Essay 1: Triangulation
The quote that I selected to work with throughout this project is this one from McLuhan, M. 1964.
‘There is a basic principle that distinguishes a hot medium like radio from a cool one like the telephone, or a hot medium like the movie from a cool one like TV. A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in "high definition." High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, "high definition." A cartoon is "low definition," simply because very little visual information is provided.’
I find this idea very interesting as everyone has a preconceived feeling about the differences between things like TV, film, books, radio, etc. and they each know what they prefer when being told a story. For TV and Film, there are many points to be talked about. I personally prefer TV shows because I love character development. McLuhan claims that a movie is a hot medium because it is more detailed by being ‘well filled with data’ but I think that more often than not, TV shows have much more information to be consumed. Each episode can have so many details that could be picked up on. A character can feel so much more alive in a TV show because we follow them and see how they grow and develop much more than a 2 hour movie can show. TV becomes much more of an investment of time as well, so we end up caring a lot more because we feel closer to them.
However, while TV shows have more time to tell overarching character narratives, they also have to have episodic stories. In a TV show with long form narrative, Innocenti and Pescatore (2014, p.2) say that:
‘single segments maintain a high degree of autonomy and thus episodes will include a central storyline that is concluded in the episode (called an anthology plot) however there will also be a background context that pans episodes (the so called running plot)’.
This means an episode needs to have enough satisfaction of some kind of ending each week but still with enough wonder to make someone come back next time. Movies don’t have as much of this problem. Both of these different delivery methods have adapted the narratives they tell to best suit the medium as Ben Shaul, N. (2008) states here:
‘..the evolution of the language of cinema and of television has devised complex narrative structures based upon such principles.’
Also, movies offer a much greater spectacle. The big screen experience is always incredible. Movies also get much bigger budgets to allow them to have much more expensive effects and actors because TV shows have to generally rely on adverts which don't raise as many funds. The movies generally look better, but I don’t think this really matters, simply because it is the content and the story at the heart of anything and that is what really makes or breaks it.
As for books to films, the common view is that the book is always better than the film, but this is all to do with biases. We naturally usually prefer the first version of a thing that we see so if we read the book of something first then we are bound to like it more. The problems with film adaptations of books is that they are just another person's interpretation of the book.
‘500 different readers of the same book may have 500 different ideas of a character’s appearance. And if an actor doesn’t measure up to what you imagined when reading the book, there’s some disappointment.’ Santos, R. (2013)
I completely agree with this statement as I believe that you create your own version of the story just from the words on the page, making it a personal experience. You have your own mental-cinema and you’re the director. Therefore when a film of a book is made, the director can only really make it the way that they envisioned it when they read it and this is bound to disappoint a lot of others because it’s often not what you imagined.
Time and pacing is also a problematic factor when turning a book into a film. Bazin, A. (1997) says that ‘..films are something completely different from the novels, that they are condensed versions, summaries, film “digests”...’ because a 2 hour movie cannot hold as much detail as a book. Something many franchises are doing nowadays is splitting a book into 2 or 3 films. While this does allow for more of the original source material to be included, it often ruins the pacing of the story. Breaking a single self contained story into multiple movies breaks the 3 act structure that most stories use.
Books being turned into TV shows has been less common until recent years. The most obvious example of this is the immensely popular Game of Thrones. With the book series being told in a long form narrative type TV show, it really allows many more of the incredibly complex and interesting characters details to be included. It is for this reason that I think something like the Harry Potter series would have worked much better as a TV show rather than a series of movies, with each book being a season of the show. It would give more time for each story and each character to develop through the school years in real time with the audience.
I personally think that the whole idea of this ‘hot and cool’ media is a bit redundant. No media is ever really better than another. It all comes down to personal preference and what you want to get out of a story. With TV and film it’s character vs spectacle. Whether you want something to invest in and really connect with deep, fleshed out characters or something that it is less of a commitment and just a great, self contained story. With books and films, it is more like a personal connection vs someone else's vision. They are both valid interpretations but it does depend on if you can put aside what you want a film of a book to be and just watch it for what it actually is on it’s own. At the end of the day, each media thrives with it’s own methods and obviously it does affect and change the way we interact with it but I believe it’s ultimately all about the story and if it is done right for the medium used.
Essay 2: Animation Analysis
The film Treasure Planet is one of my all time favorite animated films, but I am choosing to analyse this because of how the idea of the story links to my chosen quote. Treasure Planet is a stylized film adaptation of the famous 1883 book, Treasure Island and so here I am exploring how this story was adapted, and why certain aspects were changed because of the difference in medium.
Treasure Island is a 300 page book, whereas Treasure Planet is an hour and a half movie, so therefore a lot of the originals details and depth is obviously not included. Treasure Planet still stands strong on it’s own two feet as it’s own story however, just showing that it doesn’t need all that extra detail to achieve its purpose. The biggest change is that the movie is set in space rather than the seas. This is an interesting twist on the classic tale and one that could be seen as the advertising gimmick for the film to attract attention. The change creates a state for the movie where it almost becomes invincible to criticism regarding its adaptation from the novel, since it isn’t trying to be a faithful retelling, it is setting out to be different. Since Treasure Planet flows so well independently, it doesn’t really matter that it hasn’t included everything the book did because, as Bazin, A. (1997) says:
‘..faithfulness to a form literary or otherwise, is illusory: what matters is the equivalence in meaning of the forms.’
The original story has been romanticised through the years and it created the common tropes of the pirate genre including peg legs, parrots and treasure maps. These are all relatively fictional things from the real pirate era but have been exaggerated upon through the years. These elements all work well for a family friendly Disney film. They are adapted in a way to make it fit with the sci-fi theme, so the peg legs are robot cyborg legs, the parrot is a shapeshifting alien called morph and the treasure map is a holographic device. These changes keep it fun and interesting and create a very different experience than what a normal adaptation would be.
Speaking of the specifics of the films adaptation, the fact that this is an animated film is also very important as to how the story has been moulded to fit this retelling. The possibilities of the medium of animation are only limited by imagination and what a person can draw, so they can essentially do absolutely anything. This gives them more freedom to be able to take a more realistic tale and turn it into something of a massive scale. Osborne, R and Brew, A. argue that a
‘Film can brilliantly convey the unspoken menace, the uncanny and the repressed emotions of the individuals.’
This states that film can be much more subtle in conveying its messages since they don’t need to be written, just seen. In animation this would be a more thought through process. Any subtle expressions would still need to be thought and planned unlike on a live action film set where subtle expressions are more subconscious of the actors acting.
At it’s core, the story doesn’t change all that much as it still revolves around the relationship between Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver. Their relationship was always a rather complex one since Silver is really the story’s main antagonist, yet he becomes somewhat of a father figure to Jim. This happens to a much greater degree in the movie than it did in the book as it is a much more family friendly depiction so it is made to involve less death and darker ideas. In the novel, Jim’s father died, whereas in the film his father simply left him and his mother. This change gives Jim a different and stronger motive in searching for a father figure in Silver and it’s why I think they put more emphasis on this relationship in the film.
Being a much tamer family version of the story, the terrible things that Silver has done in his pirating career are never really touched on in Treasure Planet, making him a bit more of a redeemable character. In the book, he was much more ruthless and scary and while he did have a soft spot for Jim in both depictions, the film version see’s the relationship developing so much that Silver actually gives up the treasure to save Jim in the end.
The animation in this film is very well done. We are made to really feel for the characters in a great way. Character animation is done in the famous soft and bouncy Disney style and feel that is so easy to connect with and engage in the character’s events. This is obviously going to be down to personal preference depending on how each person likes to consume stories. I personally connect more with the versions of the characters in this film more than the book. ‘One may, on the other hand, see visually through the eye or imaginatively through the mind. And between the percept of the visual image and the concept of the mental image lies the root difference between the two media’. (Bluestone, G. 1968).
Often when old stories are adapted to modern media, they reflect the world of the time it was made, regardless of how old the original story is. This is something that Treasure Planet strives in because it takes this awareness and runs with it, updating language to a modern audience, showing the advance of technology and also giving gender equality by bringing in a strong female character as the captain, who was originally a male in the book. This really makes the film feel more of a modern film while being set in the future and based on a novel from the past.
This is an example of a very unique and interesting style of adaptation that I think could be done more often in order to cut down the amount of basic adaptations and remakes in Hollywood. ‘Since 1995, for instance, more than half of the sixty-five films nominated for Best Picture by the Academic of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were based on works of literature.’
(Albrecht-Crane, C. Ray Cutchins, D. 2010)
It is difficult to compare the two tellings of this story because they are so differently told. This is something that I find so fascinating since while it is still at heart the same story, it adds enough new and excited differences to be a fresh experience.
Essay 3: Reflective Practice
The practical side of this module is something I struggled with a little more than I expected. The concertina sketchbook explores the visual side of my quote and the ideas behind it. In my first two essays, I have developed the quote into more of a debate on adaptations and media devices. ‘A hot medium is one that extends one single sense in "high definition." High definition is the state of being well filled with data. A photograph is, visually, "high definition." A cartoon is "low definition," simply because very little visual information is provided.’ (McLuhan, M. 1964). This part in particular is something that I challenged and argued against in my prior essays.
My sketchbook also has this development as it goes on. Toward the start of the book, it is focused around the different media delivery methods and I labeled which would be, according to McLuhan, hot or cold. When piecing my images together I came across the fact that the hot or coldness of a media is relative to what it’s being compared to. For example, I was considering films, McLuhan referred to them as a hot medium when comparing them to TV but when they are compared to a book, they cannot hold as much detail, so surely that must make it a cool medium in comparison. This is the focus I came back to for my image sequence which I will talk about more later.
In the book, each page is contrasting with the one next to it. I wanted to keep the pattern of hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold. I think this makes it easier to take in the whole picture since instead of understanding everything about hot media and then going on to everything about cold media, it may not be a fair experience. This way is much more balance between both types of media.
After the section on media types and technologies, I had a section on colour. I quite like this section since it clearly shows a distinction between hot and cool media in the form of reds and blues. I think the contrasting colours with the differing aesthetics used to convey the colour work very nicely. This is where I started to move into a bit more specific visual research. I gathered more images from animations and comics. I then went into the section with characters. I showed the heroes next to their most famous villains. This communicates the ideas of hot and cold because of how they are as characters. The villains being colder. I then like the idea of comparing the character from the cool original source material with a newer hot movie adaptation version of them.
The last section of the first side of the book is based around the idea of actual visual idea of data and high definition. I tried to visually represent by contrasting the images with a low quality version including, black and white, pixel art and low poly art.
As I went through the process of refining my essay, I wanted to add more visual research of the books to film. I show the covers of the books vs their movie adaptation counterpart. This is followed by a collage of articles talking about why the books are always better than the films or vice versa. This shows the argument is common within audiences and it is very interesting to see the great general opinion is that the book is always better. This is the same where I show the differences between the treasure island book and the treasure planet film.
‘500 different readers of the same book may have 500 different ideas of a character’s appearance. And if an actor doesn’t measure up to what you imagined when reading the book, there’s some disappointment.’ Santos, R. (2013)
The mass amount of Disney films being remade into live action is something that I am very passionate about. One could say that this is making a story from a cool medium and making it a hot media. I show the list of planned Disney remakes because I find it baffling that their movie plan for the next decade at least, just relies on adapting their old classics to what is seen as a superior media type. It proves how modern film industry is struggling to bring new, original ideas to life and their obsession with adaptation. They are playing safe with stories that they know audiences already liked. ‘Since 1995, for instance, more than half of the sixty-five films nominated for Best Picture by the Academic of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were based on works of literature.’
(Albrecht-Crane, C. Ray Cutchins, D. 2010)
The storyboard is something that is basically an elaboration of the points I’ve been making throughout the first and second essays. I visualise how all of the details and plot points from the book simply cannot fit into a movie. I have the book being red to represent it being a hot media and then the script is a blue to show it being cool media in comparison. I believe that this works well in order to communicate the idea of my whole project. I like how it developed to be able to talk about adaptation as I found it interesting and useful.
Bibliography
McLuhan, M. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Canada. McGraw-Hill Education. p.30 [Online] Available at: http://robynbacken.com/text/nw_research.pdf (Accessed: 12 November 2016).
Innocenti, V. and Pescatore, G. 2014. Changing series: Narrative models and the role of the viewer in contemporary television seriality. Between [Online] Available at: http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/between/article/view/4 (Accessed: 15 December 2016).
Ben Shaul, N. 2008. Hyper Narrative Interactive Cinema: Problems and Solutions. Amsterdam. Rodopi. p.17
Santos, R. 2013. 6 Reasons The Book Is (Almost Always) Better Than The Movie. Barnes and Noble. [Online] Available at: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/6-reasons-the-book-is-almost-always-better-than-the-movie/ (Accessed: 4 January 2017).
Bazin, A. 1997. Film Adaptation: Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest. p.21
Bazin, A. 1997. Film Adaptation: Adaptation, or the Cinema as Digest. p.20
Osborne, R. Brew, A. Film Theory For Beginners. London: Zidane Press. P.52
Bluestone, G. 1968. Novels Into Film. University of California Press. p.1
Albrecht-Crane, C. Ray Cutchins, D. 2010. Adaptation Studies: New Approaches. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p.11
