FICTION ADAPTATION: Briefing and Haiku Adaptation

Fiction Adaptation

What is an adaptation? 
- translation from written to visual language

What are the opportunities?
- an existing audience / proven market for your work

What are the challenges?
- translating interior thoughts into action - some things in the original work won't work directly onto screen so will have to adapt in a way to portray them visually.
- remaining faithful to the material - fans of the original work will be keen to see it adapted onto screen but will not be happy to see one of their favourite works ruined.
- bot alienating fans of the literature 

What is the key to a successful adaptation?
- capture the spirit of the material (prevailing quality or mood) - find the theme of the original piece and find a way of retaining that in the adaptation
- Stay true to the theme, not necessarily the word - the adaptation doesn't have to be literal and an exact copy down to the word but the theme should remain the same
- faithfully reproduce the tone that the reader remembers

To adapt a piece successfully, consider the following:
- what is the writer's intention?
- what is the controlling idea that has informed their choices?
- identify what they are trying to make heard and this will guide your choices when visualising this central concern.

Haiku Challenge

Mike asked us to develop a haiku into a short video using existing stock footage.

The Haiku I picked out was:

An old silent pond...
A frog jumps into the pond, 
splash! Silence again.

Note the imagery the writer uses:
- pond, frog, nature, wildlife, movement

What is the writer’s intention?
- to create an atmosphere of peace being disturbed by using imagery of nature and movement. 

What are they trying to communicate?
- my interpretation of the haiku is that the pond is like a calm / peaceful place. The frog disturbs the calm / peace by jumping in and making a splash. But then the disturbance is gone and silence returns. Silence is a big theme in the haiku - the beginning and end of the haiku make a sort of circular story. The situation in the beginning returns in the end.

How might this be achieved visually?
- this could be achieved in a number of ways. I think the beginning and end images should be very similar in style to resemble the silence in the beginning and end of the haiku. I think there should be a lot of nature imagery in the haiku but it does not have to be literal. There needs to be a disturbance but this does not necessarily have to be the frog. Something needs to disturb the silence / situation and then this must return at the end. 

Does it need to be literal? 
- no it does not need to be literal. The haiku describes a disturbance in the pond before the silence returns. However, I decided to portray it literally due to the limited time to create the piece and the fact that the haiku still works to portray it's intention when interpreted literally. 

Feedback:

- A very literal interpretation of the haiku, but it works

- Try and figure out ways to find less literal interpretations.

Fiction Adaptation Project

The Brief

- demands a developed application of production skills from planning through to completion, using an advanced creative methodology. 
- research, plan and produce a short video for transmission that is a work of adaptation derived from a literary source 

Sonnet
Traditionally, the Sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, which employs one of several rhyme schemes and adheres to a tightly structured thematic organisation. 

We have a selection of sonnets to choose from. I will read them and begin to pick them apart / analyse them to find which one offers the most to adapt for me.