For some reason, getting an English minor seemed like a good idea at the time.
- Created By Katana
Pages two and three
If everything is clear and the room has settled, then the chance arises to make an escape back to the kitchen – finally. While it may lack air conditioning, it contains the people who make the job somewhat worth it. They are the cohorts and ...And the beginning page
Same as the below, but now a page! --- “Two at six!” What was once a mysterious code of numbers soon became clear in my head. The phrase simply meant “two people at table six”. Of course there&r...The beginning paragraph
Oh hi World.
First assignment for English 303 was to write a paragraph. Here we go.
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“Two at six!”
Two people, table six. Of course there’d be two people at table six, it was a table that could only and would only ever seat two people. Ever. Someone could just say “table six is now occupied” and the chances of there being only one person were slim to none. The primary reason was that on a Friday or Saturday night, being alone and going to a nice restaurant was the sure fire sign of a loser. And while I may have just described myself, I desire to keep the joke off of me. I was already going to be at the beck and call of the customers, so there wasn’t really a whole lot more degrading that could be done.
I exaggerate, of course. In the long run, people are people, and I hold that most people are decent despite what I say while driving.
Film, TV, and Theater styles
Not anything about the Whose Line game, I just thought it was catchy.
The current play we're reading right now is called Angels in America (part 1, there are two parts, we're only reading the first). It's about something and has characters.
But the focus of this little rant and curiosity is not about the play or its characters or themes or anything. It's merely the device that brought something to my attention.
I've never written anything that could be considered a screenplay. But from what I can tell, the way you write for theater is different than what you'd write for TV/movies. It's the limits of the mediums that each have that make you go a certain route...yes? That's kind of how I take it?
I never really gave this much thought until we watched a clip from a HBO production of Angels in class. I read along in my book and was startled to hear exactly what I was reading. I looked up at the screen and had such a hard time being convinced that what I was watching was...natural. It felt so clunky, so forced. I'm not sure what the deal was, but I was really annoyed by this.
Is this a one-time deal? Just the fault of the adaptation? A stylistic choice that I'm just being bitter about? I mean, I write stories, I watch TV and movies, but I don't get to go to the theater all that much. I've probably seen more plays in my life than the average person, but it still isn't a heckuva lot.
Case in point, for me, is The Producers, a work I first had to envision from the soundtrack alone. I then saw the 2005 musical movie, then the 1968 movie, and then finally the Broadway production (that the 2005 adaption was based off of) in 2007. Before seeing the Broadway version, I watched the 2005 movie like crazy, one for genuine enjoyment and two for reference. I listened to the commentary a lot, and one thing continuously brought up is how things were different from the movie versus the stage.
So come the stage, I wasn't exactly expecting the movie, and what I got was in fact, not the movie. The things were mostly the same, but the dialogue was morphed and modified to fit the environment it was in. Both times felt like they worked, because they worked in the medium they were in.
I have no idea what the purpose of that was.
But the general idea of this post is to kind of pry and question what that barrier is. Also, to you writers, I'm interested in how you view these things and different areas of writing. I'm not saying it's easy or hard to write for a certain media, but is it something to think about? And how should one go about adapting a play for TV, if even bothering to "adapt" it at all?
