The authorial voice of Adaptation, The Apartment, and A Boy's Life depends greatly on the structure of the script. Adapatation feels like a documentary rather than a fictional film. It conveys a sincere tone as though the writers are chronicling true events. You can't help but feel that you are reading a documentary. Kaufman's voice is very identifiable in the script. Unfortunately, the constant jumps between time lines muddles up the individual voices of the other characters. Without looking at the character line or action, I sometimes cannot tell who is speaking. However, after a while, I got accustomed to the structure and the individual voices of Orlean and Laroche became more distinct and that added to the documentary feel of the script.
The Apartment made a few jumps, but it was not as consistently done as to bewilder the reader. Wilder and Diamond's voice were humurous. It was evident in the action with phrases like "it's a big mother" and in the dialogue with Bud's trademark of adding -wise to some of the things he was saying. Whereas Adaptation is very serious, The Apartment is very humurous.
Although at first I did not like the heavy description of Mathison's A Boy's Life because it took away from the action in the dialogue, I now view it as the simplest and easiest script of the three to read. Adaptation and The Apartment shift timelines and character point-of-views while A Boy's Life stays, for the most part, linear and focused on one character's point-of-view. This simplicity contributes to the innocence of the story. Whereas the dialogue in Adaptation and The Apartment reflect the writers' voices, A Boy's Life sounds like a child wrote the dialogue, which is a positive thing in this situation.
Despite their differences, the voices in each story contribute to the overall success of the script.
-Fernando Rosas
Discussion Question:
1. Did you find Adaptation hard to follow sometimes with all the jumps between timelines?
2. Weston prefers "group" script analysis. How do you prefer to analyze a script? In a group or by yourself?
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2 comments:
I just recently watched Adaptation for another film class so when I was reading the screenplay; I think it made it easier to follow. However, at times it was confusing because not only were there many flashbacks but there were many different story lines to follow.
1. I found it difficult to follow at times because we’re used to reading stories told in a very straight-forward way, and when a story is told in a different way it can be confusing, but rewarding as well.
2. I prefer working by myself, at least at first, in order to form my own opinions on the material, and then hearing other points of view in a group setting.
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