Prompt: Reflect upon an influential text (e.g. a reading, or a screening) you encountered during the studio, and discuss it in terms of your own developing practice. This might be (but not limited to), how it introduced you to new ideas. Or, how it changed or reinforced your previous ways of working.
Analysing the script for Frozen River (2008) and then viewing its final product as a film provided some valuable insight into the adaptation process of print to screen. Through identifying what things had been added, omitted or otherwise varied I realised that written ideas and details may not come out how you expected on the screen and once filming, these details can be adapted to better suit what you are trying to achieve. What I found interesting was that the image of the world I had constructed in my head after reading the script was quite different to the one in the actual film. The characters themselves felt much more hostile in the script compared to what I believe was portrayed on screen, particularly because of the kind of interaction described between the mother and her son. The fact that they had omitted some of this dialogue took away the extra tension I had perceived between them.
I started thinking about how scripts can be interpreted or adapted differently to better fit the screen. This informs my own work because initially I thought that the production of a screen work had to be strictly loyal to its written script. I now understand that there can flexibility when adapting scripts to a screen and therefore when I produce my own work, it is not necessary that every detail must be perfected because things can be easily altered. I understand that some of the alterations in Frozen River could have been due to other factors such as budget restrictions or ease of practicality. But I think a lot of it comes from the fact that viewing something tangibly and visualising something mentally can be very different things and therefore subject to reformation.
One of the things that stood out for me when we evaluated Frozen River as a film was the exclusion of a number of details that had been written into the script. This got me thinking about how, while the things viewers see on screen is important and can incite emotional reactions, it is also what they don’t see that can be more effective in generating such a response. This also taps into the concept of tone that we also discussed as a class in the context of Frozen River. Tone is difficult to convey because it is not something audiences view, but what they feel. This will be something I make a note to consider when constructing my own works in the future, as I think it is an important yet easily forgotten strategy. I feel like it is a natural inclination to be as thorough and detailed as possible in most contexts but in a screen context what’s left out can be as important and purposeful of what’s included. This concept reminds me of cooking – often professional chefs will emphasise that you don’t have to put as many flavours as possible onto a plate just because you want to show off as much as you can and get everything out there – rather, it’s much more effective to select the few most necessary components and let them work perfectly together.
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