[ SECRET POST #3542 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3542 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 19 secrets from Secret Submission Post #506.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. http://i.imgur.com/Fi27rno.png

[(Anonymous)]

A book that is largely stream of consciousness will be very hard (if not impossible) to film. "Streamlining" won't help and obviously neither will CGI. And that's usually what people are talking about when they say a book is unfilmable - when it relies more on prose and thoughts than dialogue and action.

[(Anonymous)]

They've filmed Joyce's Ulysses, more than once. I think to be truly unfilmable it would have to be a book that was all over the place in contents, theme, and characterization so that no coherent narrative could be found no matter how hard a person tried. Chuck Wendig's Star Wars Aftermath, for example, is a prime candidate for being unfilmable. Since it is also unreadable with a sane mind.

[kallanda_lee]

I guess that at some point it just becomes something entirely different though. And that's okay. But you can't in all honestly say it's really a film adaptation of the book, more like a film inspired by the book.

[brandiweed.livejournal.com]

This, very much. Really, any long chunk of first-person narration, especially if it's in someone's head, doesn't translate to the third-person narrative form of film too easily, especially as long voiceovers are not really the done thing anymore.

Other unfilmable aspects, of course, generally involve the ratings board (there are scenes in the novel of American Psycho that were never ever no way no how going to get filmed).

[morieris]

This reminded me of The Bartimaeus Trilogy. It's the titular demon's inner monologue that's amazing. I'd love to hear it as a voice over, but with all the talking, might as well just read the book eh.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess if you change the plot (which many do anyway), or make something super arty and weird, yeah....

Space Odysesy 2001 anyone 🐒🌞🌘🌚🌜🌚🐒🐒💃

[(Anonymous)]

Nothing is technically unfilmable, but like

There are things that are incredibly, incredibly difficult to adapt, and where adapting them would challenge our notions of narrative film

[ketita]

What anon above me said. I don't think it has to do with CGI or even plot convolutions, but with types of information that are transmitted in prose and in film completely differently.
I'm not saying it's impossible to make things work, but I think the amount of skill and artistry you'd need is above average, in order to really capture the essence of the book.

And you know what, even with streamlining plot - not every streamlined plot will make as good a movie as it did a book. The structure of the two is quite different.
Even among successful movie adaptations of books, the adaptations that are *as good* as the book stand out because of how rare they are.

[(Anonymous)]

Sometimes, in my opinion, its less a matter of can it be filmed, cause yeah it could be, but could it be filmed and still be true to the source material and actually good.

And I think some things just couldn't make the jump in medium and be good and not completely different.

[diet_poison]

Yeah, I agree.

Not that it's bad to still make it if it's good, even if it is completely different, but people have to be OK with and accept that they're very different.

[kallanda_lee]

As others have said, it has less to do with CGI than with the fact that some novels are very much based on a character's internal world, and you can't always show that on film. Like, a character spending 50 percent of a book pondering the meaning of life is hard to film.

And even if you could, it might be boring (while the book might be brilliant) or so far removed from the book you ca't really call it an adaptation anymore.

[(Anonymous)]

Really?
The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness seems like it'd be ridiculously hard to film and impossible to follow if they did the voices like they're implied.

[(Anonymous)]

This was my first thought, and yet, an adaptation is/was in the works.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly the first thing i thought of too! i think the problem is that the Noise WOULD be absolutely unbearable to anyone who isn't used to it if you were to represent it accurately, as it is in the book. That's the entire point, obviously, but no mainstream audience would want to subject itself to it!

[(Anonymous)]

There are definitely conventions of each medium that are incredibly difficult to translate to a different medium. And sometimes it's near-impossible to compensate for the difficulty or the loss of them.

Two examples that come to mind, going in the opposite direction (screen to text), are montages and music.
Both of which are annoyingly common in fanfic for my current favourite show (mostly because the show itself has a whole lot of both).

[ketita]

That makes sense, really. If they were all the same, we'd have no need of so many different mediums...

[ariakas]

Blood Meridian...?

If so please marry me anon. If you really wanted to film it, you could. It would just take a very, very bold director.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

You got the obscure reference.

[(Anonymous)]

Some books are unfilmable since film is a visual medium and books are not. For instance, The Giver is unfilmable since the major reveal that tips us off that all is not as wonderful as Jonas perceives it (the inability to see color) is neatly tucked away quite a ways into the novel. Any attempt to put Sameness on screen would ruin the dawning horror the reader feels as the full extent of the dystopia becomes clear.

And yes, I know they made The Giver into the movie. I saw it. I stand by my position- the book is unfilmable.

[sarillia]

My candidate for unfilmable book is If on a winter's night a traveler. I don't know how you would take the things I love about it and turn it into a film.

[cloudtrader]

That is the only thing I have ever read where the 2nd person narrative didn't bug the shit out of me... and yes, it is totally unfilmable, imo.

[purpleseas]

CGI still looks hilariously fake much of the time, though, and ends up ruining whatever the intended effect was (especially in horror oh my god please stop), so it's really not the answer to everything. Streamlining does a real disservice to stories that rely on things like stream of consciousness and character study. Gone Girl was streamlined into being completely nonsensical. And then there are books like Stephen King's It, which is on its second adaptation now but is way too long and intricate and full of objectionable content to do faithfully, so it's not always technical limitations or length alone that make something unfilmable. I just don't think every story lends itself to film, and it's really fine to leave some of them alone.

[(Anonymous)]

"We have the CGI to film anything" would be more compelling of an argument if there weren't so many examples of terrible CGI in films...

[(Anonymous)]

I would currently love to see a film of Children Of Time (it won the Clarke award this year). But half the book is about spider societies where communication is through, basically, interpretive dance. And also the main characters keep being replaced (this makes sense in context, I promise).

...actually this comment is really just a book rec. Have you ever wanted more insects in your SFF? Adrian Tchaikovsky is the author for you!