FILM STUDIES

TOOLBOX
Advanced Prose
Sara Khazai
FUM
• How faithful is the adaptation to the source material? What are
the results of its strict fidelity versus creative reinterpretation?

• What elements of the book are most challenging to adapt to film,

and how are they addressed by the filmmaker?

• How does the cultural and historical context of the book impact
its adaptation into a different medium?
• What role does the author's intent play in the adaptation process,
particularly if the author could be involved in the adaptation?

• How do changes in narrative structure, such as flashbacks or non-

linear storytelling, affect the adaptation's fidelity to the original text?

• What considerations are made regarding pacing and duration when

adapting a lengthy book into a two-hour film?
• How does the filmmaker handle the limitations of the visual medium
compared to the written word in conveying complex themes and
emotions?
• What strategies are employed to translate internal monologues and
introspection from the page to the screen?
• How does the adaptation negotiate the inclusion or exclusion of
subplots and secondary characters from the source material?
• In what ways does the adaptation use the visual aspects of
storytelling, such as cinematography and visual effects, to enhance
the narrative?
• How does the target audience for the film adaptation influence the
creative decisions made during the adaptation process?
• What role does intertextuality play in the adaptation, particularly in
relation to other films or cultural references?
• How does the adaptation navigate the expectations of fans of the
source material while also appealing to a broader audience?
• What ethical considerations arise when adapting a culturally
significant or sensitive text into a different medium?
• How does the adaptation handle controversial or problematic
elements of the source material, such as outdated social norms or
stereotypes?
• What impact do changes in setting or time period have on the
thematic resonance of the adapted story?
• How does the adaptation address the linguistic and stylistic
differences between written and spoken language?
• What are the implications of casting choices in the adaptation, for
example in terms of race, ethnicity, and gender?
• How does the adaptation engage with the critical reception of the
source material and previous adaptations, if any?
• What insights can be gained from comparing multiple adaptations of
the same source material, particularly in terms of differing creative
approaches and interpretations?
 .
• What do actor costumes and fashion styles
say about the personalities of the characters
and their places within their cultures?
• How does the signature tune or sound track
of the movie convey social/cultural
meaning?
• Choose and analyze some important signs in
the movie in terms of signifiers and
signifieds. Do the mental/ideological
concepts they present form a pattern?
What meanings culture attributes to •
costumes, what the clothes ‘say’ about
characters and their place within the
culture
Semiotics: Social meaning product of •
the relationships between ‘signs’. The
‘sign’ can be a photograph, a word, a
sound, an object, a smell, etc.
Sign broken into two parts. The signifier •
is the physical form of the sign: the
image, or word, or photograph. The
signified is the mental concept referred
to
• Do the selected signifiers for a group of
characters (like fashion, set design or
mode of speech) create negative/positive
connotations for them?
• How do the codes of the movie work? Do
they expect the audience to suspend
their disbelief in some way?
• Advertising: selection of signifiers with
positive connotations used to transfer
associations on to an accompanying
advertised product
• The representation is organized to
make specific sense for a specific
audience in a movie
• Film has its own ‘codes’ to establish
social or narrative meanings; and
conventions—sets of rules which
audiences agree to observe and which,
for example, allow us to overlook the
lack of realism
 • When the camera moves to a close-up, this
indicates strong emotion or crisis
• Discuss the effects of specific close-ups, fades
• At the end of love scenes we might see a slow
or panning away fade, or a slow loss of focus, or a modest pan
• How does the camera represent upwards from the lovers’—all imitations of
the audience averting their eyes
conversational exchanges? Does it focus
more on the speaker or his addressee for • The shot-reverse shot system is a convention
for representing conversation.
some reason?
• Music is used to signify emotion; orchestra
builds up to crescendo during a clinch

• How and to what effect are slow-motion
sequences used?
• How are genre conventions followed by
both the movie and the audience? If there
are breaks with traditions, why are they
used and how do they affect the
audience?
• Slow-motion sequences usually used to
aestheticize—to make beautiful and instill
significance into subjects. In slow-motion
death scenes; the aim was not simply to
glamorize death but to mythologize
particular deaths—injecting them with
added significance and power
• Genres: To understand them, audiences
must bring the set of rules with them into
the cinema, in the form of the cultural
knowledge of what a western or a musical
is

• How does the camera angle convey
the size and power of the characters?
• How does the movie adaptation
compress certain parts of the original
text?
• Discourses of camera, lighting, editing,
set design, and sound
• Shooting from above/below,
exaggerates character size and power
• A single shot can last minutes. In it,
dialogue can be uttered, characters’
movements and thus relationships can
be manipulated, and a physical or
historical setting outlined. This may be
equivalent to a whole chapter in a novel
 • Each shot is related to those adjacent
• Analyze the relationship between to it. As we watch a film we often defer
particular adjacent shots and the way our understanding of one shot until we
see the next.
they create meaning in a sequence.
• When we see a character addressing
• Does the shot of the addressee’s another offscreen, our view of the
reaction seem unexpected when it significance of those words may have
follows the shot of the speaker in to wait until we see the following shot,
some scenes? depicting the person being addressed

• Discuss the montage and the mise-en-
scene and the relationships they create
within shots.
• If the movie uses black and white film stock,
what effect is it trying to produce?
• Relationships between shots are
created by montage and relationships
within shots by mise-en-scene
• Often black and white film stock is
used to signify the past; to simulate
the documentary, to offer a nostalgic
tribute to the past, to give texts a high
fashion or avant-garde look, etc.

• Are there overhead, helicopter or crane shots?
To what effect are they used?
• How does the camera angle towards its
subject work? What are the functions of
panning, tilting and rolling?
• The positioning of the camera contributes to
the meaning of a film. The use of overhead,
helicopter or crane shots can turn film into a
performance art, exhilarating in the
perspectives it offers the audience.
• The camera can be directed either squarely
or obliquely towards its subject, with rotation
of the camera possible along its vertical axis
(panning), its horizontal axis (tilting), or its
transverse axis (rolling). If a camera is looking
down on its subject, its position is one of
power
(see next slides)
• How does the camera angle identify • Camera angles can identify a shot with
a character’s point of view. We see what
the character’s point of view?
the character would be seeing
• How do the point-of-view shots
• Point-of-view shots are important for
manipulate audience identification motivation and also for controlling
with certain characters? Do they aspects of the audience’s identification
intensify tension, impotence or our with the characters.
sense of the vulnerability of the
victims?
• How does the camera distance from the
subject work in particular shots? Does it
enhance the ambiguity of emotional
response, invite the audience to project
their own emotions on to the scene, or
signify the withdrawal of our close
• Panning the camera along the horizontal
attention and the end of the narrative?
• Does the horizontal panning of the
camera prolong the suspense or
maximize our sense of the hero’s isolation
and vulnerability?
• The height of the camera and its distance
from its subject affects meaning of a shot.
A conventional means of narrative
closure is to slowly pull the camera back
so that the subject disappears into its
surroundings.
axis imitates the movement of the
spectators’ eyes as they survey the scene
round them (the point of view of a
character).
 • Rolling the camera gives the illusion of the
• Is the rolling of the camera used for world, either actually or metaphorically,
comic effect? Is it sinister and unsettling? being tipped on its side. This is sometimes
Does it indicate a world out of kilter? done as a point-of-view shot, to indicate that
the character is falling, or drugged, or sick,
• Does tracking enhance audience or otherwise likely to see the world oddly
identification with the character’s
• The forward or lateral movement of the
experiences? camera apparatus is referred to as tracking
or dollying, and it is often used in action
sequences or as a point-of-view shot
 • A soft focus on a character or background
may pursue a romantic or lyrical effect
• How do variations in focus achieve
• ‘Rack’ focus is used to direct the
specific objectives? Do they create a audience’s attention from one character to
dramatic effect or a romantic one? another. This is having one face in focus
while the other is blurred, and using the
switch in focus from one to the other for
dramatic or symbolic effect

• How are figures and other elements
moved around within the frame to create
effect? Does the shadow of someone
falling over a character signify
domination? Does the character move
from the background to the center of the
foreground, dominating those on either
side of him?
Is the effect of the frame claustrophobic? •
• Does the film lighting set its mood, or help
show us personalities/motivations? Make
something sinister and alarming?
• The frame is images within the
physical boundaries of the shot. The
function of the frame is in either
enclosing or opening out space
around the images.
• There are two main objectives to film
lighting; the first is expressive—
setting a mood, giving the film a ‘look’
or contributing to narrative details
such as character or motivation.

• Is gloomy darkness an index of moral and
spiritual decay or uncertainties ?
Is the film’s lighting mostly realistic? Why? •
• Does low-key lighting exploit shadows, and
light only part of the screen to give a sense of
ambiguity or threat? Does it move the key
light to one side of the figure so that only half
the face is visible, or increase the angle so
that the face is lit from below and acquires a
distorted, hostile aspect?
• Realism is lighting’s second objective.. If
it is successful, the figures are lit so
naturally and unobtrusively that the
audience do not notice lighting as a
separate technology
• Three dimensional lighting includes a
main light (the key light) which is
usually directed at the figure to be lit;
the fill lights, which remove the shadows
caused by the key light; and the back
light which defines the figure’s outline
and separates him from the background.
• Does lighting pick out and emphasize elements within the • High-key lighting is realist, while
frame, directing the audience’s attention to one feature of low-key lighting is expressive
the frame while obscuring others?
• Sound can serve a narrative
• During long takes, does a character move in and out of
shadow, into dominant or dominated positions, by moving function, provide powerful
from one regime of lighting to another? emotional accompaniment to a film’s
• Is sound used as a transitional device? Does it conclude a
high points, and enhance realism by
speech begun in one scene after the visuals have taken us reproducing the sounds one would
on to the following scene? (overlapping sound) binding a normally associate with the actions
disjointed narrative together?
• Does sound show the transition from one location to the
next?

• Is music used as part of the construction
of the world of the film, as a source of
atmosphere, or as a reference point to a
subculture?
• How does the music of the film help
create its world, its time and place?
• Does a particular kind of soundtrack pull
a particular segment of the audience,
such as teenagers, into the cinema?
• Music in films is usually nonrealistic in
that we rarely see its source in the frame
or even within the world of the film
• Simon Frith (1986:65): Music amplifies
the mood or atmosphere and also tries to
convey the ‘emotional significance’ of a
scene: the ‘true", "real” feelings of the
characters involved in it’. He calls this the
‘emotional reality’ of film music, and its
aim is to deepen the sense of the film’s
realism, to give it an emotional texture.
Film music assists in the construction of
the reality of time and place
• What kind of emotional response does
the movie music produce for the
audience? Does the film music ‘feels for
us’, telling us when a powerful moment
is happening and indicating just what
we should feel about it through the
mood of the music?
• The soundtrack producer’s job is to pack
the soundtrack with the right mix of
contemporary popular music for the film’s
target demographic
• Music and images are not understood in a
direct, linear way by the audience, but
irrationally, emotionally, individually
• As spectators we are drawn to identify not
with the film characters themselves but with
their emotions, which are signaled
preeminently by music which can offer us
emotional experience directly
• Do we read the signs of the movie décor • Mise-en-scène is ‘everything that is in
in order to give them a set of social the frame’ of a shot: set design,
costumes, the arrangement and
meanings? movement of figures, the spatial
• Is the narrative advanced through the relations (who is obscured, who looks
arrangement of elements within the dominant, and so on), and the
placement of objects which have
frame? Do characters reveal themselves
become important within the narrative
to us without revealing themselves to
other characters? Do we scan the frame to
pick up clues in a mystery?
• Does the mise-en-scene recreate a
historical background spectacularly?
• Is the choice of actors important in the• Actors and individual performers become part
presentation of the characters? of the characterization. Stars can be sufficiently
meaningful as to require the bare minimum of
• Is the montage used to represent mood or ‘character’ in the narrative
summarize the narrative or both? • The star’s face is part of the mise-en-scene
• Montage, is the construction of the relationship
between shots. It occurs most frequently as a
means of representing a mood—cuts to shots
of the sea, mountains, or crowded city streets—
or for narrative ‘ellipsis’—where sections of
the narrative need rapid summarizing rather
than full dramatization

• Are editing transition devices used to
soften the cut such as overlapping sound
from one shot to the next; the use of
motivations in the first shot which take us
to the next (such as an action shot where
the viewer wants to see its conclusion)?
Are sudden cuts used for dramatic effect,
producing surprise, horror, or disruption?
• Are timing of cuts used to enhance the
energy of the action, or to slow it down?
• There is a multitude of editing
techniques. The fade-out, the dissolve,
‘the wipe’, in which one image replaces
another preceded by a demarcation line
moving across the screen. The most
frequent method is the simple cut from
one shot to the next.
• A thoughtful character, considering his or
her future, may be shot from several
positions in order to expand the moment
and instill significance into it.
• Here are some of the most famous critics and scholars in the field of adaptation studies:

1. Linda Hutcheon - Known for her work on adaptation theory and postmodernism, including the influential book A Theory of Adaptation
2013

2. Robert Stam - Renowned for his contributions to film theory and adaptation studies, particularly in exploring the relationship between
literature and cinema. Film Adaptation and the Studio System: The Case of Dreamworks 1992

3. Thomas Leitch - Notable for his research on film adaptation, including the book Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the
Wind to The Passion of the Christ. 2007

4. Brian McFarlane - A prominent scholar in adaptation studies, focusing on literary adaptation in film and television. Novel to Film: An
Introduction to the Theory of Adaptation 1996

5. Deborah Cartmell - Known for her interdisciplinary approach to adaptation studies, particularly in relation to Shakespearean adaptations.
Screen Adaptation: Impure Cinema 2010
1. Dudley Andrew - Renowned for his work on film adaptation, especially in analyzing the cultural and historical contexts of adaptations.
What Cinema Is! 2010

2. James Naremore - Notable for his writings on film adaptation and his exploration of the aesthetic and cultural implications of
adaptation. "Toward a Poetics of Adaptation“ 1994

3. Imelda Whelehan - Known for her research on adaptation and popular culture, including gender representations in literary and film
adaptations. The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural Economy of Contemporary Literary Adaptation 2007

4. Julie Sanders - A leading figure in adaptation studies, particularly in relation to Shakespearean adaptations and the intersections
between literature and film. Shakespeare and the Making of Theatre 2003

5. Christine Geraghty - Notable for her contributions to adaptation studies, particularly in examining the industrial and cultural aspects
of adaptation. Now a Major Motion Picture: Film Adaptations of Literature and Drama 2008

6. Sarah Cardwell, Adaptation Revisited: Television and the Classic Novel - 2019

7. R. Barton Palmer and Homer B. Pettey (Editors), A History of the Western: Film and Television Adaptations of Classic and Modern
Literary Works - 2017

8. Dennis Cutchins, Katja Krebs, and Eckart Voigts-Virchow (Editors), Adaptation in Visual Culture: Images, Texts, and Their Multiple
Worlds - 2020.

9. Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan (Editors), The Cambridge Companion to Literature on Screen - 2021.

10.Douglas McFarland and Wesley K. Willoughby (Editors), The Politics of Adaptation: Media Convergence and Ideology - 2018