sexual politics —
– or, even more insidiously, with a spuriously ‘ Americanized universality ’
(202)
• Jeffers’s reaction to this wholesale appropriation is
incredulous outrage.
• In half a dozen closely reasoned chapters, she
demonstrates that
– one British novel after another has been Americanized in
its film adaptation,
– even if the adaptation, like Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting
(1996),
– is the work of British hands, for,
– as in heritage tours of Britain aimed at American
tourists,
– ‘ Britain reterritorializes itself in the image of an
American film-set on location in Britain ’ (233)
• Anthony Minghella’s 1996 adaptation of The English Patient
trades
– Michael Ondaatje’s searching dramatization of colonial tensions
– in the figure of the Sikh sapper Kip
– for a single-minded emphasis on the doomed romance of
• Count Ladislaus de Almasy and Katharine Clifton,
• a romantic melodrama typical of ‘ the best Academy Award – winning “
tear-jerkers ” ’ (130)
• The casting of the American Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones
– is only the most obvious sign of the film’s surrender to the United
States,
– beginning with its adoption of a romantic comedy formula
– designed specifically to appeal to Americans
• And ‘ [w]ith [Stephen Gyllenhaal’s 1992 film adaptation of
Graham Swift’s] Waterland ,
– but more so with High Fidelity ,
– the British content is simply obliterated ’ (176)
• This indictment is certainly true,
– but readers who do not share Jeffers’s outrage are likely
– to find it unnecessarily detailed, repetitive and familiar
– from dozens of Sunday newspaper columns
• As her frequent references to
• ‘ global capitalist axiomatics’ (227) attest,
– Jeffers does not write like a columnist.
• But her capacity for moral dudgeon is equally great,
• as when she observes that
– ‘ Americans cannot really perform Shakespeare ’ (218) or
– that Bridget Jones’s Diary and High Fidelity ‘ appear
– to fulfill a certain niche in a language, culture and society,
– but when deterritorialized for film,
– the reterritorialized product renders
– one of the novels as not even British ’ (193)
• Jeffers’s critique of Hollywood’s Americanization of
contemporary British fiction is
– smartly observed, exhaustively supported and cogently argued
• It is easy to sympathize with her furious denunciation of the ways
– John Madden’s Shakespeare in Love (1998) remakes
– ‘ the greatest poet of the English language’
– as a ‘ “ commercial entertainment ” writer ’ (221)
• But the very next sentence —
• ‘ Shakespeare is the finest and noblest in the English language, not “
entertainment” ’ —
– goes too far, establishing poetic drama and entertainment
– as not only distinct but mutually exclusive
• Jeffers’s description of herself as ‘ a critical vigilante ’
– whose book comes close to ‘ tak[ing] the law into its own hands ’ (228)
– shows an impassioned determination to turn back the clock
– on cultural appropriation
• (what gives someone the right to appropriate a novel clearly ordained to fill a
specific niche for its original audience?)
• and implies a correspondingly conservative attitude toward
adaptation studies
– far more backwards looking than anything in Desmond and Hawkes or
Cahir
• The pull between looking back and looking forward
– that produces both Jeffers’s denunciation
– and Sanders’s celebration of appropriation
– finds a more even-handed response in two more general surveys
by Linda Hutcheon and Christine Geraghty.
• I have already reviewed Hutcheon’s A Theory of Adaptation in
Literature/Film Quarterly ,
– but this essay would not be complete without some brief remarks
about her book
• Hutcheon, who approaches her subject
– not through a background in literature and film
– but from the context of earlier studies of parody, pastiche, opera
and intertextuality,
– identifies herself less closely with a field than a method
• : ‘ to identify a text-based issue
• that extends across a variety of media,
• find ways to study it comparatively,
• and then tease out the theoretical implications from multiple textual
examples ’ (xii)
• She looks backward in her
– unobtrusively displayed familiarity with earlier work in
adaptation studies
– and in the rigorous topical organization of her volume into
chapters
• that explore the who, what, when, where and why of adaptation
(more precisely, in Hutcheon’s case, the what, who, why, how, when
and where)
• At the same time, her decision
– to organize her study around
– a series of interconnected topics
– rather than a series of readings
– is a novelty that sets her book
– apart from the field as clearly as the attention she gives
– such non-cinematic examples
– as theatrical and radio plays, graphic novels, operas and
musicals
• Hutcheon is most forward looking in
– the arguments and assumptions she rejects
• : the emphasis on book-to-film adaptations,
• the aesthetic hierarchy that establishes literature
– as both the source of adaptations and the measure of their value
• and the definition of adaptations as a collection of products
• She shares these positions with most recent writers
– on adaptation
– but sees their implications more clearly
• If adaptation is not simply a series of transcriptions or
imitations,
– what is it? (the most imp. question)
• Hutcheon defines it alternatively as a creative process
– and, in parallel with Sanders, as a receptive process
– whereby adaptations are recognized and enjoyed as adaptations
– by audiences who are constantly invited to shift back and forth
– between their experience of a new story
– and their memory of its progenitors
• Such a shift, of course, is common in the reception of
many texts
– that are not adaptations,
– most notably in members of popular genres
– whose success depends on their audience’s knowledge of the
genre’s rules
– and their expectation
– that a given text will both invoke those rules and play with
them
• Acknowledging that adaptations ’ intertextual
strategies
– ally them with a vast number of other texts,
– perhaps with all texts, Hutcheon ends her survey
– not with a conclusion but with a pair of questions
• : ‘ What is not an adaptation? ’ (170)
• and ‘ What is the appeal of adaptations? ’ (172)
• Her emphasis on the ways readers and viewers
– enjoy experiences that combine familiarity with difference
– provides a compelling answer to the second question
– but not the first
• Although Hutcheon offers her own breakdown of
– what counts as adaptation
• (remakes, literary translations, musical transcriptions,
condensations, bowdlerizations, parodies, sequels, prequels,
commentaries, reviews and academic criticism)
– and what does not
• (brief allusions, music sampling, museum exhibits and presumably
specific performances of musical and theatrical texts),
• her categorizations are not especially persuasive,
– but they do not need to be,
– because the question is more valuable than any answer
• The same talent for raising productive questions
– comes out more unexpectedly
• in Christine Geraghty’s Now a Major Motion Picture: Film
Adaptations of Literature and Drama
• At first glance Geraghty’s book seems just another
– collection of case studies that might just as well
• have been commissioned from diverse hands
• But the assumptions with which
– Geraghty approaches her task,
– and the articles of faith she jettisons,
– distinguish her approach from the beginning
• In developing suggestions of Dudley Andrew & Robert Stam
– that adaptations are peculiarly layered texts,
– she implicitly agrees with Hutcheon that adaptation is
– a ‘ layering process [that] involves an accretion of deposits over
time,
– a recognition of ghostly presences,
– and a shadowing or doubling of what is on the surface by what is
glimpsed behind ’ (195)
• She proceeds to her analysis without the obligatory prologue
– reviewing earlier developments in adaptation study
– because such reviews ‘ too readily … lead to methods of analysis
– that rely on comparisons between original source and film ’
– and the attendant comparative evaluations (1)
• In a still more original stroke, she decides
– ‘ to remove the original book or play from the analysis ’
– in order to examine the ways ‘ adaptations can be understood
– without the crucial emphasis on literary origin ’ (194)
• This challenge sounds paradoxical,
– for how can adaptations be studied as adaptations
– without close attention to the novels and plays on which they are
based?
• Geraghty’s achievement lies in the variety of contextual
frames
– — history, genre, space, performance, marketing, reception —
– she develops to accomplish this task
• She considers the ways film versions of
– David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and Pride and Prejudice
– seek to establish their credentials as ‘ classic adaptations ’ (16)
– without any specific reference to textual fidelity.
• She examines the strategies films based on novels
– by Proust, Woolf and Joyce use to negotiate
– their double status as art films,
– which carry the cultural cachet of their originals, and heritage
cinema,
– with its more commercial aspirations
• Geraghty excels in close textual analysis,
– as she shows in examining the use of settings and camera setups
(imp.)
– to suggest or expand theatrical space
• in cinematic adaptations of Tennessee Williams’s plays
• But she is equally proficient in the contextual study
– demanded by her analysis of the generic positioning of two films
• based on contemporary novels by women,
– Wesley Ruggles’s Cimarron (1931) and Sidney Franklin’s The Good Earth (1937)
• Textual and contextual study meet
– in her discussion of the use of space, scene and publicity (Imp.)
• in two Westerns, Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans (1992) and Ang
Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005)
• and of the attempt by William Wyler’s The Heiress (1949),
• Terence Davies’s The House of Mirth (2000)
• and Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York (2002)
– to recreate the look of nineteenth-century New York
• Like Hutcheon, Geraghty leaves readers
– with plenty of unresolved questions.
• Her suggestion that ‘ popular and much-adapted
texts
– have to work with similarity and difference in a
movement
– that refers to but does not rely on knowledge of
previous versions ’ (42)
– opens the way to a debate about the relation between
– referring to previous texts, assuming some familiarity
with them, and
– relying on viewers ’ having read them
• Her approving citation of Catherine Grant’s
assertion that
– ‘ [t]here is no such thing … as a “secret”
adaptation’(3,197; cf. Grant 57)
– is bound to provoke further argument about Hutcheon’s
premise
– that an adaptation must be perceived as an adaptation
– in order to work as an adaptation
• Like Hutcheon, Geraghty extends the range of
intertextual contexts
– for adaptations so dramatically
– that she must leave unresolved the question of
adaptation’s relation to other intertextual modes
• A new collection of essays from Germany offers
– a tantalizing glimpse of the more distant future
• As its title suggests, Intermedialities ,
• edited by Werner Huber, Evelyne Keitel and Gunter Süss,
• is not about adaptation
– Of all its thirteen contributions, only two,
– Monika Seidl’s essay on the relation between the sitcom The Nanny and
ninteenth century English governess novels and
– Keitel’s essay on the parodistic treatment of Poe’s poem ‘ The Raven ’ in
the ‘ Treehouse of Terror ’ episode of The Simpsons ,
• could be called adaptation studies
• Instead, the contributors focus on an array of
– intertextual relations almost dizzying in their arbitrariness
• : the figure of Zorro, Baudrillard and the Matrix trilogy,
• Satanic and occult rock music,
• the reception aesthetics of audio books,
• the bogus commentary track Joel and Ethan Coen produced
– for the Director’s Cut DVD release of Blood Simple (1984)
• In their Introduction, the editors note that
– the term intermedium , first coined by Coleridge
• ‘to distinguish between person &personification in narrative
allegory’ (1),
• has, as Intermedialität , found wide acceptance in Europe
• but little in English language theory,
• even though it carries less unexamined metaphoric weight than
adaptation
• Their volume is not an attempt
– to break out of the imprisoning discourse
– that has often limited adaptation studies
• Instead, it seeks to dig a tunnel from the opposite
direction
– in the hopes of meeting the tunnel escapees
– like Sanders, Hutcheon and Geraghty who have been digging
away
• from the prison-house of adaptation studies
• In the face of such a clouded crystal ball,
– it would seem the height of folly
• to make any predictions or prescriptions
• about the crossroads at which adaptation studies finds itself
• Nonetheless, the temptation is irresistible.
• The most urgent item on the agenda is
– to shift evaluative problems the field has inherited from
literary studies
• — fidelity, hierarchy, canonicity —
– from the praxis of adaptation studies to part of its subject
• Instead of producing more anthologies of book-to-film
analyses,
– which populate the field more and more densely without
enlarging it,
– editors and publishers might consider collections
• that focus on specific problems in the production and reception of
adaptations
• and the relations between adaptation and other intertextual modes
• Theorists of adaptation could do a service
– to both themselves and their field
– by looking more closely at the ways adaptations
• play with their sourcetexts
– instead of merely aping or analyzing them
• Finally, theorists of adaptation would do well
– to explore more deeply the one context
– that ‘ takes pride of place in Anglo-American discussions of “
intermediality ” ’ (Huber et al. 5): media literacy.
• If adaptation studies can make a decisive contribution
to students ’
– “ ability to ‘ critically read and write with and across varied
symbol systems ” (Huber et al. 6; cf. Semali and Paillotet 6),
– it will have succeeded where
– literary studies has increasingly failed
BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus
Incident
Incident Meaning –
plurality
Noun
1. an instance of something happening; an event or occurrence.
– "several amusing incidents"
2. LAW a privilege, burden, or right attaching to an office, estate,

or other holding.
Adjective
1. liable to happen because of; resulting from.
– "the changes incident to economic development"
2. (especially of light or other radiation) falling on or striking

something.
– "when an ion beam is incident on a surface"

Process – relevance, aesthetics
• Identification
• Sifting
• Relevance
• Placement
• Execution
• The other end

Identification – need
• individual preference
• order of importance
– plot, ch, theme ?
• Individual
• Intertwined/ overlapping

Sifting -
• the degree of change

• relation to the whole
• functional/aesthetic

Relevance -
• information
• presentation
• revelation

Placement -
• at what point of time (beginning Bond Movies)

• impact
• connection to the previous and next

Execution -
• directorial
• histrionics
• place/location
• camera/editing

Incident – the other end
• how does the audience feel about it

Influencing factors
• Genres
• Budget
• Star cast
• Functional/purpose
• Makers – producer/director
• Real issues – feasibility – CGI ????

Worksheet
Order of the incidents (1- What/how is revealed Impact of it on the
15) audience

Character
Character – reaction of the author
• I was taken aback.
• I’d never thought about them coming to life I front of me on screen.
• How that would cheapen them, and what I’d meant for them, and to
them.
• I couldn’t give them over to someone else to recreate. Could I?
Character - thought of by the authors
• The story detailed actual people walking around inside my head, lining out
their lives, as I tried to flesh them out, know them to write most accurately
how they would react to certain situations that I created for them.
• She (Joyce Carol Oates) visualizes her characters and sees them I herself
and her life, but not necessarily as if it were a film in her mind.
ADAPTATION?????
• Film simply recreates a written story as it has been written.
• This is not the case in most instances and usually can’t be.
• Films have their own qualities, their own elements, that are used to put together
a narrative meant to have an impact, to move its audience.
• Authors – have concerns and fears

Reactions of the writers
• Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife)
• My official position on the movie is that I haven't seen it and I’m not planning to see it.
• I think the movie should have its chance, and that I should not be inflicting my views on
other people.
• I’d explored in my analysis of literary creation the influences that had affected the
invention of my novel:
• my imagination,
• my lived experiences,
• literary influences,
• critical analysis,
• strategy,
• cultural influences,
• the determination of my novel’s organization and structure,
• and ultimately, and which was still ongoing, revision.
Character
• Brush up from the previous slides
Character
• Refer to the forthcoming slides
Identify actor character
• actions,
• reactions,
• placements,
• selection and
• projection
Character - action
• Initiate – humanitarian, society, family, self – on all scales
• How to identify – what does the story cover?
• Direct influence, strong and unforgettable impact, backdrop – an integral part of life and
personality but does not become the root cause of the life adopted/ decisions taken
• FG
• SOTL – HOW – ANALYZE
• ITW – why not a reaction?
• Stuck – apply STAR analysis

Character – reactions
• Initiate – humanitarian, society, family, self – on all scales
• How to identify
• Not an initiation on their own – but a reaction to the situation or an event
• LOTR
• COAS – 30:10
Character – placement
• Against the oddities of life, choice, sacrifice/struggle, learning
Character - selection
• Which character to select
• Which aspect to select
• How much of that aspect is to be selected
• Why/ what impact it would have on the other characters, theme, plot
• Why/ what impact it would have on the audience
Character – projection
• Scenes
• Time
• Dialogue – NCFOM – 21:00
• Screen space –
• Relevance given to the actor – Ashley, SOTL – 1:15:00
Dialogue
Class 18
Outline
• Questions
• Types
• Need
Questions
• What is the context for this line?
• What is happening in the script at this moment?
• Describe each force (both external and internal) acting
on the character in this moment.
• Which of those forces are strongest?
• Which of those forces are weakest?
• How did the line of dialogue reflect the balance of
those forces?
• Are there any forces at work that were not reflected in
the line?
• In the line of dialogue, did the author miss an
opportunity to convey the full range of forces acting
upon the character?
Types
• Succinct
• Direct
• Narrative
• Implied
• Anaphora
• Chiasmus
• Stichomythia
• Understatement
Succinct
• Hey
• Huh
• Look
• What
• Huh
• Wow
Direct
• What are you looking for?
• I can not find my pen.
• Which pen are you looking for?
• The pen with the black cap.
Narrative (a description of events)
• The boy went out in search of food. On the
way, he noted a bag. First, he thought that it
was just a rag. But when he looked closely, he
found that it was a bag of money. He picked it
up. He got happy by the mere thought of full
stomach.
Implied
• She used to talk to everybody. Her smiles were
for everyone. Then, I gave orders and all
smiles stopped together.
Anaphora
• (a word/phrase repeated in successive clauses)
the girl …the girl…the girl….

Chiasmus
• Invert the order of the similar phrases
• Slowly goes the happiness – the trouble

comes dancing
Stichomythia
• Dialogue in alternate lines, often in verse, giving a
sense of rapid but controlled argument.
• Q. Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.

• H. Mother, thou hast thy father much offended.
• Q. Come, come you answer with an idle tongue
• H. Go, go you question with an wicked tongue.
Understatement
• A species of irony where the true magnitude of
an idea, event of fact is minimized or not stated.
• The idea is not bad.

Need
• Character revelation
• Action advancement
• Instrumental in action initiation
• Interest retention
• Aesthetic pleasure
Identify
• TIOBE –
– E Text
– Act 1 – 1:05
– DVD – 1:50
• P&P –
– 1940 – 2:15
– 1995 – 2:50
– 2005 – 3:40
 A SCREENPLAY is a written work that is made for a film or television
program.
 A scene wise description with visual and sound details along with
dialogue gives the screenplay.
 Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing

pieces of writing
 Screenplay can also be called as Script. Every screenplay is a script

but every scripts are not called screenplays.
 Genre
 Story
 Research
 Developing Characters
 Plot/Structure
 Conflicts
 Treatment
 Visual diary
 Screenplay
 Screenwriting software
 Dialogue
 Drafting
 Genre refers to the method based on similarities in the narrative
elements from which films are constructed.
 Basic Genres in which film is made are Fiction and Documentary
 Depending on the setting, tone, mood and mood ,fiction and

documentary films are again sub classified into (Crime, mystery,
thriller, drama, historic, war etc.)
 The Basic step of writing a screenplay is picking a genre.
 Most films are hybrid.

 Once genre selection is done, Story is the what comes next.
 Screenwriting is story telling.
 Stories may develop from a story idea or a character idea or a scene

idea.
 One may have many ideas but selecting the one which most inspires
should be the one to be developed.
 To start research one has to lock down the story and have a out line
or Synopsys of the story.
 After having the outline , one has to research and fill in the blanks
left out that are left out for research.
 Too much researching is waste of time.
 Research gives facts but not stories. Whether you're writing a period
piece, science fiction, heavy industry-related stuff, period, or
historical stuff, the story always comes first.
 To develop a biographies ,one need facts.

Things to remember while developing a character
 Dramatic need - What does he/she want, is going to get or going to
achieve?
 Point of view - Ways the character views the world
 Attitude - Manner of opinion. Characters have attitudes about life.

They take a stand about things.
 Change - Characters must change

 MAIN CHARACTER
She/he does the action and make the story move along.
 SUPPORTING ROLES
These characters stand with or against the main character.
These listen, advice, pull, force the main character
A catalyst figure, to push the story and reveal information.
 CHARACTERS WHO ADD OTHER DIMENSIONS
Generally have contrasting character to the main character, to elevate him.
 THEMATIC CHARACTERS
Characters who serve to convey and express the theme of the film
Convey their ideas through attitude, action and occasionally dialogue
A writer's POINT OF VIEW character
 MASS AND WEIGHT CHARACTERS
The people who surround the powerful people in the script
The right hand man to the main character
Characters FIGHT, SCRAP, ARGUE, PERSAUDE and try to force their point of view,
their decisions, their actions on people who don't see things the same way.
INNER CONFLICT - Characters are unsure of themselves, or their actions, or even

what they want. One can express through voice-over, and through talking with
someone else.
Example: Inception, Memento, the Lookout
SOCIETAL CONFLICT - Character is against a GROUP of people who represent society
(political group, team, town leaders).
Example: God Father, Hotel Rwanda
SITUATIONAL CONFLICT - Something happens suddenly. How to handle it - panic,
become a leader. Could be a personal situation.
Example :No man’s land, Dog day afternoon
COSMIC CONFLICT - The character VS the supernatural force
Example : Independence day, district 9
 It is the structure how the film proceeds.
 PLOT Screenwriting is a mixture of two things:
1 What happens to the characters
2 What they do because of WHO they are
 A plot can be successful if it leads viewers into Expectation, make

them think they understand, then crack and open a Surprise.
Surprise & curiosity always bring the audience into the story
 Any general PLOT has a 3-ACT STRUCTURE

Every story has a BEGINNING, MIDDLE and END.TO follow this the
story need not be linear.
FIRST ACT
Generally shows where you are, what the story is about, who the main
character is and where we are going.
SECOND ACT
Then they face a major conflict and main character usually fail at it. It
sets up their inner/outer fears and obstacles so they can overcome
them in the third act.
THIRD ACT
This is where the main characters tries to over come the conflict, Win
at it.
 A treatment is a basic outline of the story that is broken up into acts
 This is where we divide the plot into scenes.
 Each scene has a description of what happens in a line or two.
 To develop a good screenplay one has to develop a good treatment.
 Every scene should be thought upon as why it happened? What are

consequence?
 Visual diary contains the visual and sound details of each and every
scene that are to be shown.
 Visualization helps the writer to know how the scene progresses and
what are all important in the scene.
 It also helps while unveiling the suspense or hiding it during the

course of writing it.
 A scene wise description with visual and sound details and dialogue
gives the screenplay.
 From the written treatment and the visual diary of each scene
screenplay is developed.
 Screenplay are written in particular formats and software to make
them universally understood.
Screenplay software
 Screenwriting software is word processors specialized to the task of
writing screenplays
 They help for easily formatting
 Ex: Celtx, DreamaScript, Final Draft, Montage, Movie Magic,
Screenwriter, Storyist
 The most crucial part of screenplay writing is dialogue.
 The purpose of dialogue in screenplay writing
-Moves story forward
-Communicates facts and information to the reader
-Reveals character
-Establishes character relationships
-Makes your characters real, natural and spontaneous
-Reveals the conflicts of the story and characters
-Reveals the emotional states of your characters
-Comments on the action
 Dialogue should always be taken care to be realistic.

 Lengthy dialogue generally doesn’t work.
 After successfully completing all the steps, we get the first DRAFT.
 A first draft of a script is almost always NOT GOOD.
 One has to get it reviewed by trusted experts, edit and then draft
again and again to reach the final draft.
Script Writing
Class 16-17
Script Writing
• Adaptation script writing
• Difference between screenplay and script writing
• Difference between spec script and shooting script
• Spec script
– Scene heading
– Narrative description
– Dialogue blocks
Script Writing
• How to Adapt a Book into a Film
• Because of these differences, most of the novel will
be cut out. The most important aspect of the
screenplay adaptation is deciding what to keep in.
The following pointers require noting after reading
the novel.
• The pivotal scenes
• The seven or so most important characters
• The dialogue that fuels the plot.
The Structure of a Screenplay
• The ideal screenplay should consist of short sentences
and paragraphs of action, intermixed with essential
dialogue. Long reams of text will not look good on the
screenplay.
• The first ten pages are the most important part of the
screenplay, as this forms the shop window from which
agents and publishers will view. The beginning of the
novel need not form the opening of the screenplay. The
following pointers might help in this decision.
– Look for the most dramatic scene in the novel and begin
there.
– Consider combining scenes in the novel to create a new one
in the screenplay
– Invent a new scene if one does not present itself within the
novel.
Differences between screenplay and
script writing
• Because a screenplay is a • A script
form of script and not – A general term for a written
opposite is the case work
– Detailing story, setting, and
• Screenplay
dialogue
– Dramatic elements of the
– A script may take the form
film
of a
– Setting, light values, action • screenplay,
– Blue print of a structure • shooting script,
• lined script,
• continuity script,
• or a spec script
Shooting Script
• Shooting scripts are scripts used during production to
shoot the movie.
• They are written with much more detailed than spec
scripts and may include, among other things,
– scene numbers,
– editing transitions, and
– camera angles
• Shooting scripts are a great source of confusion for
novice writers because they seem to break all the
formatting rules.
• Since shooting scripts are used in production, they are
formatted to include any helpful information that the
director may request.
– They are not used for selling purposes, so if you come across
one, do not use its format.
Spec Script
• Spec scripts are scripts written on the speculation
of a future sale. They are written in the present
tense using master scene format.
• This format uses
– scene headings
– narrative description
– dialogue blocks
• There is absolutely no technical direction for
camera, sound, music, and editing.
– Technical and artistic direction are implied through
creative writing.
Scene Headings
• A scene heading, also called a "slug line," is composed of
three parts:
– interior vs. exterior
– location
– time of day
• The three parts are written on one line and capitalized, as in
the example below.
– Interior and exterior are always abbreviated as INT. and EXT.
– Time of day is limited to DAY and NIGHT, with the occasional use
of DAWN and DUSK.
• INT. DON'S LIVING ROOM - NIGHT
• If any of the three elements change, it creates a new scene
and a new heading is required.
– For example, if the next scene takes place in the same location but
during the day, the heading would be changed to read:
• INT. DON'S LIVING ROOM - DAY
Special Scene Headings
• There are several special scene headings to help clarify issues of time and
space. They include:
• "Month Year"
– Use this heading when the script alternates between several different time
periods. It can be written in a variety of ways, including "season year." This
heading is from the The Godfather:
• SPRING 1946
• "Back To"
– Use this heading when returning to a previous location or time after a short
scene change:
• BACK TO THE DON'S LIVING ROOM Or
• BACK TO SPRING 1946 Or
• BACK TO THE PRESENT Or
• "Later"
– Use this to indicate a minor shift in time at the same location:
• LATER Or
• LATER THAT DAY
• "Flashback"
– Use this to indicate an earlier time:
• FLASHBACK:
• "Montage"
– This indicates that a series of short related scenes
follows (note that a montage can also be implied in the
writing):
• MONTAGE:
• "Intercut"
– This indicates that the scene takes place in more than
one location. It is often used with telephone calls:
• INTERCUT:
Usage
• Use of special scene headings is a matter of personal
taste and will distinguish your writing style.
– They should make the script easier to read. If the script
becomes more complex, you are using them incorrectly. If in
doubt about a heading, do not use it.
– Special scene headings can be used alone or in conjunction
with a normal scene heading. When used in conjunction with
a normal heading, it is placed first, as such:
• SPRING 1946
• INT. DON'S LIVING ROOM - NIGHT
– It is acceptable to use a special scene heading on the same
line if it improves the writing flow:
• INT. DON'S LIVING ROOM - NIGHT (SPRING 1946)
Narrative Description
• Narrative description is the telling of the story as it
unfolds on screen. It begins directly below the
scene heading.
• The writing should be lean and visual, focusing on
action that moves the story forward. Though
concise, it should have enough flair to engage
readers.
Write Only What Can be Seen and Heard
• Unlike a novel, everything in a screenplay must be

recorded in terms of picture and sound. Therefore,
narrative description should never include anything
that cannot be seen or heard.
• For example, you cannot describe a character's
feelings, since this cannot be recorded. To convey a
character's feelings, thoughts, and memories they
must be externalized in some way. This can be
through action, dialogue or flashback scenes.
Timing
• It is a customary assumption in the movie industry
that 1 page of screenplay equals 1 minute of time
on screen. This is convenient for planning purposes.
Since the average feature is 120 minutes, the
average script should be about 120 pages in length.
• Because of this convention, description passages
should cover as many pages as the scene is
expected to run in real time. For example, if you
sense that an action scene will take a minute of
screen time, it should be written to cover 1 page,
rather than 1 line.
Dialogue Blocks
• Dialogue blocks, also called "speeches," are composed of three
parts: character name, wryly, and dialogue, as illustrated below:
• Character Name:
• HAGEN
• Wrly:
• (quietly)
• Dialogue:
• I didn't tell mama anything.
• Character names are written in upper case, wrylies are written in
lower case inside parenthesis, and dialogue is written in normal
sentence case.
• A wryly indicates how a line should be said. It was named after all
the novice screenwriters whose characters say things in a "wry"
way. Wrylies should only be used if the subtext of the dialogue is
not clear. Keep them to a bare minimum. Action can be written as
a wrly if it is a few words and helps the flow of action.
• When a character speaks in narration it is indicated
with (VOICE OVER) after the character's name. When a
character speaks from off screen, it is indicated with
(OFF SCREEN) after the character's name. These
instructions can be initialed, though it makes the script
a bit more cumbersome to read for non-industry types:
• Narration:
• HAGEN (Voice Over)
• or
• HAGEN (V.O.)
• Off Screen Dialogue:
• HAGEN (Off Screen)
• or
• HAGEN (O.S.)
Footers
• There are two types of footers that can be used in a
screenplay:
– (CONTINUED) and
– (MORE).
– The footer that is used depends on whether the page break occurs
• in the middle of narrative description or
• in the middle of dialogue.
• When the page break occurs in the middle of description,
– the footer (CONTINUED) is used to indicate that the scene is
continued on the next page.
– It is placed in the lower right corner of the page:
• Don Corleone blinks. One feels that just for a second he loses
all physical strength; he clasps his hands in front of him on the
top of the desk and (CONTINUED)
Footers
• When the page break occurs in the middle of dialogue,
– the footer (MORE) is used to indicate that there is more dialogue
on the next page. It is centered directly under the last line of
dialogue :
• HAGEN
• (quietly)
• I didn't tell mama anything. I was about to come up and wake
you and (MORE)
• Why use footers?
– Cast and crew often break the script apart into scenes, to
correspond to each day's work.
– It is easy for individual pages, called "sides," to become lost.
– The footer indicates that there are more pages in a given scene.
• It was once customary to use footers in all scripts.
– Since they serve no purpose in a spec script, there is a trend to
leave them out.
Formatting "Don'ts" Summary
• When writing a spec script don't use
– scene numbers
– camera angles
– page footers
– caps for sound effects in narrative description
– caps for character names in narrative description (except
when first appearing)
– third person use of "we" (e.g. "We see John storm out...")
Margins
• Margins are crucial to proper screenplay format. The
standard margins are:
• Headings and Description - 1.5" left, 1" right. Headings
and descriptions should be approximately 6" in width.
• Dialogue - 3" left, 2" right. Dialogue should stay around
3.5" wide
• Character Names - 4" from left (up to 4.25" is
acceptable)
• Wrylies - 3.5" from left (up to 3.75" is acceptable)
• Top/Bottom Margins - 1" top, 1" bottom
• Page Numbers - upper right, usually .25"-.5" from top
and 1"-1.25" from left
• Line Spacing
• Description and dialogue blocks are printed using
single line spacing. Scene headings, description, and
dialogue blocks are separated using double line
spacing.
• Typeface
• The screenplay and title page must be printed in 12
point courier typeface. Nothing else.
Binding
• The cover must be blank. Different colors are
acceptable, but there must be no artwork or logos.
After the cover comes the title page, also called the fly
page. There are three sections on the title page: title,
author, and contact information.
• The copyright and registration information should not
be mentioned, because it will "date" the script
(producers want fresh material). After the title page
comes the script itself. There should be no blank pages.
• The script is held together with #5 ACCO folding brass
fasteners with washers. It is traditional to use two
rather than three. Screw brads (i.e. Chicago screws) are
also acceptable. Do not use spiral binding!
• Paper
• The script and title page should be 3-hole 20lb.
paper. Use only white. The cover should be card
stock in the color of your choice. Covers that fold
over the fasteners are acceptable and look nicer,
but cost a bit more.
• Formatting Software
• Screenwriting software ??? automatically creates
proper margins as you write. This allows you to
concentrate on telling the story, rather than
remembering formatting rules. Some of these
products can help you generate and develop story
ideas, as well.
Elements of Screenplay
• Slug lines
• Action
• Parenthetical
• Character’s Name
• Dialogue
• Transitions
Steps of Script
Writing
18 Secrets Revealed
Difference between Script &
Screenplay
 When applied to a film, the word "script" can
cover descriptions of characters (appearance
and personality) plot developments, descriptions
of emotions felt by characters, physical actions
and, of course, dialogue.
 Screenplay is relatively limited, its a part of the
script its usually only for news or films and
contains dialogue, settings, light, action it is story
divided in scenes infact scenes in more detail.
Difference between Script &
Screenplay
 Script is a short division whereas screenplay is a
description
 A script consists of dialogue writing with proper
camera angles whereas screenplays are how
the environment of the scene would look like
basically its related to the expressions of the
characters.
 Screenplays focus more on the setting and
physical actions (blocking). scripts are more
about dialogue
Basics of Screen-writing
 "Writing Scripts is simply one of the most difficult
things a human being can do" - New York Times
 One of the Most difficult but not the impossible
 Who reads the script/screenplay -- Producer,
Development Person, an actor, director, editor
 Reading the script should not be an ordeal
experience for them but should be entertaining,
challenging, involving & easy.
 The script is usually a page-turner and even if it
isn't what the particular producer's looking for,
the read will still be a good one.
 If they don't buy the script, maybe they will give
him an assignment or be open for his next pitch.
 To get the work, you have to seduce the
producer into reading on, to find out what
happens on the next page.
 Its the Scriptwriter's primary job to seduce first
the reader, then, ultimately the viewer.
 Script Writing is a wonderful way to spend time,
solving problems in universes of our own
making, playing with the characters who
respond to our every whim, who don't argue, or
complain or do anything that displeases us and
best of all, teaches us things.
 Scene 12
Ext.High street,Bank –day
Its raining and a black cadillac pulls up.Mr.Vittorio and richard get out,look around the street and
slowly make their way into the Bank.Mr.Vittorio opens the door and whispers to richard
Mr.Vittorio
Are you sure you want to do this?
Richard unbuttons his tatty coat
Richard
Yes,get a move on
Int.Bank-Day
Richard and Mr.Vittorio enter the bank foyer and make their way to a free cashier
Mr.Vittorio
(nervous)
Couldn’t we wait for thew rest of the crew?
Richard
Put a lid on it!
They approach the cashier.Mr.Vittorio is looking nervously about the interior of the bank.
Richard puts his gloved hand into his unbuttoned coat.
Richard
I’d like some traveller’s cheques please
Cashier
Certainly, Sir,do you have any identification?
Richard extracts his passport from his inner coat pocket.
Format
 Depends on your intended audience
 Consists of a number of elements such as
 Action,scene headings,character
names,dialogues,shots,transitions,act
numbers,scene numbers,,etc.
 Split page format,commercial format
 Names of the characters, centre justified
and marked in bold
Step #1
Organization is freedom
 If your organization needs are met, it frees
you to write more creatively.
 Beginning, Middle and end is an
organization. The details and textures of
the story interweave around and through
the beginning, middle & end.
Step # 2
 What are Story Organizers?
 Writers use outlines, or treatments, or
information on index cards, among other
systems.
 If you stick close enough to the spine of
your story, as plotted through your scene
list, you will always be moving through the
story forward.
Step 1
 Example of Scene List : Dead Serious
Simon Sweeney Ordering up a screenwriter.

Aurther Partt, the writer, meeting with Sweeney
Aurthur thrown out of Sweeney’s office at Studio.
Aurthur at bar with Graff, who was a film writer and now
makes living as a bartender and garbage-man
Arthur dumped by Girlfriend, who becomes an agent.
Arthur comes up with million dollar idea.
Arthur tries to get to Sweeney. Fails
Arthur tries to get into Sweeney’s house. Busted.
Chase.
Arthur makes his stand on the Hollywood sign.
Step 1
Arthur becomes folk hero
Sweeney buys his screenplay.
Aurthur on top of the world
Sweeney’s out of the studio.
The deal for screenplay doesn’t happen.
Arthur is sued by studio and pilloried by the studio spin
machine.
Arthur tries to get work in TV and is shunned due to age.
Arthur tracks down Sweeney, now a potato farmer, to resurrect
project and themselves.
Sweeney sets the dogs on him.
Arthur’s agent drops him.
Arthur looks around and realizes he’s nowhere.
Arthur goes to Hollywood sign to commit suicide, and is
discovered again.
Arthur on way to becoming media darling redux.
Step 1
 The scene list is the concise, conceptual way to see the
structure and flow of the whole piece.
 You should adopt the habit of using color and shape
code in the scene list.
 Eg.
 A dot next to action scene.
 A box next to talk scene.
 A circle for the main character.
 A triangle for the antagonist
 A diamond for the woman lead.
Step #1
 When you are at the beginning states of your
scene list, don’t censor any scene, put them all
down, let your story tell itself.
 Don’t torture your story into someone else’s
generic.
Secret #1
 Don’t do it the way other movies or stories did.
 No one is gonna see it because it’s a process
and there is no wrong way. Put it down, read it
and re-logic it. Don’t show it to anyone.
 Try different ways. Listen to yourself & be open
& become sensitive to what you feel and think
about the story.
 Scene list is just a beginning and not the actual
script.
Step
The Log Line
 Ex : 1. For an episode of old tv show
Father Knows Best, Billy loses his house
key.
 2. For Dead Serious Screenwriter
Arthur’s hilarious descent into
Hollywood oblivion and back again.
 (Notice that the main character is at the
center line of the story)
Step2
The Log Line
 The log line is the simple, one or two
sentence description of a movie that
appears in TV Guide.
 They force you to distill your idea for the
screenplay down to its essence and be
absolutely clear about what you are writing
about.
Step2
The Log Line
 The Log line is what you judge what you
are writing against. Everything you write is
judged against the log line to see if you
are writing the screenplay you want to be
writing. There is a tendency to drift, to get
lost. The log line keeps you honest. It
keeps you close to the spine or center line
of the story.
Step2
The Log Line
 It compels you to think about the basics of
your idea.
 When the writer can’t come up with the
basics of their idea, then the idea might
not be clear in their mind or the idea itself
must be flawed.
 If the story you’re writing isn’t clear, then
your writing won’t be clear either.
Step 3 Telling the Story through
the Characters
 At the center of every story are the
characters with whom we readers/viewers
identify with.
 We experience the story through the
characters and our job as the writer is to
put them in the center of your script.
Step#3 Telling the Story through
the Characters
 Practical Note : Actors get movies made. If you
don’t have a castable part, a part that an actor is
dying to play, it will be harder to get the script
made. The bigger and more challenging a role,
the better and more bankable actor will be
attracted to it and the better chance we have to
get our screenplay seriously considered.
 Actors only count their lines in the script.
Step 4
Rising Action
 We have started to live in a world of
nanoseconds and we are exposed to more
and more stories on television soaps,
commercials and lots of movies. When we
are in a movie theatre our mind is remote
controlling us, trying to get the story faster
looking to get out the moment things get
boring.
Step #4
Rising Action
 ”It’s a bad thing when the reader/viewer is ahead
of the writer.”
 An example of rising action : If we are writing a
movie about a serial killer, in the first ten pages
your killer stabs a man to death. The next killing
has to be more gruesome. Lets say he hacks a
man to death with a razor-sharp machete. The
next murder has to be even more. More graphic.
More horrible. More.
Step #4
Rising Action
 You have to keep delivering more, every
step of the way.
 Rising action is a vital concept to making
your script a page turner.
Step#5
The Mathematics of Film Writing
 The more you write the better it gets.
 Start by conceptualization, then the log
line, then the scene list,then your rough
draft. Get input from readers and start
rewriting. Again think and rewrite.
Step #6
Less is More
 Write a big amount of detail only in the
important scenes, only when it’s story
relevant, only when you damn well have a
good reason.
 We as a writer have to take responsibility
to guide the readers to what’s important
simply by the way we write it. It is called
“weighing” a script.
Step#7
More Is More
 Different parts of the script should be
written in different ways.
 Gold Scenes : big action scenes,
important pivotal scenes, scenes in
trailers, scenes where character reveals
the essential truths about themselves
 Gold scenes should be written fully and
completely, weighted heavy.
Step #7
More Is More
 The transition scenes, unimportant ones
should be written minimally.
 Not so gold : Cut them and rewrite them to
make them good.
Step #8
Script Presentation
 Anything but perfect, studio acceptable
format lessens your chances for success.
Step #9
Show Not Tell
 It is the job of the film writer to constantly
reinforce the visuals so that the reader can
always see what is going on
 There should be along with dialogue blocks,
descriptions & stage directions
 When rewriting, take the draft and try to
eliminate all the dialogues that can be replaced
by a character’s gesture or action.
Step #9
Show Not Tell
 Check through a draft to see if any of your
characters are telling us something that would
better serve your story by seeing it.
 Try to see the movie and where there are
potential opportunities to describe an important
visual better where descriptions of action or tone
and mood would make the scene work better.
Try also to direct what type of lightning to be
used.
Step #10
Write Short
 Try to write an eighty to eighty five page rough
draft.
 If you write long freely being creatively but
undisciplined you would end up writing long draft
of some 160-180 pages. Cutting it short would
result you in skipping some of the scenes you
loved, shortcut the logic and you will end up as
unhappy writer.
 If you write short you will have freedom to
expand it, add gold and weight to the script.
Step#11
Rewriting – A Survival Course
 When you complete the first rough draft
sticking to the story send it to the people
who are also in the writing proffesion and
ask them for notes and listen to it. Don’t be
defensive to criticism.
 After you have all the notes, evaluate them
against the final list of rewritten notes.
Step #11
Rewriting – A Survival Course
 Get back to the script with a new perspective.
 Film Writing Is a process.
 Change Scenes…
 Make the dialogue sound better to your ear…
 Make the characters richer…
 Deeper…
 Crank Everything Up…
Step #12
Cut to the heart of the Scene
 Don’t have people endlessly introducing
each other at the beginning of a meeting.
 Don’t have characters discuss the weather
ad nauseam before you get to the reason
the scene exists.
 Cut right to the action, the information load
of the scene.
Step #13
It’s a Process
 Film Writing is a lot of work, hour after hour, day
after day, week after week and its key to
understand that no single piece of writing on any
given day is vital
 Keep Moving Forward day after day.
Step14
It’s About Character
 Characters move the story. They

experience conflicts and it is what
drama/storytelling is all about.
 Characters are more interesting when not
only do they make things happen, but
things happen to them.
 Situation Pushes Character, Character
pushes the situation.
Step #14
 Don’t model characters we have already
seen on TV or films.
 Bring something new to the characters.
Look around as individualized behavior is
all around. Look for interesting
characteristics
Step#14
 Study people, how they dress, what they
say, how they stand, how they combine
clothes, combine their hair, respond to
different situations.
 Also study yourself. And incorporate all
these things into your characters.
Step #15
Dialogues
 Make your language comfortable,
conversational, easy on the ear and the
brain.
 Listen to conversations in restaurants,
barber shops, planes, parties, waiting
rooms, elevators etc.
Step #16
Openings
 It is the most important part of our script.
 The challenge is to make your openings
grab readers by the throat and never let
them go.
Step #16
Openings
 Your opening must accomplish:
 Set up story
 Establish Location
 Introduce main characters and their needs
 Atmosphere
 Tension
 Issue/theme
Some Descriptions
 Unreadable screenplays are poorly
written, long scene descriptions. Keep
scenes brief, concise, precise & in
conversational language.
Ending
 The natural inclination is to write the ending too
fast. You’re near the end and you rush
everything to get there. Do it. End it Fast.
 Rest and rewrite it after taking notes.
 Try to have ending somehow relate to the
opening.
 Ending should answer all questions, tie up all
loose ends.
Elements of film
Chapter
Elements of film
• Mise-en-scene
• Cinematography or camera work
• Editing
• Sound
Mise-en-scene
• All that appears on stage
• All that appears in one frame/scene of a film
• Placed in front of the camera
– Sets (ATWIED – opening; ABM – 2:20; COAS – opening; LOTR – opening; BHD – 9:35)
– Lighting (video - net)
– Costuming (BHD - 16:00; Bnhr – opening: PAP – 2:00)
– Makeup (stardust – 1:45:00; R Crso – 27:50)
– Props
– Placement of objects and people
– The actors’ gestures and movements
Sets
• Sets
– Those on location, artificially created, encompass
the physical space that the camera shows and in
which the characters move
– How the props are used in relation to the
background, the specific arrangement of the
props and characters
SHOTS
• Alfred Hitchcock video – placement of shots
• Psycho – 46:45 – collection of shots – overall impact
Static shot
• This is the simplest camera set up, but it is
also restricting, presenting what is happening
in frame like a play and making it impersonal
for the observer. In Barry Lyndon, Kubrick
predominantly used static frames to connote
the static structure of society.
Aerial Shot
• An exterior shot filmed from — hey! — the air.

Often used to establish a (usually exotic) location.
All films in the '70s open with one — FACT.
• EXAMPLE: The opening of The Sound Of Music (1965). Altogether

now, “The hills are alive...“
• A&D – 11:24; BHD – 9:37; SI – 5:13

Arc Shot
• A shot in which the subject is circled by the
camera. Beloved by Brian De Palma, Michael
Bay.
• EXAMPLE: The shot in De Palma's Carrie (1976)
where Carrie White (Sissy Spacek) and Tommy
Ross (William Katt) are dancing at the prom. The
swirling camera move represents her giddy
euphoria, see?
• TTM – 36:17 ?
• 36:14 locked down

Bridging Shot
• A shot that denotes a shift in time or place,
like a line moving across an animated map.
That line has more air miles than Richard
Branson.
• EXAMPLE: The journey from the US to Nepal in Raiders Of

The Lost Ark (1981).
Close Up
• A shot that keeps only the face full in the
frame. Perhaps the most important building
block in cinematic storytelling.
• EXAMPLE: Falconetti's face in The Passion Of
Joan Of Arc (1928).
Medium Shot
• The shot that utilises the most common
framing in movies, shows less than a long
shot, more than a close-up. Obviously.
• EXAMPLE: Any John Ford film (i.e. The
Searchers), the master of the mid shot.
Long Shot
• A shot that depicts an entire character or
object from head to foot. Not as long as an
establishing shot. Aka a wide shot.
• EXAMPLE: Omar Sharif approaching the
camera on camel in David Lean's Lawrence Of
Arabia (1962).
Cowboy Shot
• A shot framed from mid thigh up, so called
because of its recurrent use in Westerns.
When it comes, you know Clint Eastwood is
about to shoot your ass.
• EXAMPLE: The three-way standoff in The
Good, The Bad And The Ugly (1966).
• TLOPi – 1:18:29
Deep Focus
• A shot that keeps the foreground, middle ground
and background ALL in sharp focus. Beloved by
Orson Welles (and cinematographer Gregg Toland).
Production designers hate them. Means they have
to put detail in the whole set.
• EXAMPLE: Thatcher (George Couloris) and Kane's mother

(Agnes Moorehead) discussing Charles (Buddy Swan)'s fate
while the young boy plays in the background in Citizen Kane
(1941).
Dolly Zoom
• A shot that sees the camera track forward toward
a subject while simultaneously zooming out
creating a woozy, vertiginous effect.
• Initiated in Hitchcock's Vertigo (1959), it also appears in such
scarefests as Michael Jackson's Thriller video (1983), Shaun Of The
Dead (2004), The Evil Dead (1981) and The Goofy Movie (1995).
• It is the cinematic equivalent of the phrase "Uh-
oh".
• EXAMPLE: Police Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) sees the Kintner kid
(Jeffrey Voorhees) get it in Jaws (1975). Not the first but the best.
• Gf – 2:13:10
Dutch Tilt
• A shot where the camera is tilted on its side
to create a kooky angle. Often used to
suggest disorientation. Beloved by German
Expressionism, Tim Burton, Sam Raimi and
the designers of the villains hideouts in '60s
TV Batman.
• EXAMPLE: The beginning of the laboratory
scene in Bride Of Frankenstein (1935).
Establishing Shot
• The clue is in the name. A shot, at the head
of the scene, that clearly shows the locale the
action is set in. Often comes after the aerial
shot. Beloved by TV directors and thick
people.
• EXAMPLE: The first glimpse of the prison in
The Shawshank Redemption (1994).
ESTABLISHING SHOT/
REESTABLISHING SHOT
• After this introduction, the camera moves forward
with several close-ups of both the musicians and
the spectators.
• At the end of the sequence, Hark shows us the
entire room in a larger shot.
• This final establishing shot is called a reestablishing
shot, for it shows us once again the spatial
relationships introduced with the establishing shots.
Handheld Shot
• A shot in which the camera operator holds the
camera during motion to create a jerky, immediate
feel. Beloved by Steven Soderbergh and Paul
Greengrass. It basically says, "This is real life,
baby".
• EXAMPLE: The pool hall fist fight in Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973).
• CoM – opening
• AWTR – 24:45 – follow
Low Angle Shot
• A shot looking up at a character or subject
often making them look bigger in the frame.
It can make everyone look heroic and/or
dominant. Also good for making cities look
empty.
• EXAMPLE: Darth Vader stomping around the
Death Star corridors in Star Wars Episode IV A
New Hope (1977).
High Angle Shot
• A shot looking down on a character or
subject often isolating them in the frame.
Nothing says Billy No Mates like a good old
high angle shot.
• EXAMPLE: Little Charlie (Teresa Wright)
realizes her uncle (Joseph Cotton) is a serial
killer in Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt
(1943).
• SC – 3:03
Locked-Down Shot
• A shot where the camera is fixed in one
position while the action continues off-
screen. It says life is messy and can not be
contained by a camera. Beloved by Woody
Allen and the dolly grips who can take the
afternoon off.
• EXAMPLE: Ike (Woody Allen) and Mary
(Diane Keaton) walk in and out of shot whilst
flirting.
Library Shot
• A pre-existing shot of a location — typically a wild
animal — that is pulled from a library. Aka a "stock
shot", it says this film is old. Or cheap.
• EXAMPLE: Every shot of an animal in a black and
white Tarzan movie.
• Library Shot
• Stock footage shot or other footage which is germane
to a given visual presentation but which was not
generated for that specific film or television
presentation.
• TTM – 1:26:00 – originally planned to do but did not do it

Matte Shot
• A shot that incorporates foreground action
with a background, traditionally painted onto
glass, now created in a computer. Think the
Raiders warehouse or the Ewok village or
Chris Hewitt's house.
• EXAMPLE: The final shot of 1968's Planet Of
The Apes.
Money Shot
• A shot that is expensive to shoot but deemed
worth it for its potential to wow, startle and
generate interest.
• EXAMPLE: The White House blowing up in
Independence Day (1996).
• CR – 10:20
Over-The-Shoulder Shot
• A shot where the camera is positioned
behind one subject's shoulder, usually during
a conversation. It implies a connection
between the speakers as opposed to the
single shot that suggests distance.
• EXAMPLE: The opening of The Godfather
(1972).
• AWTR – 25:00
Pan
• A shot where the camera moves continuously
right to left or left to right. An abbreviation of
"panning". Turns up a lot in car chases and on
You've Been Framed (worth £250 if they use
a clip).
• EXAMPLE: Brian de Palma's Blow Out (1981)
— a 360 degree pan in Jack Terry (John
Travolta)'s sound studio.
POV shot
• A shot that depicts the point of view of a
character so that we see exactly what they
see. Often used in Horror cinema to see the
world through a killer's eyes.
• EXAMPLE: The opening of Halloween (1978)
told from the point of view of the child
Michael Myers (Will Sandin).
• TGG: 2:00:00; Eragon – 27:09
The Sequence Shot
• A long shot that covers a scene in its entirety
in one continuous sweep without editing.
• EXAMPLE: The 3 min 20 secs opening of
Touch Of Evil (1958) in which Mike
Vargas (Charlton Heston) and Susie (Janet
Leigh) cross paths with a car carrying a ticking
bomb.
Steadicam Shot
• A shot from a hydraulically balanced camera that
allows for a smooth, fluid movement. Around
since the late '70s, invented by Garrett Brown.
• Beloved by Stanley Kubrick, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese,

Alfonso Cuaron. A lengthy Steadicam shot is the directorial
equivalent of "Look ma, no hands!"
• EXAMPLE: Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) taking his new girl (Lorraine
Braco) through the Copa by the back entrance in Goodfellas
(1990). If you have the time, also see Russian Ark, a 99 minute
Steadicam shot.
Tilt
• A shot where the camera moves continuously
Up to Down or Down To Up. A vertical
panning shot. A tilt to the sky is traditionally
a last shot in a movie.
• EXAMPLE: The last shot of Robert Altman's
Nashville (1975).
• TDWTP – 36:45; 37:58

Top Shot
• A shot looking directly down on a scene rather
than at an angle. Also known as a Birds-Eye-View
shot. Beloved by Busby Berkeley to shoot dance
numbers in patterns resembling snowflakes.
• EXAMPLE: The camera moving over the carnage
left by Travis Bickle at the end of Taxi Driver
(1976).
• CR – 33:26
Tracking Shot
• A shot that follows a subject be it from
behind or alongside or in front of the subject.
Not as clumsy or random as a panning shot,
an elegant shot for a more civilized age.
Beloved by Stanley Kubrick, Andrei Tarkovsky,
Terence Davies, Paul Thomas Anderson.
• EXAMPLE: The dolly shots in the trenches
during Stanley Kubrick's Paths Of Glory
(1957).
Two-Shot
• A medium shot that depicts two people in
the frame. Used primarily when you want to
establish links between characters or people
who are beside rather than facing each other.
• EXAMPLE: Quiz Kid Donnie Smith (William H.
Macy) and Thurston Howell (Henry Gibson)
discuss love in Magnolia (1999).
Whip Pan
• A shot that is the same as a pan but is so fast
that picture blurs beyond recognition.
Usually accompanied by a whoosh sound.
Beloved by Sam Raimi and Edgar Wright.
• EXAMPLE: Any one of a dozen sequences in
Hot Fuzz (2007).
• CR – 48:55
Zoom
• A shot deploying a lens with a variable focal
length that allows the cinematographer to
change the distance between camera and object
without physically moving the camera. Also see
Crash Zooms that do the same but only quicker.
• EXAMPLE: The slow descending zoom that picks
out Mark (Frederic Forrest) and Ann (Cindy
Williams) out of a crowd in The Conversation
(1974).
Crane Shot
• A shot where the camera is placed on a crane or jib
and moved up or down. Think a vertical tracking shot.
Beloved by directors of musicals. Often used to
highlight a character's loneliness or at the end of a
movie, the camera moving away as if saying goodbye.
• EXAMPLE: Gone With The Wind (1939). As Scarlett
O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) arrives at the train depot, the
camera heads skyward to reveal hundreds of
wounded confederate soldiers around her.
• 1:15:10
Wide angled shot
Shots
• Three most basic shots
– The long shot
– The medium shot
– The close up
The long shot
– The long shot (LS)
• Shows the full human figure of a ch/chs and
often the figures are dwarfed by the
background
– The extreme long shot (ELS)
• Is one in which the human figure can barely be
distinguished
The medium shot
– The medium shot
• Is one in which we see the human figure from the waist
up
– The medium long shot
• Frames the human from the knees up
– The medium close-up
• Allows the viewer to move in closer and see the human
from the chest up
The close up
– Medium close shot or bust shot (MCU)
• A little headroom, just below the bust or in the
middle of the chest
– The close-up (CU)
• Focuses in on a specific part of the human, most
often the face, Below the neck above the head
– Big close-up (BCU)
• A tight shot of a person’s face – forehead, just under
the chin, lip
– The extreme close-up (XCU)
• Focuses in on a portion of the face
Lighting
• Lighting
– Helps to establish the mood, focuses attention on details,
cinematographer decides about artificial light or natural
light, the direction it should take, and its intensity
– Three point lighting is most often used and describes three
sources of light: a key light, a fill light, and a backlight
• The key light provides the primary light force
• The fill light fills in the shadows thrown by the key light
• The backlight comes from behind the subject, separating the subject
from the background
– Some basic lighting effects used in films, operating under the
three-point system,
• include high-key lighting which means the scene is brightly lit,
minimizing shadows. High-key lighting creates a brighter and more
joyful mood.
• A low-key lighting is dimly lit and there is lot of shadow. low-key
lighting creates harsher and more somber mood.
Costumes
• Costumes
– Vary from realistic dress to extravagant costumes
– Imp as it creates the time period in which the scene is
occurring and provides insight into the characters
– Hairstyling must coordinate with the styling
– Makeup although not always noticeable, an art since
Academy Award (1965). It becomes crucial especially in
science fiction, fantasy, and horror films.
– Cosmetics can enhance or change an actor’s natural
appearance that works with the role that they’re playing
in the film
Props
• Props
– Are objects or items used on a set or in a scene
– The props used and their arrangement can add
realism or authenticity to the scene
– It can also create the effect of irony, something
out of the place, or not what the viewer would
expect.
Gestures and movements /
figure behaviour
– Acting style or how an actor plays a part obviously differs
from one film to the next and from one decade to the
next
– Actors are cast based on different kinds of reasoning,
and based on various needs depending on the film and
the desired effect
– To study figure behaviour is to study the movements of
and actions of the actors or other figures (animals,
monsters, animated thing, robots, aliens) in a scene or
given shot of a film
– It allows a deeper look into what the film is attempting
to do and how it does it
Cinematography or camera work
• Shot is the basic unit of film
• The single image that is seen on the screen
before the film cuts to the next image
• It’s a single, continuous view of the scene that
documents uninterrupted action
• Frame of the movie image forms its border
and contains all that is occurring in the scene,
or its mise-en-scene
Relevance
• All of these different types of shots describe
the distance away from the human body as
the focal point of reference
• To study in a certain frame the distance from
the subject that is maintained and consider
why and how this distance is maintained
• What does it add to the scene
• Why has it been filmed this way
Film speed
• Film speed
– To take note of while studying a shot
– The rate at which the film is shot is most apparent in
instances of slow or fast motion.
– Slow motion can be used to indicate a dream while fast
motion can be used to enhance the comical nature of
the scene
– The tone is equally important
• Tone refers to the range and texture of colours in a film image
• Why certain colours or tones might be used and how they
relate to the themes of the film
Grounds
• Foreground clouds
• Middle ground ship
• Background greenery/ground
• TTM – 1:21:08
• All covered
Camera Movement
Need of various camera movements
• Although camera movements are often
implemented to add dynamism to shots, their
best appearances are when new information
is revealed. At the beginning level, budding
filmmakers sometimes tilt and pan without
the proper motivation. Camera moves can be
distracting and even annoying when overused
or used without a reason.
Camera angle
• The camera angle is the camera’s position as it’s focusing in
on the subject
• The camera might look down on the subject, from a high
angle position or it might look at the subject straight-on or at
eye level ?????
• The low angle is when the camera is looking up at the subject
• Camera angles add meaning to the subject being filmed
• One can study the angle at which the camera frame
represents the action and the significance of that angle
• Why is it filmed in this way
• The height of the frame can be a factor in determining an
aspect of the scene, in that the placement of the camera
determines how the viewer sees the subject/s in the scene
• Why has it been done the way it has
Camera movement
• Camera movement refers to any position that camera takes when
viewing the subject that changes the perspective in its subject
• A tilt shot involves the camera moving up and down, so that the
frame of the scene moves up and down. It might be following the
point of view of the character, giving the viewer a perspective of
what is around the character, both high and low.
• A pan shot moves left or right, scanning the scene horizontally
while staying in the same place
• A tracking shot moves forward, backward, or laterally, while
moving toward, away, with or around the subject. That is, the
camera is not stationary but follows or intrudes on the action with
the movements of its own position
• A crane shot is high, overhead shot that looks down on the action
and implicates a dramatic change in the perspective
• The handheld shot is one in which the camera is carried by the
camera operator
Camera Movement
• Camera movement refers to any position that camera takes when
viewing the subject that changes the perspective in its subject
• A tilt shot involves the camera moving up and down, so that the
frame of the scene moves up and down. It might be following the
point of view of the character, giving the viewer a perspective of
what is around the character, both high and low.
• A pan shot moves left or right, scanning the scene horizontally
while staying in the same place
• A tracking shot moves forward, backward, or laterally, while
moving toward, away, with or around the subject. That is, the
camera is not stationary but follows or intrudes on the action with
the movements of its own position
• A crane shot is high, overhead shot that looks down on the action
and implicates a dramatic change in the perspective
• The handheld shot is one in which the camera is carried by the
camera operator
Static shot
• This is the simplest camera set up, but it is
also restricting, presenting what is happening
in frame like a play and making it impersonal
for the observer.
– In Barry Lyndon, Kubrick predominantly used static frames to connote
the static structure of society.
• TH: 1:56
Tilt
• Tilt. Like a pan tilts are used to reveal new information
and are best done slowly. Tilts are effectively used to
emphasize the height of something or as a moving
close up revealing the details of a character.
• Tilt
• Vertical movement of the camera angle, i.e. pointing
the camera up and down (as opposed to moving the
whole camera up and down).
• Tilts refer to the up or down movement of the camera
while the camera itself does not move. Tilts are often
employed to reveal vertical objects like a building or a
person.
• A film plane is the area inside any camera or image
taking device with a lens and film or digital sensor.
The film plane varies in distance from the lens focal
point in each manufacturer. Thus each lens used has
to be chosen carefully to assure that the image
from the lens is focused on the exact place where
the individual frame of film or digital sensor is
positioned during exposure, the film plane is the
location in which the lens creates the focused image
which must be exactly upon the light-sensitive
material. It is sometimes marked on a camera body
with the 'Φ' symbol where the vertical bar
represents the exact location.
Tilts and The Scheimflug Effect
• This one seems like magic, and is similar in some ways to a free lunch. It was
discovered in the 19th century by a fellow named Scheimflug.
• In a normal camera the lens plane, the film plane and the subject plane are
parallel to each other.
• Yellow Stripe Hwy, outside Monument Valley, 1999
• Taken with a Canon EOS3 and Canon 24mm L T/S f/3.5 lens on Provia 100
west of Monument Valley.
• But, if you tilt the lens so that an imaginary line drawn through the film
plane A, and similar imaginary lines drawn through the lens plane and the
image plane (B and C respectively) meet at a single point, then everything
along the image plane (C) will be in focus.
• Here's the deal. With a subject like the one above, the road (plane C) will be
in focus from the front of the lens to the distant mountains if the lens plane
(B) is tilted so that the back of the camera ( A the film plane), the lens plane
and the subject plane converge at that imaginary point.
• Enough theory. Look through the lens and adjust the Tilt knob it so that the
image appears sharp. Final adjustment is made by racking the focus back
and forth while adjusting the Tilt knob. You've got it.
Pan
• Pan. Pan
• Horizontal movement, left and right.
• Pans are used to reveal new information such as an

important clue or hidden character without cutting,
so it is more fluid. Speed- Pans 'must' be slow, a
common rule is it should take 5 seconds for an
object to pan from one side of the frame to the
other. Pans and Tilts are commonly used at the
beginning and ending of a scene.
• During a pan, the camera is aimed sideways along a straight
line. Note that the camera itself is not moving. It is often fixed
on tripod, with the operator turning it either left or right.
Panning is commonly utilized to capture images of moving
objects like cars speeding or people walking; or to show
sweeping vistas like an ocean or a cliff.
• One of the earliest and best appearances of panning was in
Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 movie Life of An American Fireman.
While the camera follows the fire brigade approaching their
destination, the operator pans to reveal it – a house burning.
Remember: the best pans are used to reveal information.
• A smooth pan with be slow enough to allow the audience to
observe the scenery. A fast pan will create blur, in which case
it will be called a Swish pan. Newsgathering etiquette
demands panning from left to right, as to allow the viewer to
read any text that may be captured on camera, like headlines
or marquises.
Tracking
• Track
• Roughly synonymous with the dolly shot, but often defined more
specifically as movement which stays a constant distance from the
action, especially side-to-side movement.
• Truck
• Another term for tracking or dollying.
• Track vs zoom. Tracks are generally better to use as they perform a

more natural movement.
• A track in focuses the audience attention on the object or person.
• A track out makes the protagonist look, less powerful, vulnerable
isolated.
• A circular track helps to externalise thematic ideas such as
conspiracy.
Crane
Crane shot
Shooting from manual crane
Boom
• Eragon – 2:24 – 2:29
• 1:49 (Dutch tilt)
• 2:00 (crane)
• 27:09 (aerial)
Handheld
• If used too often it can look appalling and make
the viewer feel sick. Nevertheless it can be used
to great effect with it connoting honesty,
immediacy, and energy, and since it is the closest
move to how we see the world it encourages
viewer participation. It can be used effectively if
juxtaposed against static shots. The camera
operator can achieve more stability if the
rehearse handheld moves and hold the camera
close to their body.
• COMen – 0:55
Steadicam
• Steadicams were revolutionary as they offered
the freedom of handheld cameras, yet offer a
stable picture. This meant that not longer was
it a problem to film smooth tracking shots on
stairs, rough ground or sand, while its fluid
floating quality connotes the story being told
from 3rd person NPOV (neutral point of view),
dreams and fantasies.
Steadicams
The larger Steadicams are designed to Most professional Steadicams have a monitor
support 35 mm film anddigital cinema so the operator can see what they are
cameras (like this Arri Alexa) and shooting.
even IMAX cameras.
Steadicam
• To film this recreated
Victorian London street
scene, the cameraman
next to the lamp post is
using a Steadicam and
wearing the harness
required to support it.
Zoom
• Zoom. If done too often or too quickly it detracts
from your film, this is usually because it is
unmotivated. Yet a slow hidden(During
movement in scene) zoom used at the right
moment can be very powerful.
• Zoom
• Technically this isn't a camera move, but a change
in the lens focal length with gives the illusion of
moving the camera closer or further away.
Contrazoom
• Where you zoom out while pushing in which makes
the subject appear still, but the background appears
to stretch .This was effectively used in jaws and
goodfellas – 2:13:10.
• The Dolly Zoom is a camera shot made famous in

Alfred Hitchcock's VERTIGO (1958). It was invented by
cameraman Irmin Roberts to visually convey the feeling of
agoraphobia by zooming in with the lens while simultaneously
dollying backwards the entire camera...or vice versa.
Dolly Zoom
• A technique in which the camera moves closer
or further from the subject while
simultaneously adjusting the zoom angle to
keep the subject the same size in the frame.
• The dolly zoom, also referred to as the Vertigo effect or a Zolly

shot, is a technique wherein the camera is dollied either
forward or backward while the zoom on the lens is pulled in
the opposite direction.
Crash Zoom
• Tarantino - kill bill
Dolly
• The camera is mounted on a cart which travels
along tracks for a very smooth movement.
Also known as a tracking shot or trucking shot.
Follow
• The camera physically follows the subject at a

more or less constant distance.
Pedestal (Ped)
• Moving the camera position vertically with
respect to the subject.
Arch
• 180 or 360 degree at the same distance but
from different camera angles (Matrix)
Boom shots
Operating a jib from the rear

Examples
• V for Vendatta – 2:20
Camera Movements: Types and
Their Different Roles
Camera Movements
• Pan
• Tilt
• Dolly
• Tracking/Trucking
• Boom Crane Ariel
• Hand held Steadicam
• Zoom in/out
Pan
• The chase in Eragon – to state the action – in
the action when the attention is aroused
• Carrying out the duties – TDWPrada – to show
the movement – when tone of the movie is
set – the store from where she is given the
accessories – to show her beginning and for
the exposure of the vastness she initially fails
to understand
Tracking
• Opening of Eragon – setting
• When the sisters board the train – MOAGiesha
– moving towards a new beginning
•
Boom
• Boom tilt – house – setting - Eragon’s hut –
Arya and Eragon in the forest -
Tilt
• Durza - Eragon
• Models – TDWTPrada
• TDVCode – covering the documents and the
reactions – her significance – both
simultaneously used (appx 2:00:00)
Zoom
• Conflict setting – TDWTPrada – setting the
action when she starts becoming the part of
the system – her immersion
Aerial
• TDVCode – aerial – when they move after
Leigh’s arrest to the other church – distance
covered – grandeur of theme – moving further
– setting changed (appx 1:50:00)
Hand held
• TPianist – when the German asks him to play
it for him – seems to be a gradual zoom in but
a very fine hand held shot – (appx 2:00:00)
Camera movement:
appropriate/inappropriate
Camera Movements (Bad) TTM
• 1:53 (dolly in)
• Still shots – three major characters (A, A, P)
• 3:41 (Tilt, Boom ??)
• 7:45 (way through)
• 12:27 (naïve, raw, innocent, lively)
• 17:55 (induction into new world)
• 19:00, 20:00, 21:00 – encounter with three Ms
• 23: 00 – king intro
• 24:00 – dual
• 26:55 – bonding of partnership
• 36:23 – king and cardinal – pan, arch, miniscule, long?
• 38:00 – king and 3 Ms
• 43:00 - rivalry – good – dooly in – focus
• 45: 00 – kissing of hand, supremacy
• 46:30 – equal pedestal
• 47:30 – theft – good but lacking
• 49
• 51:47
• 1:00:20
• 1:04:25 – chase
• 1:04:50 – strategy – arch
• 1:09:10 – completion of entry
• 1:12:00 – initiation of plan
• 1:12:50 – lighting of bombs
• Wrong ending note
• 1:14: 26
• 1:17:00 – bringing in diamond
• 1:18:00 – items retrieved
• 1:18:54 – falling off the ship
• 1:20:00 – wife and husband, takes the hand
off
• 1:22:00 – counter attack
• 1:25:00 – the exchange
• 1:26:00 – saving the servant
• 1:27:45 – the rescue
• 1:28:45 – D Art’s fight
• 1:31:00 – final shot
• 1:32:00 – fight for necklace
• 1:36:00
Camera Movements (good)
• Opening of LA Confidential
• The Scarlet Letter (13:45 – chasing the bird)
• Opening of Anna Karenina & (41:30 - suicide)
• No Country for Old Men (2:30 – killing of Pm)
• Opening of Forrest Gump (14:45)
• Stardust (1:45:00)
• (Prince Caspian 3:40-8:41, 12:15, 24:25, 32:50,
37:45, 46:15, 50:20, 1:07:38, 1:54:00, 2:03:30)
Editing
Class 14-15
Editing
• Editing is the linking together of one shot to the
next, and usually follows a logical connection
between the two
• Very few films contain only one shot, and thus most
join many shots together
• Editing is also choosing the best camera shots taken
and putting them together in a way to build a
scene, a sequence, and finally, a completed film
Types of edits
• Several types of edits
– The cut - the first shot ends where the second begins. The shots are
spliced together.
– A dissolve joins two shots together by blending them – the beginning of
the second shot is briefly superimposed on the end of the first shot
– The fade-in means the beginning of the shot gradually goes from dark to
light
– Conversely, the fade-out means the end of the shot goes from light to
dark
– The wipe is when a line moves across an image to gradually clear one
shot and introduce another – this tends to show a connection between
the scene ending and the one beginning
– A jump cut is one in which a continuous shot is suddenly broken in that
one shot is abruptly replaced by another that is mismatched, calling
attention to the cut and disconnecting the viewer
– The iris edit is the new image opening as an expanding circle in the old
image (iris -in) or the old image closing as a contracting circle
disappearing into the new image (iris-out)
Types of edits
• Continuity editing is editing the viewer does not
notice
• This editing is referred to as invisible editing
because the filmmaker does not want the editing to
distract from the story, so avoid cuts and transitions
between images
• Continuity editing relies on shots called establishing
shots
– An establishing shot is one that begins a scene or
sequence by clearly locating it in a specific place so that
the shots that follow are part of that scene or sequence
but as more detailed shots
Types of edits
• Crosscutting uses alternating shots of at least two
sequences of action happening in different places at
the same time
• The shot/revere shot is an exchange between two
characters that goes back and forth between the
two characters as they speak to or look purposefully
at the other character
• An eye line match means that the next shot shows
the viewer what the character in the previous shot
sees
• A match on action follows a character’s action into a
new space, from a different focal point
Types of edits
• Disjunctive editing is continuity editing’s opposite
in that it emphasizes the cut from one shot to
another, making it clear that the scene has changed
• The term montage takes disjunctive editing further

by calling attention to the discontinuity of shots
• The montage technique is the juxtaposition of

dissimilar shots, designed to incite the viewer to
make conscious connections between the shots
Editing
• Devices
– Transitions
– Matches
– Duration
• Styles
Transitions
• Analytical tradition, editing serves to establish
space and lead the viewer to the most salient
aspects of a scene.
• Classical continuity style, editing techniques avoid
drawing attention to themselves.
• Constructivist tradition such as Soviet Montage
cinema, there is no such false modesty. It celebrates
the power of the cinema to create a new reality out
of disparate fragments.
– Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera (Chelovek s
kinoapparatom, USSR, 1929)
Transitions
• Cheat Cut
• Crosscutting, Aka Parallel Editing – Eragon – opening
(15:00); V for Vendatta - opening
• Cut-in, Cut Away – Eragon – opening – (2:08)
• Dissolve – stardust 1:14:30 (matte, jump cut or elliptical
editing, wipe????)
• Iris -
• Jump Cut – less than 30 degree
• Establishing Shot/Reestablishing Shot -
• Shot/Reverse Shot -
• Superimposition -
• Wipe -
Cheat cut
• A part of continuity editing system
• It purports to show continuous time and space from
shot to shot
• but which actually mismatches the position of figures
or objects in the scene.
– In this sequence from Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minelli,
1944)
– the editing sacrifices actual physical space for dramatic
space.
– As we can see in the first shot, there is a wall behind the
telephone.
• Cheat cuts were also often used to disguise the
relatively short stature of leading men in relation to
their statuesque female co-stars.
CROSSCUTTING, aka PARALLEL EDITING
• Editing that alternates shots of two or more lines of
action occurring in different places, usually
simultaneously.
• The two actions are therefore linked, associating the
characters from both lines of action.
• In this extended clip from Edward Yang's Yi Yi (Taiwan, 2000), father
and daughter go out on dates at presumably the same time, and go
through the same motions, even if the father is in Japan and the
daughter in Taipei.
• To further stress the similarities, the father is actually reliving his first
date with his first girlfriend (whom he has just met again after 20
years), while his daughter is actually on her first date!
• Yang uses parallel editing across space and time to
suggest that history repeats itself, generation after
generation.
CUT-IN, CUT AWAY
• An instantaneous shift from a distant framing to a
closer view of some portion fo the same space, and
vice versa.
• In Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark ( Denmark, 2000) Selma
and Bill have a dramatic conversation in Bill's car that is framed
by a cut-in and a cut-away.
• The two cuts neatly bracket Bill's anguished
confession as a separate moment, private and
isolated, that only Selma knows about.
• This editing-constructed secrecy will ultimately have
drastic consequences for Selma.
DISSOLVE
• A transition between two shots during which the first image
gradually disappears while the second image gradually appears
– NCFOM – 1:53:53; TGWTDT(2009) – 7:20; ITW – 2:15:15
• for a moment the two images blend in superimposition.
• Dissolves can be used as a fairly straighforward editing
device to link any two scenes, or in more creative ways,
for instance to suggest hallucinatory states.
• In this series of shots from The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di
Stendhal, Dario Argento, 1996), a young woman becomes so
absorbed by Brueghel's The Fall of Icarus that she actually dives into
the painting's sea! (at least in her imagination, in "real life" she
faints).
IRIS
• A round, moving mask that can close down to end a
scene (iris-out) or emphasize a detail,
• or it can open to begin a scene (iris-in) or to reveal
more space around a detail.
• For instance, in this scene from Neighbors (Buster Keaton,
1920), the iris is used with the comic effect of gradually
revealing that the female protagonist is 1) ready for her
wedding and
• 2) ready for her not-too-luxurious wedding.
• Iris is a common device of early films (at time when
some techniques like zooming were not feasible),
– so much so that when it is used after 1930 it is often
perceived as charminlgly anachronistic or nostalgic, as in
Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (1960).
JUMP CUT
• An elliptical cut that appears to be an interruption of a
single shot. CR – 1:34:25
• Either the figures seem to change instantly against a
constant background, or the background changes
instantly while the figures remain constant.
• Jump cuts are anathema to Classical Hollywood
continuity editing, but feature prominently in avant-
garde and radical filmmaking.
• When the French Nouvelle Vague films of the 1960s made jump cuts
an essential part of their playful, modern outlook, many directors
from around the globe started to use jump cuts --either creatively or
in a last ditch attempt to become "hip".
• More recently, jump cuts are more commonly associated with music
videos, video or alternative filmmaking, like Lars Von Trier's Dogma
films. Here is an example from Dancer in the Dark (Denmark, 2000).
Jump cuts
• Jump cuts are used expressively,
– to suggest the ruminations
– or ambivalences of a character,
– or of his/her everyday life,
– but they are also a clear signifier of rupture with
mainstream film storytelling.
• Rather than presenting a film as a perfectly self-
contained story that seamlessly unfold in front of
us, jump cuts are like utterances that evidentiates
– both the artificiality and
– the difficulties of telling such a story.
ESTABLISHING SHOT/
REESTABLISHING SHOT
• A shot, usually involving a distant framing,
– that shows the spatial relations among the important figures,
objects, and setting in a scene.
– Usually, the first few shots in a scene are establishing shots,
– as they introduces us to a location and the space
relationships inside it.
– In the initial sequence from Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma
Daan, Honk Kong,1986), director Tsui Hark uses three shots
to establish the locale.
• In the first one, three musicians are shown against a fireplace in
what looks like a luxurious room.
• Our suspicions are confirmed by the second establishing shot, which
shows us the other half of the ample room (shot/ reverse shot) and
reveals a party going on.
ESTABLISHING SHOT/
REESTABLISHING SHOT
• After this introduction, the camera moves forward
with several close-ups of both the musicians and
the spectators.
• At the end of the sequence, Hark shows us the
entire room in a larger shot.
• This final establishing shot is called a reestablishing
shot, for it shows us once again the spatial
relationships introduced with the establishing shots.
SHOT/REVERSE SHOT
• Two or more shots edited together that alternate characters,
typically in a conversation situation.
• In continuity editing, characters in one framing usually look left, in
the other framing, right.
• Over-the-shoulder framings are common in shot/reverse-shot
editing.
• Shot / reverse shots are one of the most firmly established
conventions in cinema, and they are usually linked through the
equally persuasive eyeline matches.
• These conventions have become so strong that they can be exploited to make improbable
meanings convincing,
– as in this sequence from The Stendhal Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Italy,1996).
– Director Dario Argento has his protagonist Anna looking at Botticelli's The Birth of Venus
(c1485)...
– ...but with the use of successive shot/ reverse shots, eyeline matches and matching
framings, it soon begins to look as if Venus herself is looking at Anna!
• CR – 35:40
• NCFOM – 20:57 – mixture of shots – static – smooth zoom in/dolly?/handheld?
SUPERIMPOSITION
• The exposure of more than one image on the same film
strip.
• Unlike a dissolve, a superimposition does not signify a
transition from one scene to another.
• The technique was often used to allow the same
performer to appear simultaneously as two characters
on the screen
• (for example Son of the Sheik), to express subjective or intoxicated vision (The Last
Laugh),
• or simply to introduce a narrative element from
another part of the diegetic world into the scene.
• In this clip from Neighbors (Buster Keaton, 1920), the resentful father of the bride
looks at the wedding ring and immediately associates in his mind with a five and
dime store.
– The subjective shot gives us a clear indication of his opinion
of his soon to be son-in-law.
WIPE
• A transition between shots in which a line passes across the
screen, eliminating the first shot as it goes and replacing it
with the next one.
• A very dynamic and noticeable transition, it is usually
employed in action or adventure films.
• It often suggest a brief temporal ellypsis and a direct
connection between the two images.
• In this example from Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (Sichinin No Samurai,
Japan, 1954),
• the old man's words are immediately corroborated by the wandering,
destitute samurai coming into town.
• As other transitions devices, like the whip pan, wipes became
fashionable at an specific historical time
– (the 1950s and 1960s), so much so as to became stylistic markers
of the film of the period.
• TDWTP – 37:05;
Matches
• Editing matches refer to those techniques that join
as well as divide two shots by making some form of
connection between them.
• That connection can be inferred from the situation
portrayed in the scene
– (for example, eyeline match)
– or can be of a purely optical nature (graphic match).
Matches
• Eye line Match
• Graphic Match
• Match On Action
Eye line Match
• A cut obeying the axis of action principle, in which
the first shot shows a person off in one direction
and the second shows a nearby space containing
what he or she sees.
• If the person looks left, the following shot should
imply that the looker is off screen right.
• The following shots from Dario Argento's The Stendhal
Syndrome (La Sindrome di Stendhal, Italy, 1996), depict Anna
looking at a painting, Brueghel's The Fall of Icarus. The scene
takes place inside Firenze's most famous museum, the Uffizi
Gallery.
Eyeline Match
• As her interest grows, the eyeline match (that is the
connection between looker and looked) is stressed with
matching close-ups
• of Anna's face and Icarus's falling into the ocean in the painting.
• Again, this implies that Anna is looking directly at Icarus's body.
– Ironically, even if Argento managed to film inside the real
Uffizi gallery, the painting he wanted to use, The Fall of
Icarus, is not part of the museum's collection!
– The painting that we see is probably a reproduction, shot in
the studio, and edited together with Anna's shots in the
Uffizi to make us believe that they are both in the same
room.
– As this example demonstrates, eyeline matches can be a very
persuasive tool to construct space in a film, real or imagined.
GRAPHIC MATCH
• Two successive shots joined so as to create a strong
similarity of compositional elements (e.g., color,
shape).
• Used in transparent continuity styles to smooth the
transition between two shots,
• as in this clip from Women On The Verge Of A Nervous
Breakdown (Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios,
Almodóvar, 1988).
• Graphic matches can also be used to make
metaphorical associations, as in Soviet Montage
style.
– Furthermore, some directors like Ozu Yasujiro use
graphic matches as an integral part of their film style.
Match on Action
• A cut which splices two different views of the same
action together at the same moment in the movement,
making it seem to continue uninterrupted.
• Quite logically, these characteristics make it one of the
most common transitions in the continuity style.
• Here is an example from Traffic (Steven Soderbergh,
2000)
– A match on action adds variety and dynamism to a scene,
– since it conveys two movements:
• the one that actually takes place on screen, and
• an implied one by the viewer, since her/his position is shifted.
Duration
• Only since the introduction of editing to the cinema
at the turn of the 20th century has not-editing
become an option.
• The decision to extend a shot can be as significant
as the decision to cut it.
• Editing can affect the experience of time in the
cinema
– by creating a gap between screen time and diegetic time
(Montage and overlapping editing)
– or by establishing a fast or slow rhythm for the scene.
Duration
• Long Take, aka Plan-sequence
• Overlapping Editing
• Rhythm
Long Take, Aka Plan-sequence
• A shot that continues for an unusually lengthy time
before the transition to the next shot.
• The average length per shot differs greatly for
different times and places, but most contemporary
films tend to have faster editing rates.
• In general lines, any shot above one minute can be
considered a long take.
• Here is an excerpt from the initial shot of Robert Altman's The
Player (1992) which not only runs for more than eight minutes,
but it is in itself an hommage to another famous long take, the
first shot of Welles's Touch of Evil (1958).
Long Take, Aka Plan-sequence
• Unless shot at a fixed angle, with a fixed camera and no
movement, long takes are extremely hard to shoot.
• They have to be choreographed and rehearsed to the last
detail, since any error would make it necessary to start all
over again from scratch.
• Sophisticated long takes such as this one from The Player, which includes all
kinds of camera movements and zooms, are often seen as auteuristic marks
of virtuosity.
• Aside from the challenge of shooting in real time, long takes
decisively influence a film's rhythm.
• Depending on how much movement is included, a long take
can make a film tense, stagnant and spell-binding, or daring,
flowing and carefree.
• Indeed, directors like Altman, Welles, Renoir, Angelopoulos, Tarkovski or
Mizoguchi have made long takes an essential part of their film styles.
• (usually in combination with deep focus and deep space)
Overlapping Editing
• Cuts that repeat part or all of an action, thus expanding
its viewing time and plot duration.
• Most commonly associated with experimental
filmmaking, due to its temporally disconcerting and
purely graphic nature,
• it is also featured in films in which action and
movement take precedence over plot and dialogue:
sports documentaries, musicals, martial arts, etc.
• Overlapping editing is a common characteristic of the
frenzied Hong Kong action films of the 80s and 90s.
• When director John Woo moved to Hollywood, he tried to
incorporate some of that style into mainstream action films, such as
Mission: Impossible 2 (2000).
Rhythm
• The perceived rate and regularity of sounds, series of
shots, and movements within the shots.
• Rhythmic factors include
– beat (or pulse),
– accent (or stress), and
– tempo (or pace).
• Rhythm is one of the essential features of a film, for it
decisively contributes to its mood and overall
impression on the spectator.
• It is also one of the most complex to analyze, since it is
achieved through the combination of mise-en-scene,
cinematography, sound and editing.
• Indeed, rhythm can be understood as the final balance
of all the elements of a film.
Rhythm
• Let us compare how rhythm can radically alter the
treatment of a similar scene.
– These two clips from Deconstructing Harry (Woody
Allen, 1997) and Cries and Whispers (Viskingar Och Rop,
Ingmar Bergman, Sweden1972) feature a couple at a
table, and both clips feature a moment of fracture
between the two characters.
• Still, they could not be more dissimilar.
– Allen employs fast cuts (even jump cuts), pans, quick
dialogue and gesturing, as he concentrates exclusively
on the two characters, shot from a variety of angles but
always in medium close-up and close-up.
Rhythm
– Even if both characters overtly disagree with each other,
there is an overall feeling of warmth and immediacy between
them, suggested by their proximity (established in short pans
and close-ups) and in the tone of their speech.
– The quick camera movements and different camera
placements suggest the uneasiness of both characters, as
they budge on their seats.
• Cries and Whispers, on the other hand, present us with
a scene of horrifying stillness.
– Bergman accentuates the separation between man and
woman by shooting them frontally and almost eliminating
dialogue.
– In this context, even the smallest sounds of forks and knives
sound ominous; a glass shattering resonates like a shot.
Rhythm
• Furthermore, the mise-en-scene becomes as equally, if
not more, important than the characters, reducing
everything to dour red, black and whites.
• The feeling of claustrophobia is enhanced by the use of
shallow space, having the characters become one with
the austere backgrounds.
• Pace is deliberately slow, and it only quickens when the
glass breaks and both characters lift up their heads,
only to immediately return to normal.
• Bergman accelerates the rhythm for a second,
punctuating the moment of the glass breaking so that a
trivial incident is magnified into a clear signal of
disaster.
Rhythm
• Lastly, rhythm is, almost by definition, intrinsically
related to music and sound.
– Some of the most striking examples of the use of music
as a film's driving force occur in the (endlessly imitated)
spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, which were written
in close collaboration with composer Ennio Morricone.
• In fact, sometimes the music would be composed
first and then a scene that fitted that rhythm would
be shot, thus reversing the customary order.
Rhythm
• The prelude to the final shotdown of The Good, the Bad
and the Ugly (Il Buono, il Brutto, il Cattivo, Italy, 1966)
runs for several minutes, as three men face each other
in a triangle, waiting to see who will take the first step.
• One of the film's theme songs is played in its entirety,
from a slow, elegiac beginning to a frenzy crescendo
that is abruptly cut off by the first gunshot.
• The slow mounting crescendo is paralleled by an
increase in the editing rate, and an intensified framing
(the sequence actually begins on a long shot similar to
the previous one).
Styles
• The patterned use of transitions, matches and
duration can be identified as a cinematic style.
• Editing styles are usually associated with historical
moments, technological developments, or national
schools.
Styles
• Continuity Editing
• Montage
• Elliptical Editing
Continuity Editing
• A system of cutting to maintain continuous and clear
narrative action.
• Continuity editing relies upon matching screen
direction, position, and temporal relations from shot to
shot.
• The film supports the viewer's assumption that space
and time are contiguous between successive shots.
• Also, the diegesis is more readily understood when
directions on the screen match directions in the world
of the film.
– The "180° rule," shown in the diagram below, dictates that
the camera should stay in one of the areas on either side of
the axis of action (an imaginary line drawn between the two
major dramatic elements A and B in a scene, usually two
characters).
Continuity Editing
Continuity Editing
• By following this rule the filmmaker ensures that each
character occupies a consistent area of the frame,
helping the audience to understand the layout of the
scene.
• This sense of a consistent space is reinforced by the use
of techniques such as the eyeline match or match on
action.
– In this sequence from Neighbors (Buster Keaton, 1920),
continuity is maintained by the spatial and temporal
contiguity of the shots and the preservation of direction
between world and screen.
– More importantly, the shots are matched on Keaton's actions
as he shuttles across the courtyard from stairwell to
stairwell.
Continuity Editing
• In the Hollywood continuity editing system the
angle of the camera axis to the axis of action usually
changes by more than 30 ° between two shots, for
example in a conversation scene rendered as a
series of shot/reverse shots.
• The 180° line is not usually crossed unless the
transition is smoothed by a POV shot or a
reestablishing shot.
Montage
• 1. A synonym for editing.
• 2. An approach to editing developed by the Soviet filmmakers
of the 1920s such as Pudovkin, Vertov and Eisenstein;
• It emphasizes dynamic, often discontinuous, relationships
between shots and the juxtaposition of images to create ideas
not present in either shot by itself.
• Sergei Eisenstein, in particular, developed a complex theory of
montage that included montage within the shot, between
sound and image, multiple levels of overtones, as well as in
the conflict between two shots.
• This sequence from October (Oktyabr, USSR, 1927) is an example of
Eisenstein's intellectual montage.
• The increasingly primitive icons from various world religions are linked by
patterns of duration, screen direction and shot scale to produce the
concept of religion as a degenerate practice used to legitimate corrupt
states.
Montage
• Soviet Montage proved to be influential around the world for
commercial as well as avant-garde filmmakers.
• We can see echoes of Pudovkin in The Grapes of Wrath (John
Ford, USA, 1939), Mother India (Mehboob Khan, India, 1957),
and The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, USA, 1973).
• In a famous sequence from the latter film, shots of Michael
attending his son's baptism are intercut with the brutal
killings of his rivals.
• Rather than stressing the temporal simultaneity of the events
(it is highly unlikely that all of the New York Mafia heads can
be caught off guard at exactly the same time!),
• the montage suggests Michael's dual nature and commitment
to both his "families", as well as his ability to gain acceptance
into both on their own terms -- through religion and violence.
Elliptical Editing
• Shot transitions that omit parts of an event, causing
an ellipses in plot and story duration.
• In this clip from Traffic (Steven Soderbergh, 2000), a
drug party is rendered through elliptical editing
(achieved with a plentiful use of dissolves and jump
cuts) in order to both shorten the time and suggest
the character's rambling mental states.
Elliptical Editing
• Elliptical editing need not be confined to a same
place and time.
• A seven-minute song sequence from Hum Aapke
Hain Koun (Sooraj Bartjatya, India 1994)
– dances us through several months in the life of a family,
from a cricket match to a ritual welcoming a new wife.
– from scenes of the newlyweds' daily life... to the
announcement of Pooja's pregnacy,
– from a gift shower for the upcoming baby... to multiple
scenes of celebrations, as Pooja's approaches her ninth
month.
Editing
• Movie specific – genre – fantasy/crime; Ch – strong/weak
• Scene specific
• Ex
– TGWTDT (2009) – 7:44; 23:10 (2011) 6:22
– LOPi – 1:23:10
Elements of film
Chapter
Elements of film
• Mise-en-scene
• Cinematography or camera work
• Editing
• Sound
Mise-en-scene
• All that appears on stage
• All that appears in one frame/scene of a film
• Placed in front of the camera
– Sets (ATWIED – opening; ABM – 2:20; COAS – opening; LOTR – opening; BHD – 9:35)
– Lighting (video - net)
– Costuming (BHD - 16:00; Bnhr – opening: PAP – 2:00)
– Makeup (stardust – 1:45:00; R Crso – 27:50)
– Props
– Placement of objects and people
– The actors’ gestures and movements
Sound
• The four types of sound that are heard and can be
analyzed
– Speech
– Music
– Sound effects
– Silence/Dead track
To analyze sound in a particular, one must listen

closely how sound is being used in the film
Sound
• Sound editing
– Sound bridge
– Sonic flashback
• Sound source
– Diegetic/Non-diegetic
– Direct sound
– Nonsimultaneous
– Offscreen
– Postsyncronization dubbing
– Sound perspective
– Syncronous sound
– Voiceover
• Sound quality
– aural properties of a sound - timbre, volume, reverb, sustain
Sound editing
• Sound bridge
– LOTR II 1:16
• Sonic flashback
– Psycho 13:00
Sound source
• Diegetic (actual sound)/Non-diegetic (commentary sound)
• Direct sound
• Non-simultaneous
• Off-screen
• Post-syncronization dubbing
• Sound perspective
• Syncronous sound
• Voiceover – LOTR I 00:32
Sound quality
• Timbre
• Volume
• Reverb
• Sustain
Timbre
• quality of auditory sensations
produced by the tone of a
sound wave.
• The timbre of a sound depends
on its wave form, which varies
with the number of overtones, or
harmonics, that are present, their
frequencies, and their relative
intensities.
• In music timbre is the
characteristic tone colour of
an instrument or voice, arising
from reinforcement by
individual singers or instruments
of different harmonics,
or overtones, of a
fundamental pitch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lUeIUPBFT8
Volume – loudness and softness
Reverb
• the persistence of sound after a sound is produced
• A reverberation, or reverb, is created when a sound or signal is reflected
causing a large number of reflections to build up and then decay as the
sound is absorbed by the surfaces of objects in the space – which could
include furniture, people, and air
• sound source stops but the reflections continue, decreasing in amplitude,
until they reach zero amplitude
• Reverberation is frequency dependent: the length of the decay, or
reverberation time, receives special consideration in the architectural
design of spaces which need to have specific reverberation times to
achieve optimum performance for their intended activity
• In comparison to a distinct echo that is a minimum of 50 to 100 ms after
the initial sound, reverberation is the occurrence of reflections that arrive
in less than approximately 50 ms. As time passes, the amplitude of the
reflections is reduced until it is reduced to zero.
• A millisecond (from milli- and second; symbol: ms) is a thousandth (0.001
or 10−3 or 1/1000) of a second
• Reverberation is not limited to indoor spaces as it exists in forests and
other outdoor environments where reflection exists.
• Reverberation occurs naturally when a person sings, talks, or plays an
instrument acoustically in a hall or performance space with sound-
reflective surfaces.
• The sound of reverberation is often electronically added to the vocals of
singers and to musical instruments.
• This is done in both live sound systems and sound recordings by
using effects units.
• Effects units that are specialized in the generation of the reverberation
effect are commonly called reverbs.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7i0Y6w5VD0
Sustain
• Attack transients consist of
changes occurring before the
sound reaches its steady-state
intensity.
• Sustain refers to the steady
state of a sound at its
maximum intensity, and decay
is the rate at which it fades to
silence.
• In the context of
electronically synthesized
sound, the term decay is
sometimes used to refer to a
drop in intensity that may
occur between the attack and
the sustain phase, and in such
cases the time it takes for the
sound to fade to silence is
called the release.
Speech
• Dialogue
– Emotions (anger, joy, uncertainty, fear, etc.)
– Volume (murmur, soft, loud, slur, clear, etc.)
– Delivery (precision, pauses, the desired quality,
etc.)
Music
• Live performance
– Need based – vagabonds/folks, experts, restaurants, etc.
• Background music
– Refers to the score that establishes the patterns
throughout a scene, a sequence, or the entire film
– It is also used to evoke emotional reactions in the
audience
Sound effects
• To analyze sound in a particular, one must listen closely
how sound is being used in the film
– Sound effects are noises made by people and objects in
each scene shown
• Natural and artificial sounds (chirping, boot sounds, engine,
rain pelting)
• Human reflexes (laughter, panting)
Silence/Dead track
• The absence of sound in a scene is called a dead
track and often surprises the audience
Sounds
• Terms that help understand/analyze use of sound
– Ambient sound is background noise or music that
surrounds the main action and dialogue
– Overlapping dialogue is the mixing and overlapping of
the speech of the character
– Voice-off is the speech of a character who is not yet seen
on the screen can be heard
– Voice over is the voice of the narrator who is not a part
of the story and cannot be heard by the characters
– Narrative cueing is the use of a sound or pattern of
music that correlates to a moment of motif in the story –
when these cues are sudden, they are called stingers
Words
• Rhythm – a strong regular repeated pattern of
sounds or movement
• Resonance – the power to bring images, feelings,
etc. into the mind of the person reading or listening
• Harmony – the pleasant combination of the related
things – the way in which different notes to be
played or sung combine to make a pleasing sound
• Melody – the arrangement of musical notes in a
tune
• Tune – a series of musical notes to be sung or
played in a particular order to form a piece of music
Relevance (evaluative parametres)
• Issues that can be addressed while analyzing the
sound in a film include determining the relation of
the sound to the image in a specific scene
• The sound might be used to link images, or become

more important than the image being shown
• The musical numbers might have a special relation

to the narrative structure
Relevance (evaluative parametres)
• Dialogue might be difficult to discern purposefully
• Silence might play a role in a scene or the movie as

a whole
• The rhythm of the sound might be parallel to the

rhythm of the editing
• All these help viewers identify the significance of

the use of sound in that film
Genre of films
Cinematic Adaptation
Class notes
Prof Devika
21 March 2020
Genre of films
• Action
• Adventure
• Comedy
• Crime
• Drama
• Epic
• Horror
• Musical
• Sci-fi
• War
• Western
• The auteur
Action films
• The genre in the 1970s
– linked with thriller DV Code (1:44:30) and adventure MD (1:41:30) genres
– may sometimes have elements of spy fiction and espionage
• the James Bond 'fantasy' spy/espionage series,
– martial arts films CTHD, and so-called 'blaxploitation’ films
– disaster film another subgenre
• Characteristics
– all designed for pure audience escapism
– big-budget physical stunts
– spectacular rhythm and pacing
– high energy
– non-stop motion
– Story and character development are generally secondary to
explosions, fist fights, gunplay and car chases
Action films
• Characteristics
– a resourceful character struggling against incredible odds
– adventurous, often two-dimensional 'good-guy' heroes
(or recently, heroines) battling 'bad guys’
– life-threatening situations
– chases, possibly with rescues, battles, fights, escapes,
destructive crises
• (floods, explosions, natural disasters, fires, etc.)
– an evil villain, and/or being pursued
– a series of challenges
– physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases
– victory achieved at the end after difficult physical efforts
and violence
Adventure films
• Unlike action films, they often use their action scenes
preferably to display and explore exotic locations in an
energetic way
– very similar to or often paired with the action film genre
• The subgenres of adventure films include

– swashbuckler film
– disaster films Children of men (2006) I am legend (2007) an inconvenient truth (2006)
– historical dramas - which is similar to the epic film genre.
– Adventure films may also be combined with other movie genres
such as, science fiction, fantasy and sometimes war films
• Characteristics
– usually exciting stories
– with new experiences or exotic locales
Adventure films
• Characteristics
– searches or expeditions for lost continents, "jungle" and
"desert" epics, treasure hunts, disaster films, or searches
for the unknown – Anaconda, Mummy
– quests for lost continents, a jungle, sea/ocean and/or
desert settings Moby Dick, Life of Pi, Jaws, sharks,
– characters going on a treasure hunts and heroic
journeys for the unknown Indiana Jones
– mostly set in a period background
– may include adapted stories of historical or fictional
adventure heroes within the historical context
• Kings, battles, rebellion or piracy are commonly seen in
adventure films Caribbean
Comedies
• Subgenres
– Slapstick Baby's Day Out (1994 Home Alone
– Screwball Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Importance of
Being Earnest, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), d. Alfred Hitchcock
– Parodies The Silence of the Hams (1994)

– Romantic comedies As you Like It
– Black comedy (dark satirical comedy) Pulp Fiction
• Characteristics
– light-hearted plots
– consistently and deliberately designed to amuse and provoke
laughter (with one-liners, jokes, etc.)
– by exaggerating the situation, the language, action,
relationships and characters – opening of TIOBE – 1:05
– contains a cartoonish style of violence that is predominantly
harmless
Crime/gangster
• Genres
– 'serial killer’ Zodiac, film noir sin city or detective-mystery films
• Characteristics
– glorify the rise and fall of (sinister actions ) criminals,
mobsters, gangs, particularly bank robbers, underworld
figures, murderers, lawbreakers or ruthless hoodlums
• in personal power struggles or conflict with law and order figures, an
underling or competitive colleague, or a rival gang
• operate outside the law, stealing and murdering their way through
life
• how the criminal will be apprehended by police, private eyes, special
agents or lawful authorities, or mysteries such as who stole the
valued object LAC
• usually materialistic, street-smart, immoral, megalomaniacal, and
self-destructive TGF
• They rise to power with a tough cruel facade while showing an
ambitious desire for success and recognition, but underneath they
can express sensitivity and gentleness TG – 28:00; 2:26:10
Crime/gangster
• Characteristics
– Headline-grabbing situations, real-life gangsters, or
crime reports have often been used in crime films
– Exotic locales to add an element of adventure and
wealth
– usually set in large, crowded cities, to show the secret
world of the criminal:
• dark nightclubs or streets with lurid neon signs, fast cars, piles
of cash, sleazy bars, contraband, seedy living quarters or
rooming houses
– Writers dreamed up appropriate gangland jargon for the
tales, such as "tommy guns" or "molls.”
Drama
• Genre
– Dramatic films are probably the largest film genre - many
subsets
– melodramas, epics (historical dramas), or romantic genres
– Dramatic biographical films (or "biopics")
• Characteristics
– Usually, not focused on special-effects, comedy, or action,
– mature subject content
– serious, plot-driven presentations
– portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations, and
stories
– involving intense character development and interaction
Epics
• Genre
– include costume dramas, historical dramas, war films,
medieval romps, or 'period pictures'
– Some 'sword and sandal' films (Biblical epics or films
occurring during antiquity) qualify as a sub-genre
– often share elements of the elaborate adventure films genre
• Characteristics
– an historical or imagined event, mythic, legendary, or heroic
figure
– often cover a large expanse of time set against a vast,
panoramic backdrop
– an extravagant setting and lavish costumes,
– grandeur and spectacle, dramatic scope, high production
values, and a sweeping musical score
• more spectacular, lavish version of a biopic film - LOTR
Horror
• Genre
– slasher, teen terror, serial killers, Satanic, Dracula,
Frankenstein, etc
– from the earliest silent Nosferatu classic, to today's CGI
monsters and deranged humans (a wide range of styles)
– often combined with science fiction when the menace or
monster is related to a corruption of technology or when
Earth is threatened by aliens
– The fantasy and supernatural film genres are not usually
synonymous with the horror genre
• Characteristics
– designed to frighten and to invoke our hidden worst fears
– often in a terrifying, shocking finale
– captivating and entertaining at the same time
– in a cathartic experience
Musical/dance films
• Genre
– Major subgenres include the musical comedy or the
concert film
• Characteristics
• cinematic forms that emphasize
– full-scale scores or
– song and dance routines in a significant way
– (usually with a musical or dance performance
– integrated as part of the film narrative)
• films that are centered on or choreography
combinations of music, dance, song
Sci-fi
• Genre
– sometimes an offshoot of fantasy films,
– they share some similarities with action/adventure films
– Science fiction often expresses the potential of technology to
destroy humankind and easily overlaps with horror films,
particularly when technology or alien life forms become
malevolent, as in the "Atomic Age" of sci-fi films in the 1950s.
• Characteristics
– often quasi-scientific
– visionary and imaginative
– complete with heroes, aliens, distant planets, impossible quests,
improbable settings, fantastic places, great dark and shadowy
villains, futuristic technology, unknown and unknowable forces,
and extraordinary monsters ('things or creatures from space'),
either created by mad scientists or by nuclear havoc
War
• Genre
– War films are often paired with other genres, such as action,
adventure, drama, romance, comedy (black), suspense, and
even epics and westerns
• Characteristics
– They may include
• POW tales,
• stories of military operations,
• and training
– War (and anti-war) films acknowledge
• the horror and heartbreak of war – TBITSP – 1:24:30
• letting the actual combat fighting (against nations or humankind) on
land, sea, or in the air provide the primary plot or background for
the action of the film
– often take a denunciatory approach toward warfare
Western
• Prolific author and screenwriter Frank Gruber listed seven
plots for Westerns
– The Union Pacific story. The plot concerns construction of a
railroad, a telegraph line, or some other type of modern
technology or transportation. Wagon train stories probably fall
into this category.
– The ranch story. The plot concerns threats to the ranch from
rustlers or large landowners attempting to force out the proper
owners.
– The empire story. The plot might involve building up a ranch
empire or an oil empire from scratch, a classic rags-to-riches plot.
– The revenge story. The plot often involves an elaborate chase and
pursuit, but it may also include elements of the classic mystery
story.
– The cavalry and Indian story. The plot revolves around taming the
wilderness for white settlers.
– The outlaw story. The outlaw gangs dominate the action.
– The marshal story. The lawman and his challenges drive the plot.
Western
• Characteristics
– an eulogy to the early days of the expansive American
frontier
– one of the oldest, most enduring genres with very
recognizable plots, elements, and characters (six-guns,
horses, dusty towns and trails, cowboys, Indians, etc.)
• Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented and

expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed
• major defining genre of the American film industry
Genre vs Person
The Auteur System
• The Auteur System can be contrasted to the genre
system
• films are rated on the basis of the expression of one
person, usually the director, because his/her indelible
style, authoring vision or 'signature' dictates the
personality, look, and feel of the film
• Certain directors (and actors) are known for certain
types of films
– Woody Allen - comedy
– Arthur Freed - musicals
– Alfred Hitchcock - suspense and thrillers
– John Ford and John Wayne - westerns
– Errol Flynn - classic swashbuckler adventure films
Literary Criticism / Analysis:
Putting Theory into Practice
Chapter 4
Types
• Close Textual Reading
– Encapsulation of liberal humanism, Russian formalism,
and New Criticism
• Biographical Approach
• Reader Response Criticism
• Structuralism, Semiotics, and Narratology
• Post structuralism – Deconstruction
• Post modernism
• Psychoanalytic/ Psychological Criticism
• Feminism – Gender Criticism
• Historical/Cultural Criticism
Reader/Viewer Response Criticism
• Also known as Reader reception criticism
• Terry Eagleton – Literary Theory (2008)

– History of modern literary theory in 3 stages
• A preoccupation with the author/auteur (romanticism and
the nineteenth century) (Hitchcock, Spielberg, Kubrick)
• An exclusive concern with the text (New criticism) (MDick)
• A marked shift of attention to the reader over recent years
(Bond, Bourne, Narnia, HP)
• Looks at the text
– Not from the current reader’s perspective (TTM)
– Takes into account readers of the text from various
historical periods (LOTR, Narnia, Ivanhoe)
– How time period and contextual situation of a reader
might affect the reading or the interpretation of the text
(NCFOM 22:00)
• “Horizon of expectations” of the reading audience –

(Hans Robert Jauss) depend on
– What do the readers value (Paycheck – thrill; GWTW – drama;
Jurassic Park – adventure; Casino Royale – action; Twilight – fantasy; )
– What do they look for in a work
• At a particular point in time (TIOBE, IALegend, MReport )
• And history (Ivanhoe, W&P, TSList, TTM, TP)
The Lord of the Rings - Book
• Set in the fictional world of Middle-earth
• an epic high-fantasy novel English J. R. R. Tolkien.
• Although a major work in itself, the story was only the last movement of a larger
epic Tolkien had worked on since 1917
• The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 fantasy novel The Hobbit, but
eventually developed into a much larger work
• Written in stages between 1937 and 1949,
• The Lord of the Rings was published in three volumes over the course of a year
from 29 July 1954 to 20 October 1955.
• The three volumes were titled The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The
Return of the King.
• Tolkien had written multiple times that Middle-earth is located on our Earth. He
has described it as an imaginary period in earth's past, not only in The Lord of the
Rings (see Prologue and Appendices), but also in several correspondence
letters, estimating the end of the Third Age to about 6,000 years before
his own time, and in N.W. Europe (Hobbiton for example was set in same latitude
as Oxford), though at times he would also describe elements of the stories as a
kind of "...secondary or sub-creational reality" or "Secondary belief" in replies to
letters.
The Lord of the Rings - Movie
• Release dates
– 19 December 2001(The Fellowship of the Ring)
– 18 December 2002(The Two Towers)
– 17 December 2003(The Return of the King)
• Running time
– 558 minutes (Theatrical edition length)
– 682 minutes (Extended edition length)
– 726 (Extended Blu-Ray edition)
• Country
– New Zealand
– United States
No Country for Old Men
• No Country for Old Men is a 2005 novel
by American Cormac McCarthy. The story occurs in
the vicinity of the United States–Mexico border in
1980 and concerns an illegal drug deal gone awry in
the Texas desert back country.
• The title of the novel derives from the first line of
the 1926 poem "Sailing to Byzantium" by W. B.
Yeats.
• The book was adapted into the 2007 movie No
Country for Old Men which won 4 Academy Awards,
including for Best Picture.
TIOBE, IALegend, MReport
• The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People - a
play by Oscar Wilde
– First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in
London
– (1952) is a British film adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde directed
by Anthony Asquith
– a 2002 British-American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Oliver
Parker
• I Am Legend (1954) horror fiction by American Richard Matheson.
• Movie as The Last Man on Earth in 1964, as The Omega Man in 1971, and
as I Am Legend in 2007 (American post-apocalyptic horror film by Francis
Lawrence), along with a direct-to-video 2007 production capitalizing on that
film, I Am Omega.
• "The Minority Report" (1956) science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick
• In 2002, the story was adapted into a film directed by Steven Spielberg
Ivanhoe, W&P, TSList
• Ivanhoe /a historical novel by Sir Walter Scott, first
published in 1820 in three volumes and subtitled A
Romance (set in 1194) 12th century England
• Movie – 1911, 1913, 1913, 1952, 1983
• War and Peace (Historical novel) (Serialised 1865–
1867; book 1869) Leo Tolstoy (set in 1805-12)
• Schindler's Ark (released in America as Schindler's List)
Booker Prize-published in 1982 Australian Thomas
Keneally,
• Movie Schindler's List - Steven Spielberg
• Release dates
– November 30, 1993(Washington, D.C.)
– December 15, 1993(United States)
TTM, TP
• The Three Musketeers a historical novel by
French Alexandre Dumas, set in 1625–1628,March–
July 1844 (serialised)
• a 2011 3D romantic action adventure film directed
by Paul W. S. Anderson
• The Pianist a 2002 historical drama film - Roman
Polanski,
• based on the autobiographical book The Pianist
(1946), a World War II memoir by the Polish-
Jewish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman
• The film was a co-production between France,
the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland.
Characteristics
• Reader response approach • Formalist or close textual
assumes text is always reading critics assume that
unfinished and it has no a literary work is finished
fixed meaning (AK - with fixed formal
Suicide) properties (AK - Suicide)
• A literary work is an Aslan’s death on the altar?

evolving creation of the
reader as s/he processes the
characters, plots, images,
and other elements while
reading (SI, WH, GWTW, SR)
• Michael Meyer
– Act of creative writing is, to a degree, controlled by a text
– But it may have many interpretations
– No definitive reading of a book (TCOMChristo)
– Crucial assumption is that readers create rather than
discover meanings in texts (MDick) (Falstaff, Satan)
– Different meanings for the same readers at different
points of readings (GWTW - Scarlett)
• Stanley Fish “Is There A Text in This Class?”
– Impossible to think of a sentence independent of a context
(Bond, James Bond; Elementary Dr. Watson elementary)
– When no context specified – automatically place it in the
most encountered one (No Country for Old Men – stand still)
• Each reader will come to the text with their own
understanding of the subjects it broaches (SIsland)
• It will influence their reading of the text
• It is difficult to believe that texts have one fixed
meaning ??? (Formalist and New critics insist on it)
• The meaning of text grows and changes as the reader
grows and changes (grand/parents opinion)
• Stanley
– The change from one structure of understanding to another
is not a rupture but a modification of the interests and
concerns that are already in place (Next stage of
understanding)
• More readings add a fuller understanding, a new
perspective
Chapter 4
Types
– Encapsulation of liberal humanism, Russian formalism, and
New Criticism
• Post modernism
Close Textual Reading
• Encapsulation of liberal humanism, Russian
formalism, and New Criticism
– Liberal humanism grew out of the literary theory that
preceded English becoming a subject of study (before it
was called literary theory)
– Russian formalism flourished in Moscow and St.
Petersburg in the 1920s
• Russian formalists based their theories on Ferdinand de
Saussure, the Swiss linguist.
• The Russian formalists argued that literature was a systematic
set of linguistic and structured elements that could be analyzed
• Literature from their perspective was a self-enclosed system
studied for its form not its content
• Encapsulation of liberal humanism, Russian
formalism, and New Criticism
– New criticism is related to Russian formalism but
remains it own school of thought
– It put forth that a reader should understand and value a
work for its own inherent worth
– It came about in many ways as a reaction to the
attention of scholars and teachers of the early 20th
century on the biographical and historical context of a
work
– The new critics (TS Eliot) didn’t like that the text itself
seemed to be diminished by the attention paid to its
externalities
– So, the new critic’s interest would be in the finished
work, not how the work was finished
Close Textual Reading, and Stylistics
• Mary H Snyder
– Regardless of the text and the approaches that will be
applied to that text to formulate a complex and engaging
critique of it, one should always begin with the close
reading approach, since it focuses the reader first and
foremost on the text itself, and this is important
• Basic question asked of a text when reading it
closely include
– how the various elements of the work reinforce its
meanings, and
– how these elements are related to the whole
• The work’s organizing principle needs to be
identified, as do the issues that the work raises.
• How the structure of the work resolves those issues
is crucial to this reading/watching as well
• The following questions, which help to arrive at a
theme and a starting point from which to continue
exploring this text, needs to the addressed
Questions
• 1 Plot
• 2 Character
• 3 Point of view
• 4 Setting
• 5 Symbolism
• 6 Style, tone, irony
• 7 Title
• 8 Theme
1 Plot
• Does the plot conform to a formula? No
• Is it predictable? No
• What are the conflicts in the story? Internal, External
• Are there flashbacks, foreshadowing? Yes
• Where is the climax? Middle, end
• Are the conflicts resolved at the end? Yes
• Outline the plot, and how events unfold, being very

specific.
• How does the structure of the plot affect reading
/watching the work?
2 Character
• Who is the main character and why? Anna, her story,
other more powerful but she is the centre
• Who are the other characters in the story and how are
they used? Her brother, husband, LOVER, son, so on
• How does the author/auteur reveal characters? At the
most intense moment
• How are they described? Contextually, only in relation
to Anna
• Make a list of the characters and describe them, from

their physical attributes to how they’re portrayed
3 Point of view
• Who tells the story? The narrator
• Is it one narrator? No
• Is it first person or third person? Third person
• If it is third person, is it third-person omniscient, limited
omniscient, or objective?
• How much does the narrator know? Only for the moment
• Does the point of view change during the course of the story?
Yes
• Is the narration reliable and objective? Or does the narrator
appear innocent, emotional, or self-deluded?
• Does the author directly comment on the action? No
• How does the point of view affect your reading of the text?
4 Setting
• Is the setting important? Partial
• How is it used to flesh out the characters, and / or
develop the characters? Sets the action
• Is the setting used symbolically? Yes – alone, social
• Is the setting vital enough to the story to be
considered a character? No
• Describe the setting, especially if it changes –

parental, husband, lover
5 Symbolism
• Are there symbols used in the story?
Yes – beginning – wild chase, pit, bear, delicate twig;
ending – candle, swimming, child
• How do they contribute to one’s understanding of

the story?
Help the audience understand the mood,
development of action, development of character,
etc.
6 Style, tone, irony
• Is the style consistent throughout? No
• Do all the characters use the same language, or are
there different voices? No, different voices
• Is the level of diction formal or informal? Depends –
husband, son, brother, lover
• How are the sentences constructed? Simple to
complex – the character too deep and focused to let
it shift to language alone
• How does the author/auteur’s use of language

contribute to the tone of the story? Blends well
7 Title
• How does the title relate to the tone of the story?
Centers around her only – all events and characters
have meaning in relation to her only
8 Theme
• What are the themes running through the story? –
is it adultery – if so why is she still the ruling
character
• What is the text saying to the reader/viewer? Is she
a mere adulteress?
• What messages are being conveyed? Live life, have
guts, be desirable – her hamartia
• Explain the theme that you see in the text – live for
herself – stand by yourself, force people to respect
you
Stylistics
• Stylistics identifies the linguistic details of a
particular work and how they contribute to the
text’s overall meaning and effects - dialogues
• Stylistic critics
– Describe technical aspects of the language of the text
– Provide objective linguistic data to support existing
readings or intuitions about a literary work
– Often try to establish a new reading of the text
– But mainly, try to show that literature has no ineffable,
mystical core which is beyond analysis
Chapter 4
Literary analysis
• Interpretation ?
– Might seem a drudgery
– A fascinating exploration into the depths of a text

– Informative and illuminating
– Expands the mind and one’s understanding of the world
– Learning to view the world from a mere analytical
perspective
Initial intimacy with the work
• Read/watch it more that once
• Sound interpretation
• First – experiential go through
– Appreciate the text
– Follow the story
– Notice the intricacies
– The aspects that move you
– The parts that confuse or are difficult to understand
– Emotional response to the text
Types
– Encapsulation of liberal humanism, Russian formalism,
and New Criticism
• Post modernism
Psychoanalytic/ Psychological Criticism
• Sigmund Freud – Austrian (1856-1939)
• Deeper understanding of
– Text
– Its writer
– Its reader – contemporary – A Doll’s house – leave him – rural –
uneducated
• Changed our notions of human behaviour
• Healing of the conscious mind
– consciousness is a state of being that has three modes, those of
will (or will power), mind and feeling.
• Unconscious as a force determines our actions and beliefs
• How the mind, the instincts, and sexuality work
– Wish fulfillment, sexuality, unconscious, repression
• Strong influence on our actions
• The superego
– Adheres to all the rules, our moral compass, thus conscience
– the super-ego plays the critical and moralizing role;
– The super-ego can stop you from doing certain things that your id may want
you to do.
• The id
– Represents our desires, holds the sexual desires
– the id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends;
• The ego
– Balances the superego and id
– This is the personality ; it is the conscious aspect of the person, and excludes
the subconscious and unconscious minds. It is agency, or the agent of
consciousness. The ego has to make choices, and these produce effects. So
the realm of the ego is the realm of cause and effect.
– and the ego is the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires
of the id and the super-ego.
• Freud is known to have relied on literature to explore the workings of the
mind
– How language and symbols operate, reflect fears or desires
– Text’s more obvious content vs its hidden content
• Freudian critics pay close attention to
– Unconscious motives and feelings
• Both the author and the characters in the text
• Harold Bloom The Anxiety of Influence
– Explores the idea of writers inhibited in their writing by
the greatness and influence of those who have written
before them
• Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar The Anxiety of
Authorship
– Discuss the idea of women experiencing anxiety when
picking up the pen to write, since it was not considered
their domain
• Women perception not fully explored by Freud
• Caught in the perception of his own time
• Freudian approach began to wane in 1960s
• Theories still useful – even in contesting them
• Jacques Lacan – French (1901-1981)
– Lacan revived Freud's theories (mid 1950s) by updating
them
• The ego, the “I” self is only an illusion produced by
the unconscious
• Unconscious
– The core of one’s being
– Structured like a language
• That helps to form the individual, without the individual’s
conscious awareness
• Lacanian critics pay close attention to
– The unconscious motives and feelings
• Not of the authors or characters (Freudian critics do)
• But those of the text itself
• Theory of mirror stage – creates the concept of lack
and desire in individuals – 6-18months
• Psychoanalytic / psychological criticism
– Investigates the creative process of the arts, the nature of
the literary genius, its relation to the normal mental
functions
– Explores the psychology of the particular artist or writer,
reference to the literary work – how does it reflect the
author’s personal psychology,
– An analysis of the fictional characters in the text, the
revelation of the psychological states of the emotions and
behavious of the characters
• Move beyond
– Complexities – Oedipus, Electra – Gay, Lesbian
– Language – apparent, latent
– Author – Coleridge, Ezra Pound
Movies
• A Beautiful Mind
• Fight Club
• The Silence of the Lambs – Red Dragon – Hannibal
• American Psycho
• Citizen Kane
• Atonement
• Big fish
• Mystic River
• Psycho
• The Devil Wears Prada
• The Importance of Being Earnest
Literature-to-film
adaptation analysis: charting
some new territory
Chapter 22
• Critical approaches – can be applied specifically to lit-
to-film adaptation – not only as a product but as a
process
• Adamant disapproval of fidelity (comparison) studies –
why – not clear or questionable
• Literary analysis and film analysis thrive at the cost of
lit-to-film adaptation analysis
• Comparative studies (An interesting and powerful tool)
(compare and contrast – both book and movie) sensible?
– Where do these differences and similarities stem from
– What do they mean
– How they can be detected
• An intertextual comparison –
– Julie Sanders – Adaptation and Appropriation
– Applicable at multiple levels
• Adaptation studies – an intertextual comparison
– Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on dialogism (The Dialogic Imagination)
• Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole –
there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have
the potential of conditioning others. Which will affect the other, how
it will do so and in what degree is what is actually settled at the
moment of utterance. (1981, 426)
– Julia Kristeva first proposed and developed the concept of
intertextuality (Revolution in Poetic Language) which was based on
MB’s work on dialogism
• Thus, a text is not complete in itself but always bears
and leaves the imprint of and for others.
• Intertextuality – inescapably intrinsic and purposeful
• Adaptation as a product and a process
– Linda Hutcheon – The Theory of Adaptation – doubled
definition
Different critical intertextual approaches
• Adaptability analysis
• Adaptation process analysis
• Fidelity/infidelity analysis
• Specificity analysis
• Audience reception anxiety analysis
• Short story/drama to film

• Already established critical approaches
• Analysis of book cover images – before the movie
and after the movie is released
Adaptability analysis
• Hutcheon asks
– some kinds of stories and their worlds more easily
adaptable than others (2006,15)
• LOTR, Hercu, Erag, Jaws, HP (33:30) – TDWP, ConfessOAS, (1:33:00) TIOBE
– Linear novels more adaptable than experimental ones
• SI, TG (9:00, 48:00, 1:19:00, 2:38:15, 3:07;00) – GWTW, W&P (58:50, 2:25:00) Dickens
• Adaptability analysis is the study of such concerns

– Source text might be experimental in nature and not seeming
adaptable
– Might seem as an easily adapted as a linearly structured
work but film adopts a different course
– Dual fold – identify – limitations and opportunities of the text
• Source text (questions to be asked in conjunction with the novel’s
adaptability )
– Is the work adaptable? What are the complexities? What are the
different aspects of the work to adapt?
– How many adaptations have been made? Research the adaptations and
try to follow the work closely, and those that veer away from the work?
– In different adaptations how does the director adapt the work and how
does it influence the previous adaptation? (TGWTDT)
– How does the film show the difficulties in adapting more faithfully?
What obstacles does the film seem to have encountered in adapting the
work? How to adapt the work keeping in mind the modern day
concerns?
– When we know so much about the circumstances surrounding the
writer’s creation, the film proves insightful in showing how a writer’s
creation is influenced by her/his life and at the same time influences
her/his life? What statements might this film be making about the
adaptability of the work?
– What might be an example of an adaptation idea for any movie that
incorporates one of the many fascinating interpretations of the text that
have yet to be broached?
Adaptation process analysis
• Adaptation process analysis looks closely at the
process by which the work was adapted and the
film made
• Hutcheon explains – it permits us to think about
how adaptations allow people to tell, show, or
interact with stories (2006,22)
• This analysis of the process is usually dependent
upon access to ‘behind the scenes’ information
– DVDs – behind-the-scene mini-documentaries
• Recently, novelists, screen writers, and directors
more willing to reveal the process of adaptation
• DVDs give information about the process that helps
us understand and analyze the product in a way
never imaginable
• We actually get to watch the process in action
• We can analyze the scenes that were deleted and
try to figure out why
• People get interviewed – directors, writers, actors,
producers, etc.
– How do the contributions of the novelist, the screenwriter,
and the director affect the outcome of this film?
– What are some of the constraints the actors face, and also
the director, and how do they work around them in a way
that seems fitting for the work of an adaptation?
– How does the background information on the writer help
frame a better understanding of the character’s portrayal in
the film?
– How does the information provided on DVD allow for a more
in-depth understanding of the film, and its adaptation of the
work?
– How does this information reveal and explain the intricacies
involved in making this work into a film?
– Finally, what aspects or elements of the product reflect the
vicissitudes and intricacies of the process
Fidelity/infidelity analysis
• When used simply included or what was replaced, it can result in a
dreadfully dull analysis
– Into the Wild - 2007 - Sean Penn - a 1996 non-fiction - Jon Krakauer -expansion of a 9,000-word article by Krakauer
on Christopher McCandless titled "Death of an Innocent", Jan 1993 Outside (2:07:00, 2:17:10)
– The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 2008 American romantic fantasy drama - David Fincher - 1922 short story - F. Scott
Fitzgerald (14:10, 26:25, 35:25, 1:02:20, 1:28:24, 2:00:45, 2:25:15, 2:33:00, )
– The Importance of being Ernest – Oscar Wilde – BBC – Stuart Burge – 1986 – drama – opening - The Importance of Being
Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People – 14 Feb 1895 );
– Sin City - 2005 American neo-noir crime anthology film written, produced, and directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez -
Miller's graphic novel - a series of neo-noir comics by Frank Miller. The first story originally appeared in "Dark Horse Presents Fifth
Anniversary Special" (April, 1991), and continued in Dark Horse Presents #51–62 from May 1991 to June 1992, under the title of Sin
City, serialized in thirteen parts. Several other stories of variable lengths have followed. The intertwining stories, with frequently
recurring characters, take place in Basin City.
• Used
– To explore an understanding of why the film was made the way it was
made
– Why the filmmaker adapted the work the way he did
– What about the work was used to formulate the film TT
– Why certain scenes might have been used in the film, but weren’t in the
work or why certain scenes were retained in the film and some almost
‘as is’. What the reasoning might be behind losing the scene as well as
why one might be added, or kept
• Some questions that can be asked of adaptations
are
– How do the director and those who work with him
create the effect and why? What does this style bring to
this film?
– How does the director’s style compare/contrast with
writer’s style as an author?
– The screen writer made drastic changes to the plot and
the characters. What was the effect the screen writer/s
was going for? Why might those changes have been
made taking into account the main thrust of the film, in
comparison to the main thrust of the work?
– The scene in the book is towards the end, while the
scene in the film is more towards the beginning/ ending
• How does the degree of in/fidelity influence the
outcome of the film and in what ways and why?
• This analysis involves an examination of why the
filmmaker chose to make changes that were made,
or why very few changes were made, or for what
greater overarching purpose and effect either
changes or no changes were made.
• The crux of this analysis is to determine whether
the fidelity or infidelity accomplishes a certain goal
of feel in the film, and whether or not that might
have or might not have been the desired goal.
Specificity analysis
• Specificity analysis can be an intriguing way to look
at each text in its respective medium and how each
medium is used to bring out the story it does.
• This study can focus on the techniques specific to
each medium, and explore why certain techniques
were used in each medium, and explore why certain
techniques were used in each medium.
• Perhaps a tone is created in the book due to the
minimalist format of the text, and its sparseness.
– The same impact is brought out through the types of
props used, or the costuming of the characters, even
their hair and makeup.
• It can usually be assumed that the director planned
for the effect that has been achieved, but the
viewer might see something in the film that the
director didn’t plan for a viewer to see.
• SD – opening – curiosity, authority, oddity, language, comfort
zone, warning, caution
– Shots, camera movement, frame, makeup, costume, vocabulary
– 5:00, 7:00, 9:15, 13:50, 1:50
• Questions
– What information so the intertexts/ texts of chapter (crucial)
provide to the reader of the book and why are they important?
– How is this information revealed in the film, and what techniques
are employed to do so? How much of this information is revealed
in the film? What is excluded?
– How important is this information to the film in contrast to the
book? That is, what is the main thrust of the film in comparison to
the book and how does the information fit into each text is trying
to convey to the reader/viewer?
– How to incorporate the discovery of an information into the
character, especially how this information must transform ch’s
demeanor in ways the viewer might not expect
– On another note, how does the film bring out the setting of one
particular place using different techniques from the book? The
place might seen a more dominating presence in the film than in
the book. Why might this effect have been a goal of the
filmmaker?
Audience reception anxiety analysis
• Audience reception anxiety can influence the filmmaker in
both positive and negative ways.
• Such an analysis would require research about the audience’s
expected reception of the film.
• What was predicted about how the audience might respond?
• How well known is the book?
• Is there a particular group that might have an expectant
concern about the outcome of the adaptation?
• The anxiety might affect the feel of the film, what way the
film was made, and how the book was interpreted.
• The anxiety could be attributed to the subject matter of the
book, the popularity of the book or its popularity among a
certain population or group, the notoriety of the author, or
even the author’s biographical background
• Questions
– Why did the director change the character of the book
and why?
– In what ways the book seems to focus less intently on
one aspect while the film portrays it poignantly? In what
ways does it focus more on the reactions or the action?
– Why the changes that were done were done? Was the
reaction of audience the main concern?
• Although this type of analysis might seem to rely
on speculation, research and background
information on the film, interviews with the actors,
directors, etc. and clues within the text and the
screenplay used for the film could provide more
than enough to support such an argument.
• It’s an important consideration to address, since
filmmakers must at times feel burdened by their
need not only to satisfy the audience, but lure
them to the theater at least
Short story/drama to film
• Too visual a description
• Too detailed the dialogues
• Too clear the description
• Questions
– What to retain?
– How much to retain?
– What else to add?
– How to add?
– What props to use to retain the original flavour and impact
Already established critical approaches
• Although certain approaches and theories are useful
for analyzing in one medium, it doesn’t necessarily
follow that these same approaches can be applied to
another medium.
– auteur criticism would not be useful in applying to literature,
although biographical criticism might be considered the
parallel approach in addressing literature from a similar
perspective.
• However an interesting analysis of a lit-to-film
adaptation might include a biographical approach to
the literature and a critical approach to the film that
focuses on the director or the auteur of the film.
• A comparison with the previous works and their quality
can be an interesting study
• Adaptations redistribute energies and intensities,
provide flows and displacements; the linguistic energy
of literary turns into the visual-kinetic-performative
energy of the adaptation, in an amorous exchange of
textual fluids. (Stam and Raengo, 2005a, 45-6)
• Critical approaches can be applied to such analyses,
depending on a plethora of factors to be considered.
• It is time to move beyond personal preferences and
limited views to broaden their horizons by expanding
their understanding of both literature and film, and
how the elements of each can be used to bring out
meaning in a text of each medium.
Analysis of book cover images – before
the movie and after the movie is
released
• Highlight the intensity of the change
• Bring out the theme more clearly
• Leave a longer impact
• Relate to the audience
Literature-to-film
adaptation analysis: charting
some new territory
Chapter 22
• Critical approaches – can be applied specifically to lit-
to-film adaptation – not only as a product but as a
process
• Adamant disapproval of fidelity (comparison) studies –
why – not clear or questionable
• Literary analysis and film analysis thrive at the cost of
lit-to-film adaptation analysis
• Comparative studies (An interesting and powerful tool)
(compare and contrast – both book and movie) sensible?
– Where do these differences and similarities stem from
– What do they mean
– How they can be detected
• An intertextual comparison –
– Julie Sanders – Adaptation and Appropriation
– Applicable at multiple levels
• Adaptation studies – an intertextual comparison
– Mikhail Bakhtin’s work on dialogism (The Dialogic Imagination)
• Everything means, is understood, as a part of a greater whole –
there is a constant interaction between meanings, all of which have
the potential of conditioning others. Which will affect the other, how
it will do so and in what degree is what is actually settled at the
moment of utterance. (1981, 426)
– Julia Kristeva first proposed and developed the concept of
intertextuality (Revolution in Poetic Language) which was based on
MB’s work on dialogism
• Thus, a text is not complete in itself but always bears
and leaves the imprint of and for others.
• Intertextuality – inescapably intrinsic and purposeful
• Adaptation as a product and a process
– Linda Hutcheon – The Theory of Adaptation – doubled
definition
Different critical intertextual approaches
• Adaptability analysis
• Adaptation process analysis
• Fidelity/infidelity analysis
• Specificity analysis
• Audience reception anxiety analysis
• Short story/drama to film

• Already established critical approaches
• Analysis of book cover images – before the movie
and after the movie is released
• Hutcheon asks
– some kinds of stories and their worlds more easily
adaptable than others (2006,15)
• LOTR, Hercu, Erag, Jaws, HP (33:30) – TDWP, ConfessOAS, (1:33:00) TIOBE
– Linear novels more adaptable than experimental ones
• SI, TG (9:00, 48:00, 1:19:00, 2:38:15, 3:07;00) – GWTW, W&P (58:50, 2:25:00) Dickens
• Adaptability analysis is the study of such concerns

– Source text might be experimental in nature and not seeming
adaptable
– Might seem as an easily adapted as a linearly structured
work but film adopts a different course
– Dual fold – identify – limitations and opportunities of the text
• Source text (questions to be asked in conjunction with the novel’s
adaptability )
– Is the work adaptable? What are the complexities? What are the
different aspects of the work to adapt?
– How many adaptations have been made? Research the adaptations and
try to follow the work closely, and those that veer away from the work?
– In different adaptations how does the director adapt the work and how
does it influence the previous adaptation? (TGWTDT)
– How does the film show the difficulties in adapting more faithfully?
What obstacles does the film seem to have encountered in adapting the
work? How to adapt the work keeping in mind the modern day
concerns?
– When we know so much about the circumstances surrounding the
writer’s creation, the film proves insightful in showing how a writer’s
creation is influenced by her/his life and at the same time influences
her/his life? What statements might this film be making about the
adaptability of the work?
– What might be an example of an adaptation idea for any movie that
incorporates one of the many fascinating interpretations of the text that
have yet to be broached?
• Adaptation process analysis looks closely at the
process by which the work was adapted and the
film made
• Hutcheon explains – it permits us to think about
how adaptations allow people to tell, show, or
interact with stories (2006,22)
• This analysis of the process is usually dependent
upon access to ‘behind the scenes’ information
– DVDs – behind-the-scene mini-documentaries
• Recently, novelists, screen writers, and directors
more willing to reveal the process of adaptation
• DVDs give information about the process that helps
us understand and analyze the product in a way
never imaginable
• We actually get to watch the process in action
• We can analyze the scenes that were deleted and
try to figure out why
• People get interviewed – directors, writers, actors,
producers, etc.
– How do the contributions of the novelist, the screenwriter,
and the director affect the outcome of this film?
– What are some of the constraints the actors face, and also
the director, and how do they work around them in a way
that seems fitting for the work of an adaptation?
– How does the background information on the writer help
frame a better understanding of the character’s portrayal in
the film?
– How does the information provided on DVD allow for a more
in-depth understanding of the film, and its adaptation of the
work?
– How does this information reveal and explain the intricacies
involved in making this work into a film?
– Finally, what aspects or elements of the product reflect the
vicissitudes and intricacies of the process
• When used simply included or what was replaced, it can result in a
dreadfully dull analysis
– Into the Wild - 2007 - Sean Penn - a 1996 non-fiction - Jon Krakauer -expansion of a 9,000-word article by Krakauer
on Christopher McCandless titled "Death of an Innocent", Jan 1993 Outside (2:07:00, 2:17:10)
– The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 2008 American romantic fantasy drama - David Fincher - 1922 short story - F. Scott
Fitzgerald (14:10, 26:25, 35:25, 1:02:20, 1:28:24, 2:00:45, 2:25:15, 2:33:00, )
– The Importance of being Ernest – Oscar Wilde – BBC – Stuart Burge – 1986 – drama – opening - The Importance of Being
Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People – 14 Feb 1895 );
– Sin City - 2005 American neo-noir crime anthology film written, produced, and directed by Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez -
Miller's graphic novel - a series of neo-noir comics by Frank Miller. The first story originally appeared in "Dark Horse Presents Fifth
Anniversary Special" (April, 1991), and continued in Dark Horse Presents #51–62 from May 1991 to June 1992, under the title of Sin
City, serialized in thirteen parts. Several other stories of variable lengths have followed. The intertwining stories, with frequently
recurring characters, take place in Basin City.
• Used
– To explore an understanding of why the film was made the way it was
made
– Why the filmmaker adapted the work the way he did
– What about the work was used to formulate the film TT
– Why certain scenes might have been used in the film, but weren’t in the
work or why certain scenes were retained in the film and some almost
‘as is’. What the reasoning might be behind losing the scene as well as
why one might be added, or kept
• Some questions that can be asked of adaptations
are
– How do the director and those who work with him
create the effect and why? What does this style bring to
this film?
– How does the director’s style compare/contrast with
writer’s style as an author?
– The screen writer made drastic changes to the plot and
the characters. What was the effect the screen writer/s
was going for? Why might those changes have been
made taking into account the main thrust of the film, in
comparison to the main thrust of the work?
– The scene in the book is towards the end, while the
scene in the film is more towards the beginning/ ending
• How does the degree of in/fidelity influence the
outcome of the film and in what ways and why?
• This analysis involves an examination of why the
filmmaker chose to make changes that were made,
or why very few changes were made, or for what
greater overarching purpose and effect either
changes or no changes were made.
• The crux of this analysis is to determine whether
the fidelity or infidelity accomplishes a certain goal
of feel in the film, and whether or not that might
have or might not have been the desired goal.
• Specificity analysis can be an intriguing way to look
at each text in its respective medium and how each
medium is used to bring out the story it does.
• This study can focus on the techniques specific to
each medium, and explore why certain techniques
were used in each medium, and explore why certain
techniques were used in each medium.
• Perhaps a tone is created in the book due to the
minimalist format of the text, and its sparseness.
– The same impact is brought out through the types of
props used, or the costuming of the characters, even
their hair and makeup.
• It can usually be assumed that the director planned
for the effect that has been achieved, but the
viewer might see something in the film that the
director didn’t plan for a viewer to see.
• SD – opening – curiosity, authority, oddity, language, comfort
zone, warning, caution
– Shots, camera movement, frame, makeup, costume, vocabulary
– 5:00, 7:00, 9:15, 13:50, 1:50
• Questions
– What information so the intertexts/ texts of chapter (crucial)
provide to the reader of the book and why are they important?
– How is this information revealed in the film, and what techniques
are employed to do so? How much of this information is revealed
in the film? What is excluded?
– How important is this information to the film in contrast to the
book? That is, what is the main thrust of the film in comparison to
the book and how does the information fit into each text is trying
to convey to the reader/viewer?
– How to incorporate the discovery of an information into the
character, especially how this information must transform ch’s
demeanor in ways the viewer might not expect
– On another note, how does the film bring out the setting of one
particular place using different techniques from the book? The
place might seen a more dominating presence in the film than in
the book. Why might this effect have been a goal of the
filmmaker?
• Audience reception anxiety can influence the filmmaker in
both positive and negative ways.
• Such an analysis would require research about the audience’s
expected reception of the film.
• What was predicted about how the audience might respond?
• How well known is the book?
• Is there a particular group that might have an expectant
concern about the outcome of the adaptation?
• The anxiety might affect the feel of the film, what way the
film was made, and how the book was interpreted.
• The anxiety could be attributed to the subject matter of the
book, the popularity of the book or its popularity among a
certain population or group, the notoriety of the author, or
even the author’s biographical background
• Questions
– Why did the director change the character of the book
and why?
– In what ways the book seems to focus less intently on
one aspect while the film portrays it poignantly? In what
ways does it focus more on the reactions or the action?
– Why the changes that were done were done? Was the
reaction of audience the main concern?
• Although this type of analysis might seem to rely
on speculation, research and background
information on the film, interviews with the actors,
directors, etc. and clues within the text and the
screenplay used for the film could provide more
than enough to support such an argument.
• It’s an important consideration to address, since
filmmakers must at times feel burdened by their
need not only to satisfy the audience, but lure
them to the theater at least
Short story/drama to film
• Too visual a description
• Too detailed the dialogues
• Too clear the description
• Questions
– What to retain?
– How much to retain?
– What else to add?
– How to add?
– What props to use to retain the original flavour and impact
• Although certain approaches and theories are useful
for analyzing in one medium, it doesn’t necessarily
follow that these same approaches can be applied to
another medium.
– auteur criticism would not be useful in applying to literature,
although biographical criticism might be considered the
parallel approach in addressing literature from a similar
perspective.
• However an interesting analysis of a lit-to-film
adaptation might include a biographical approach to
the literature and a critical approach to the film that
focuses on the director or the auteur of the film.
• A comparison with the previous works and their quality
can be an interesting study
• Adaptations redistribute energies and intensities,
provide flows and displacements; the linguistic energy
of literary turns into the visual-kinetic-performative
energy of the adaptation, in an amorous exchange of
textual fluids. (Stam and Raengo, 2005a, 45-6)
• Critical approaches can be applied to such analyses,
depending on a plethora of factors to be considered.
• It is time to move beyond personal preferences and
limited views to broaden their horizons by expanding
their understanding of both literature and film, and
how the elements of each can be used to bring out
meaning in a text of each medium.
Analysis of book cover images – before
the movie and after the movie is
released
• Highlight the intensity of the change
• Bring out the theme more clearly
• Leave a longer impact
• Relate to the audience

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Cinematic Adaptation

BITS Pilani Prof Devika

• Aim (a result that your plans or actions are intended to

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

On Literary Creation (Chapter 3)

Before the Beginning: Understanding the

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Beginning – somewhere in the middle of the story -

Animal: horse, chimera

Chs with SPECIAL powers: Rupenzal, the

Places: Wessex, Malgudi, Si-Fi, zootopia,

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Pick up one character from Mythical world

People: one specific oddity – attitude

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

• Let us check have you understood the difference

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

It is good to greet people.

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Helps you identify the personality of the

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

–Seizes on the capabilities of a subject

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Process (a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a

– Thematic representation of any idea (war)

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

– (Sir Walter Scott – Jane Austen) (hit/flop)

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Understanding of the process of creation

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Either create or be created (Homer / Coleridge/ Thomas de Quincy)

Go forth and prosper (TLOTR, HPotter, Twilight, THGames/SF)

Before the Beginning: understanding

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

1826 - University College established in London

Changes and development in the study of English

1920s – why English was worth studying at all

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

5. Individuality is our unique essence; can change and develop

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Politics is pervasive, (all encompassing)

Look for dictionary meaning in the class.

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Pick up three incidents from your movie where each of the

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Language itself conditions, limits, and predetermines what

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Hence, any claim to offer a definitive reading would be

BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus

Theorists distrust all 'totalising' notions. For instance, the notion