Explorations
Explorations Project
Introduction:
Tasked with the question, “How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?”, my fellow Freestyle student and I worked to explore an individual passion and improve our skill set in its regards. For my Explorations Project, I chose to research the process of book to screen adaptation. I’ve always been inspired by directs like Greta Gerwig and Stanley Kubrick, the masters of adaptive screenplay, so I thought I’d try my own hand at it. In order to do so, I chose to adapt The Age of Discretion, a short story from Simone De Beauvoir’s The Woman Destroyed.
Process:
I used a 4-step process for adapting my novel to screenplay:
Step 1: Timelines
Step 1 involved reading the book and identifying its act endings and plot points. Once I identified these things, I estimated where they would occur on a screenplay-length timeline using the Sid Fields Paradigm.
Step 2: Pages
The Pages step is where you draft your adaptation; roughly converting the book to screenplay format.
Step 3: 3 Files
Once I had my rough screenplay, I realized I need to shorten it to the projected length indicated in my timeline. To do this, I separated the acts into three separate files. This allowed me to work within each individual act to cut it down in length.
Step 4: Putting it all together
Once I had the shortened versions of each act, I put them back together into one final file. The last step here was to smooth out the transition and finish fixing any flaws within the script.
Final Production:
For my final production, I produced the 1st act of an adapted screenplay, as well as an instructional video depicting my 4-step process.
Reflection:
Adapting a book to a screenplay format is something I’d never experimented with before. It was a new skill, yet it still vastly improved my preexisting ability to screen-write. In adapting The Woman Destroyed, I learned that it may be better to start with a more action-packed book. The book I chose heavily delved into thought and philosophy, which I found to be a little more difficult to adapt. However, it was a challenge that I’m glad I took on, because diving headfirst allowed me to gain the ability to write an adapted screenplay I’m proud of.
Music Recording
The Music Recording Project was our final assignment in Digital Media. It served as a final representation of our knowledge of audio recording and Pro Tools.
The Music Recording Project felt very nostalgic to me. We chose to produce a cover of the song “Riptide” by Vance Joy, which was a callback to our youths. The decision to choose this song came about when Mal, Julia, and I all realized that we can’t play an instrument. As such, Julia tried her hand at ukelele. Now that we’d settled on ukelele, choosing the single most iconic ukelele song was the clear next step: we had to perform Riptide. I learned a lot of things in this process, but mostly that I was a tambourine prodigy. Aside from that, I learned that using the recording studio isn’t as daunting as I thought, and ProTools just takes a moment to get used to.
Lyrical Essay
“The lyric essay partakes of the poem in its density and shapeliness, its distillation of ideas and musicality of language. It partakes of the essay in its weight, in its overt desire to engage with facts, melding its allegiance to the actual with its passion for imaginative form.” – Deborah Tall and John D’Agata.
In this unit we studied the works of Maggie Nelson, Ryan Van Meter, Claudia Rankine, Ross Gay, Heidi Czerwiec and Ander Monson and David Foster Wallace. I was particularly inspired by Maggie Nelson’s Bluets.
I chose to write my lyrical essay about pomegranates, emulating Nelson’s emphasis of feeling portrayed through symbolism. In this essay, I share some anecdotes about pomegranates and what they’ve meant for me throughout my life, as well as some religious and cultural contexts behind them.
