Thursday, June 12, 2014

TCWT June Blog Chain: Movies and Books

Okay, so when I started trying to write this, it just sounded really confused and fake, because my brain is kind of really boggled and confused right now unfortunately, a side-effect of being a  teenager, you know, so to forewarn, this is probably not going to be good, but I do have something to say about this, so I'll do my best.


SO, escaping that above awkwardness, this months Teens Can Write Too Blog Chain Prompt:
“What are your thoughts on book-to-movie adaptions? Would you one day want your book made into a movie, or probably not?”

A lot of the time, I say I don't really care about the common strictness between movie to book adaptions, that a number of people relentlessly examine, that much. I used to think that in the end, the director will always have a different way of looking at a story than every other reader of the book or story will, (although I don't quite understand what the director of the Percy Jackson movies was thinking.) and as long as I personally enjoyed the movie itself, I left the movie theater happy. 

But lately, I've been thinking about it more and more, and I imagined myself in the position where my book would be made into a movie. 

So after seeing The Fault in Our Stars this past week, and looking back at all the book to movie adaptions I've experience, the single most important thing to me when a book is being made into a movie is for the movie to capture what I felt reading the book. To find something there, in a scene that tells me and makes me feel that the director and I shared some feeling of wonder, or sadness, or angst, or whatever jumble of feelings us humans are capable of feeling in a story. 

I mean, to me, I don't care if the book wasn't EXACTLY like the movie, or if some scene was missing a certain color scheme described in the book, or god forbid, the actor playing a character didn't have the same hair color as described in the book. Oh, the atrocities are endless!

Yeah, I don't really care. As long as the movie found and portrayed the point of the entire story or book, and  truthfully portrayed the characters as they are in the book, I'm pretty satisfied. It's a difficult thing to accomplish to capture the feel of the book, and finding the right people who really understand the story. 

The truth is, I haven't really experienced that many book to movie adaptions, so I may not be all that credited for this kind of topic, but either way, it's a really amazing thing to see characters and stories go from being on paper, to living inside your brain, to being on a wide screen movie theater. 

I mean, personally, that would be freaking awesome, and I'd probably pull a John Green on set crying 24/7 seeing my book come to life with amazing people. 

(Can you tell how much I appreciated The Fault in Our Stars movie and the people who made it yet? Because I really liked it. I really like it a lot.)


Yeah, so I guess that's it for now! Maybe when my brain is less boggled I'll be able to organize my brain thoughts more. ANYWAYS, here are the rest of the TCWT blogs coming up the rest of the month. Check it out yo:


28th – http://teenscanwritetoo.wordpress.com/ – The topic for July’s blog chain will be announced.







5 comments:

  1. That's great point you made! I agree that the "bigger picture", so to speak, is more important than the details, and can really make or break a movie.

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    1. Yep! "Bigger picture" is a good word to describe it all! Thanks for your comment and input!

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  2. I think you hit upon the truth of the matter— as long as the movie captures the same emotions as the book did, it doesn't matter where it goes with the character's hair color. One way to gain that emotional congruity is to reproduce the book exactly, but another way is to rewrite the script in a way that will provide the same impact in a smaller time frame. I haven't seen Fault in our Stars, but you can probably tell me which of the two options it took.

    Good post!

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    1. You know, one other thing that I didn't include in the post that I did not think about too much at the time is whenever I do see book to movie adaptions, there's a long time difference from when I read the book to the time I saw the movie. So a lot of the time its the movie helping me recall moments I experienced reading the book. Thinking about it, I don't know if a book could ever be exactly like the movie. I mean, in the case of The Fault in Our Stars, it seemed like the movie itself was so complete, but then when I went back and remembered the book, there were a few things missing, but in the end it didn't matter all because the movie still managed to capture that feeling I had reading the book. I read your post for this prompt and I thought it was great. Usually, as a side effect of not reading the book in a while, I go into the movie theater pretty opened minded, since I don't remember every exact scene in the book, but you always remember what you learned and felt in the book, you know? Yeah, your comment and your post made me think a lot... I don't know if I answered your question, but I would say The Fault in Our Stars did rewrite the script in a way that still managed to give off the impact the book made in a smaller time frame. Anyways, thanks for your awesome comment.

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  3. I love that. You are dead on, in my opinion. A movie can't capture the entire feeling of reading a great book for the first time, but it can capture parts of it, parts of what makes the book special, and THAT is what makes an adaption brilliant. That's such a great point you made, and I agree. The adaption doesn't have to be exact--it's its own art form--and as long as it captures the emotion and tone of the book, I will be very pleased. This is why I'm constantly blown away by the Game of Thrones TV series. I watched the series before reading the books, but I was shocked at how well they were able to maintain much of what made the books great while also being sufficiently different from the books.

    Awesome post!

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