[HPFGU-Movie] watered-down characters

[Lita]

I figured I'd take a stab at some of this....I'm probably
several film classes beyond what I need to get the minor in
it by now. :) Plus, all my production classes have been in
screenwriting.

thalia chaunacy wrote:
> in theatre, one page of dialogue equals one minute of time on stage. this
> does not account for action sequences or close-ups or montages or any of
> that additional movie-type stuff.

The general rule of thumb in film is that one page of a
(formatted) script equals one minute of film time.  Most
scripts are in the 110-115 minute range. Note--those are
*not* numbers for production scripts, which are an entirely
different animal. The screenwriter doesn't add in any of the
cinematic stuff. (There are ways to sort of "lead" the
reader into seeing some specific shots, but the screenwriter
does not put in any type of camera movements or editing
directions.)

> PS is 309 pages. that's 5.15 hours. CoS is 341 pages, which is 5.684
> hours. PoA is 435 pages, or 7.25 hours. besides, there are zillions of
> sequences in which tons happens in two paragraphs, difficult at best to
> translate to film.

I don't think you can necessarily make a direct substitution
for the novel's pages with the script's pages. I don't think
that's a fair comparison, as the the writing is completely
different for both. Outside of some very brief descriptions,
all the script contains is dialogue--it goes without saying
that novels include quite a bit more than that. Really, the
only way to tell what the length of a direct book-to-screen
translation is would be to reformat the books into a script
and strip everything out. (And, at that, the dialogue would
likely be off anything because it wouldn't be film
dialogue.)

Having said that, though, it's extremely difficult to adapt
a novel into film--probably because the two are completely
different mediums. Film is visual and novels are very
internal. Even the narrative structure gets handled
differently. In general, it's a very bad idea to strictly
translate a novel into a script simply because most novels
don't work cinematically. There's just too much
"stuff"--what makes sense on the written page just can't all
be fit coherently into a movie.

Which I think is what you're saying, but I did want to
clarify the script length points.

> so -- beyond the whole 'they should have made it a mini-series'
> argument, which is valid but neither here nor there -- how do you make it
> a movie? you cut. well, *what* do you cut?
>
> there's the issue.

I agree that things do need to be left out--that's the
nature of an adaptation.

In fact, I've heard that one of the best ways to adapt a
novel is to *not* read the novel yourself right off the bat,
but to have someone else read it and then tell you the
story. Read the novel *after* you've done your first draft
of the script, when you're ready to revise. (I should
probably point out that it's expected that you'll go through
several drafts--probably only your original framework from
your first draft would remain if you did it like this.) That
way, you'll focus on the important stuff and what the book
is *really* about and not get caught up in all the details
of the book. I realize that's probably horrifying to most
people in any kind of fandom <g> but I think it does make a
lot of sense. (I myself am originally from the comic book
fandom, which is probably one of the more...uh...fanatical
ones out there.)

What I find to be the biggest flaws in the movies from a
screenwriting perspective, is that I don't think the movies
are a good adaptation of the books. I don't feel that the
movies are about the same things as the books. That is, that
while I think a lot of the events (and lines) are the same
as in the books, they don't mean the same things. In fact,
I get the impression that the movies aren't really "about"
anything other than "look at this cool wizarding world,
kiddies." In a lot of ways, I think the moviemakers were so
concerned with sticking in as many details from the books as
possible that they didn't worry enough about translating the
spirit of the characters to the movies.

Because, let's face it, Wood in the movies is (other than
his looks, I guess) fairly forgettable. The character is
simply exposition in the first film. All the Weasleys other
than Ron are similarly flat. Which is a shame, because
there's only a limited amount of time they can be
used--there was no reason to make what time they had so
bland. The important thing was not to have all those
background characters around, but to have *interesting*
background characters.

> well, why are you making a movie? because the plot's exciting and the
> characters are interesting, right? i don't think anyone can tell me the
> plots of PS/CoSmovies weren't exciting or that the characters were boring.

Well, I would have to disagree with you somewhat here. While
I wouldn't say that the movie!plots were boring, I do think
that they had enough flaws to keep them from being terribly
exciting. And I would have to say that the movie!characters
as written are fairly boring.

What makes the movies work is that they are visually
*amazing* (and, IMO, have a talented cast). I don't think
either the plots are the characters are particularly
interesting in and of themselves--neither inspires much
emotional attachment unless you already have one in place
from reading the books. What the films do is visually make
the world come alive. I've noticed that that "aliveness"
encouraged me to overlook a lot of the flaws of the
movies--probably because I'm something of a film geek. :)
But when I look at it from a screenwriting perspective, I
see a lot of flaws--and not just from the adaptation
perspective.

But as a kid's action flick (which, let's face it, is what
the movies are intended to be), both movies work very well.
Which, to be cynical, really isn't saying much. :)

I have to say that I've given some thought as to how I would
adapt PoA, but I won't go into that now. I think I've ranted
enough for one day.... :)

Lita

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