The #1 Secret to Writing GREAT ADAPTATIONS
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- Опубліковано 1 лют 2023
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Complete Screenwriting Masterclass Playlist: • Best of Tyler Mowery
Video Written and Recorded by Jag Gill and Nehemiah Jordan
Why do certain adaptations work while others don’t?
Some argue that it’s the removal or addition of characters, scenes, and settings
While others may say that it’s the complete reworking of existing characters and story elements.
But adding, removing, or adjusting content doesn’t necessarily make your adaptation any better or worse.
A literal adaptation of a source material that may be very accurate oftentimes won’t have the same impact on film.
THE GOAL: Take in all user feedback to write the story as close to your vision as possible. - Фільми й анімація
Get Practical Tools to Write Your Great Screenplay: www.practicalscreenwriting.com
Gotta say, while I really liked Tyler on the screen, the presentation of these last videos has gone up by a ton. Nothing wrong with what he did before, it is just that now you are doing a lot more with each video. The results are great!
y'all keep up the great work
Here a bit late though I like the idea of having characters for the sake of driving the plot forward whilst playing on the overall philosophical conflict of the story! Especially for adaptations and those from books. I’d also like to add that novels are typically written in ways to invoke emotion and get you to create your own image. Movies, however, give us our best interpretation of that image. That’s where I believe there’s a gap as well! Using prose and the interesting words from the book can cluster the image-based movie… and that’s the key… images! How can you visually show the thematic arguments and philosophical conflict by means of expressions, uses of hands and eyes, size of object on screen (depicting importance), camera angle and lighting. There’s many more though these can help the use of the pictures to display your thematic argument like giving more screen time to HOPE when they’re winning and show the lows when the conflict happens! So it’s interesting and just a thought 😂
Clear, concise, easy to follow. Excellent!
Thanks Jag. I love that you're talking about theme a lot. My favorite adaption of all time is A Little Princess (1995). There's a really strong theme in that film. That's what makes it one of my favorite movies of all time. It's fascinating to see how much stronger it was able to get than the book, and the previous movie. Would love to hear your opinion on it. It's such a great theme.
Using the theme of the source material as a unifying focus is more or less how *Hello Future Me* put it in his video _"The Last Airbender_ is the WORST film ever made. HERE'S WHY".
In that video, he talks about how the reason it failed as an adaptation lied in Shyamalan's method rather than his intention. Because it's like he was genuinely trying to make a faithful adaptation of the show that movie was based on. But the very root of his problem was everything about the movie that was from the show was strictly surface level; it's recognizable but completely devoid of meaning and purpose. In other words, Shyamalan understood these moments were important to the story and the fans, but he didn't understand WHY they were important to begin with.
And that is precisely why I HATE the _Percy Jackson_ movies. They completely failed to understand what the story of the book series was about. At the end of the day, the _Percy Jackson & The Olympians_ book series was a story about the trauma that came from being part of a messy or dysfunctional family; a story that asked you if you were willing to support your folks even if you feel they have wronged you. But in the movies, by having the gods ignore their kids because Zeus passed a law that forbade them from seeing them, it completely changes the story and makes the villain less justified in what he was doing.
Nice Jag and Nehemiah, love this!
This is a very good analysis! But I'm curious about one thing...
What if The Rings of Power had a strong thematic argument and the characters had strong philosophical conflicts, making the show a better story and experience, but those two things were completely different from the ones in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy (if The Ring of Power's theme still wasn't about having hope against all odds), could it still be considered a great adaptation?
In theory, yes; in practice, people would still find another reason to scream that it's bad "because I said so!"
I mean, it was explained countless times throughout the internet that no one has the adaptation rights for The Silmarillion, that Amazon Prime has onot about the resume of the Second Era that appeara at the appendices of the third LOTR book, so the showrunners are having to write the best with what they have without touch at anything that the official book has, but the best answer I received for that is "f*ck it, still hateful!!!", so...
I have watched many of your videos and am impressed. Have you ever written a screenplay and it got signed or produced? Do you have any credits in any movies that are out in the movie theaters? Thanks.
I like to watch this one at 1.5x speed, and it's GREAT!
9:46 ain’t this Hagrid’s house 🤣
It's interesting to see how we're talking about adaptations. Yet Arcane wasn't mentioned or even any animated adaptation because animation somehow are just for kids and not supposed to be included when we're talking about writing drama and human experience. When and what progress the animation industry has to do and achieve to get the same level of respect with live action?
In short, the tools to make a good story still apply to adaptations.
It would be interesting to see an example with a recent film, maybe #WheretheCrawdadsSing (2022) which is supposed to be book-to-film direct.
Regular viwer from 🇳🇵Nepal
The BBC’s Narnia Adaptations!
Want to see a GREAT screen adaptation of a GREAT book? See the BBC mini-series called "Little Dorrit," by Charles Dickens. Andrew Davies wrote the screenplay. BRILLIANT work! Starring Claire Foy, Matthew Macfadyen and Andy Serkis.
🙏
An adapation will always be caught in the expectations of the ones who know the original story. Thus these people will be irritated by any changes. If you want to epxress the same theme, make a completely other movie instead. Or make something that is so different under the same title that no one will have the expectations, like Westworld Series vs the original movie.
My expectations on whether or not something is a good adaptation of the source material goes hand-in-hand with whether or not it's a good movie on its own.
Like, _Jurassic Park._ Admittedly, I didn't read the book until 12 years AFTER I had seen the movie, so that might not be a fair expectation comparison. But the point is, while the movie isn't 100% accurate to the book, the movie still captures the spirit and theme of what the book was about and was still a good movie on its own (one of my top 3 favorite movies).
On the other hand, we have the _Percy Jackson_ movies (the worst book-to-film adaptations, in my opinion). If you take the fact that they're insulting adaptations of such good books out of the equation, they're very subpar, phoned in, and lazy as movies on their own. Like, the thematic conflict of those movies feels weak because Luke wants to destroy all the gods all because he never got a hug from dear old daddy, but he also knows Zeus declared that stupid law in which all gods had to avoid contact with their mortal offspring (which is NOT from the book). So, he just comes off as an arrogant and irrational douchebag in the movies, when he had a far more interesting motivation in the books.
Simple: keep everything crucial and that the books fans enjoy and make the less crucial/beloved stuff shorter in the movie/series, and respect the tone of the source material, or at least make it even more serious and intense.
That's why Alita, His Dark Materials and the four japanese live-action adaptations of Death Note are masterpieces while Netflix's Death Note and the Percy Jackson movies are sad garbage.
I think this video misses the mark on several points, even regarding the very arguments it attempts to make in assessing the two adaptations' quality. The fact that TLOTR was an actual story from which to adapt and TROP was not based off of a story but was instead adapted from footnotes and appendices from the original books sort of pours water on the whole argument that these two adaptions were even starting from similar positions, much less make valid pieces for comparison of this kind. The job the latter team had to do is arguably harder, especially when you consider 1) that they were not allowed to use the well established lore from other sources made by Tolkien and 2) that they had to contend with expectations that have been set up not just from the original works but from the Peter Jackson adaptations that preceded it as well.
The video's central argument rests on the claim that the show "lacks a specific thematic argument" that's in keeping with Tolkien's core theme from the original books (an entirely separate story not at all being adapted here). While it's fair, I think, to have an expectation that the show should at least try to align with the themes of the original work, it's hard to gauge if the show is failing or succeeding in that effort after only one season, especially since, as we know, this show and it's characters are predestined to fail in their efforts and leave the world in a much more precarious place by the end of the series and these character's stories are not done yet. It makes little sense to try and compare the quality of the adaptations with one having a completed story over the course of 3 films and the other having a deliberately incomplete story over the course of only one season.
It feels like this video is willfully uncharitable to the characters of the show even as they hold them to the arguments they are trying to make. The video says that the characters DO NOT fall within the dynamic set for the them (hoping against hope (cat1) vs. Giving up and accepting reality(cat2)) yet in the show there are obvious frames with which to view the main characters that fit almost directly into those dynamics and those philosophies are evidenced in and highlighted by their actions in the series, It just comes off that the video isn't really interested in examining them in a light that challenges the preconceived point the video is trying to make. It's as if the video is arguing that the characters from LOTR didn't constantly shift between those two dynamics as their arcs hit peaks and valleys. Elrond in the show falls into cat2 re: the state of the world and the impending threat on the elves, but also falls into cat1 re: his relationship with Durin and his trust that his friend will come to his aid. This is the inverse of the dynamic Elrond in the movies goes through (as the video points out) that begins with him falling into cat2 re: the nature of man but eventually moving into cat1 as he finds Aragorn's will to be compelling. That the show is attempting to bridge that gap and show us how the characters we know and love from the Peter Jackson films came to be from seemingly oppositional standpoints seems to me to be the whole point of a prequel series.
This also aligns with Galadriel. In this video, the claim is made that Galadriel keeps fighting not because of hope but because of vengeance, is not totally accurate on it's face. In the very first episode it is established that her hope is placed in the idea that her brother's mission (to root out the evil that remains in middle earth) was not abandoned in vain and that there is still purpose in his death. She's determined to find that, even as she is unsure of the form the enemy will take. Although she is motivated by revenge, she has to maintain and hope against all odds that there is something on which to take revenge left in Middle Earth. She clearly falls into cat1 and it's at her lowest where she becomes challenged by this not unlike Frodo in the example the video gives. Galadriel finds the resolve to move forward by convincing herself that Sauron can be thwarted by undermining his plan and creating the rings in a set of 3 rather than 2. Being proven right that evil did remain in middle earth but was ushered on by her very pursuit of it allows her to reassess herself and forge a new hope, that this evil can be thwarted by her being more cautious in how she pursues it.
I think there are plenty of legit criticisms to levy against the show as of now, and those have been brought up ad nauseum online, but the claims brought up in this video just ain't it and feel like a naked attempt to gin up content and clicks.
I want to learn writing from the basics can you give me ur email or something to learn 1on1from u?
W Jag. Wag