What Could Have Been Done Differently? (WAS Perhaps I need to clarify...)

[Cindy C.]

Once again, Luke's interesting comments have provoked another reply 
from me.  Sorry about that.  I promise that I won't make the same 
points I've made before.  Instead, I am wondering about the ways some 
of the problems could be fixed, and how some of this will impact 
future films.

              *****************************

Luke wrote:

>Most successful book-to-film adaptations do not have to 
> play to fans quite so much.  I have also long maintained that PS/SS 
> would be the most difficult of the books so far to adapt, despite 
its 
> being the shortest.  

<snip reasons that adapting PS/SS is a challenge>  

I therefore anticipate that the COS 
> movie will not suffer as heavily from these kinds of editing and 
> continuity issues in the screenplay, because it will not need the 
> same introductory stuff.


I think I'm a little more worried about future films.  I believe we 
have the exact same crew doing CoS (which is a slightly longer book), 
so if PS/SS rakes in lots of money, I doubt they'll feel compelled to 
do anything differently with continuity, editing, etc.  Indeed, I 
felt that PS/SS is somewhat unusual in the series because I think it 
can be "picked apart" more easily.  By that, I mean only that the 
various subplots are more compartmentalized such that a subplot can 
be removed without causing trauma to the story.  For instance, if you 
tossed Norbert out of PS/SS completely, the book still works.  If you 
toss dementors (or boggarts, or the Grim, or the time-turner) out of 
PoA, though, you really have a problem.

As for PoA and GoF, I am desperately concerned now.  If the 
filmmakers on PS/SS couldn't tell an entirely compelling story with 
2:30 minutes of time on a 300+ page book, I shudder to think about 
what will happen with a 500+ page PoA.  Then when I hear that they 
want a two-part GoF . . . uh, oh.  Part of what is worrisome to me is 
that PoA is very tightly knitted, so I would think it would be even 
more difficult to make the right decision about what stays and what 
goes.  


Luke wrote:


> The special effects were a mixed bag.  <snip>  The computer 
graphics 
> were typical with all the typical problems (and even a couple not 
so 
> typical, like my continued inability to understand what is so 
> difficult about making a proportionately-accurate CG Harry).  


Could anyone expound on this a bit?  Are we talking about the "rubber 
Harry doll" on the broom and the one on the troll's back?  Is it 
something else?  I'd like to understand a bit more about what the 
actual limits of special effects are, if anyone on the list knows.  
In other words, did the filmmakers just cut corners, or is it just 
impossible to get this sort of thing to be convincing?  

Don't crucify me for saying this, but I really have to wonder if 
these problems would have occurred with a director more experienced 
with special effects.  Like James Cameron or (gasp!) Steven 
Spielberg.  Perhaps the trick is to look at the concept drawings or 
prototypes and spot early on (based on experience) that something is 
amiss, and perhaps these more experienced directors would have caught 
these things.  The fact that Peeves was eliminated because the 
special effect wasn't up to scratch makes me wonder.


Luke again:

>the centaur was atrocious.

I'd like to know what happened here.  What went wrong?  I couldn't 
really put my finger on it.  It seemed that the proportions were off 
or something, maybe.  Like there was a man standing there with a 
horse body attached to his back, perhaps.  I was just wondering if 
anyone on the list knows what the "fix" for this is.  

Luke again:

> Quidditch deserves its own section of commentary rather than 
lumping 
> it in as a special effect, because I had problems with this scene 
> that ultimately have nothing to do with the effects themselves (I 
> have already talked about the fake CG motion blur, so I won't 
> again).  It looks exactly like Quidditch probably would look, but, 
> strangely . . . there's no drama whatsoever.  

I wonder if the Quiddich scene would have been helped along if it had 
come at the end of the film.  As it stands and in the book, the 
Quiddich scene integrates into the mystery because of the "Quirrell 
tries to make Harry fall" bit.  I think this wasn't sufficiently 
developed for anyone who hadn't read the book.  So maybe you drop 
that angle entirely, and you use the match as the climax instead.  
After Harry vanquishes Voldemort, he receives points, but not enough 
to take the house championship.  So they have to win Quiddich, and 
that's the climax.  I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud here.  
But it felt weird to have this rush of exhilaration from the 
Gryffindor Quiddich win right in the middle of the mystery.  

Cindy (annoyed to learn that Susan Bones is Columbus' daughter, and 
now suspicious that Harry's father might be Columbus' brother)