Quick: Krevolin’s Adaptation

As seen in the Screenplay section, Krevolin encourages us to answer the “Big 7” in order to produce a successful adaptation. One of the questions encompassed within this is, “How do you want to tell your story?” For example, do you want it to be told chronologically? Do you want there to be a voiceover? In my mind, I begin to relate this to a story’s pacing in a variety of ways. How quickly do you want action to develop? How long do certain actions or scenes need to take?

Immediately my mind jumps to the cinematic use of montage. Krevolin very briefly touched upon this idea when he analyzed the Big 7 in relation to The Shawshank Redemption by asking, “How does Andy achieve what he wants in an unexpected, interesting, and unusual way?” Krevolin explains that toward the end of the film, we see some “quick flashes that explain how/why things turned out the way they did.” These “quick flashes,” or elements of montage, are excellent storytelling devices to exemplify the passage of time in a quick way.

I think that the idea of collages or Blox is very similar to that of montage. Each of the images utilized is a flash or glimpse at a piece of action. It’s a succinct way to tell a story. Keeping this in mind, I attempted to give my Quick Blox a sense of narrative, that perhaps my other Blox (Bloxes? Is that a word? Well…it is now!) lacked.

Visible: Krevolin’s Adaptation

In the first half of our blog, we used Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips’ book Graphic Design The New Basics to determine which principles of graphic design best aligned with each of Calvino’s qualities. The principle that I chose was Diagram—“a graphic representation of a structure, situation, or process.” Diagrams are terrific because, in essence, they are visualizations of our thoughts that enable us to organize a flow of ideas.

Krevolin utilizes a special type of diagram called the Scene-O-Gram, which “allows the writer to chart out the entire course of his story on one page and see what he or she may really have.” Before starting a Scene-O-Gram though, it’s important to recognize the various “acts” of our written work as well as the goals of each act.

Below is the Scene-O-Gram structure.

 

I used Krevolin’s method when composing my Visible Blox by drawing upon significant and telling images from all of the various “acts.” The purpose of this Blox was to draw heavily upon the novel’s vivid descriptions and use them to conjure up mental pictures. Those descriptions are the ones that are most beneficial for adaptation as they provide the basis for an on-screen visualization.

As Krevolin also explained, the oldest forms of storytelling involve pictures. Stories were once told by paintings and diagrams on a cave wall. Today, this principle remains intact. We tell our stories first by writing them as screenplays and then transposing them to “the wall.” However, the cave wall is now a digitally projected, THX, Dolby, Surround Sound, 35 mmm-cinematic movie screen. Regardless, the power of images is still very prominent.

Exact: Krevolin’s Adaptation

When thinking about how “exactitude” relates to adaptation and while constructing my Exact Blox, I uncovered an exciting connection! Exactitude is a lot like the notion of faithfulness in adaptation. In his book “How to Adapt Anything into a Screenplay,” Richard Krevolin devotes an entire chapter/case study of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (also sometimes referred to as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone—alchemy reference!) to the discussion of faithfulness in adaptation. Krevolin raises and answers questions such as: How faithful does an adaptation need to be to its original work, can something be too faithful, and what can be cut/added?

To begin, Krevolin says that, the “key to successful adaptation really is—not to do a verbatim and faithful transcription, which in many ways is impossible anyway, but to capture the truth of the original work and convey that onscreen.”

Krevolin also explains that it’s actually okay to create a new story that is simply inspired by source material. We can add, combine, or completely eliminate elements of the original work if it helps to improve our adaptation. Since a screenplay isn’t a literary form, it relies more heavily on images. Thus, sometimes we need to incorporate clarifying visuals that may not have originally been present in the written story.

In creating my Exact Blox, I definitely took this to heart. One major feature of my Blox is the image of “Alchemical Symbols” within a circle. Such symbols were absolutely never mentioned in The Alchemist, but they are an important visual representation of alchemy. They are the most commonly recognized indication of alchemy’s essence. I also incorporated images of an alchemic “chemistry set”—again never mentioned in the original novel. However, these stand as recognized symbols and signifiers that an average, mass audience would understand. Despite these fabricated inclusions, I think that my Blox still retains the spirit of the novel and exemplifies the presence of “exactitude” in The Alchemist.