Translating the novel to the screen. What is lost? What is gained? Singular author vs creation by committee?
A list of documents processing the reduction of the novel into key scenes in order to create the film
Looking at Sally Potter\'s film version of Virginia Woolf\'s novel, \'Orlando,\' specifically regarding it\'s intertextual nature. When Tilda Swinton and Sally Potter were being interviewed at the BFI, they both talked about how passionate they were about creating Orlando the film, and they hoped that they could replicate the way the novel made them feel and succesfully represent this on film. As discussed in a seminar, one person's 'feelings' about a novel can vastly differentiate from another's (usually hindering the audience's enjoyment because they did not feel the same), so, when translating a medium from novel to film, which idea will resonate with all? Potter has chosen the ideas 'death' and 're-birth.' What is also interesting, is that a screenwriter will usually begin a script perhaps not totally aware of their controlling idea. Therefore, is the key to succesfully adapting a novel to film finding the 'controlling idea' of a novel and reproducing it cinematically?
A focus upon aspects from the stage of development as to discern the approach taken in adapting from novel to film.
The central impulse of this pathway is to provide a conduit through which one may explore how the passing of time is expressed within Sally Potter's 1992 film 'Orlando', as a prominent theme of both the original novel and film. Furthermore, in acknowledgement of the disparities between the manner in which a visual medium and a written work respectively convey meaning, one is also drawn to the cinematic techniques utilised to communicate the eponymous hero/ine's inner thoughts, feelings and frustrations. The titular quotation, lifted from another of Woolf's novels, 'The Waves' is appropriated here to reflect upon the process of adaptation, particularly the ever-mutating, palimpsestic nature of a text (Woolf 2005: 86).
An analysis of the pragmatics of getting Orlando made.
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