War Horse: From the Book to the Play to the Film
There are several challenges a film can face when it is adapted from a written piece. Whilst some critics will defend that film adaptation tend to vary several aspects of a story, others, may object there are techniques, which help to recreate and maintain the plot alive within audio-visual frameworks. This paper will discuss two of the main difficulties of adapting War Horse and the different methods that were used in the pursuance of visual storytelling.
War Horse is a children’s novel written by the British author Michael Morpugo. First published in 1982, it quickly gained widespread acceptance due to the remarkable narrative around The First World War. Some of its most acclaimed features …show more content…
The plot is originally developed in two main settings: Devon and The War. It is generally known, “the human eye and brain experiences color physically, mentally and emotionally. As a result, colors themselves have meanings” (Stone et al., 2008). Taking into consideration colour meaning, the theatre production developed the idea of having lighting and hues as describing devices within the advancement of the diegesis. As said by Paule Constable, the lighting designer, it was utterly important to give the audience a sense of location very quickly (Bickerstaff and Grabsky, 2009). Through light, the theatrical version is able to define both words by using contrasting angles and varied colour temperatures (Ibid, …show more content…
As a consequence, the moving picture acquired an “episodic format”. This signifies that it experiences war through the journey lived by a neutral character who makes connections with all the people he comes across. On the whole, the cinematography reflects the tonality of the story and its dramatic changes as the War progresses because the surrounding world keeps gradually getting darker (Curtis and Hiddleston, 2012) (See fig.
There are several challenges a film can face when it is adapted from a written piece. Whilst some critics will defend that film adaptation tend to vary several aspects of a story, others, may object there are techniques, which help to recreate and maintain the plot alive within audio-visual frameworks. This paper will discuss two of the main difficulties of adapting War Horse and the different methods that were used in the pursuance of visual storytelling.
War Horse is a children’s novel written by the British author Michael Morpugo. First published in 1982, it quickly gained widespread acceptance due to the remarkable narrative around The First World War. Some of its most acclaimed features …show more content…
The plot is originally developed in two main settings: Devon and The War. It is generally known, “the human eye and brain experiences color physically, mentally and emotionally. As a result, colors themselves have meanings” (Stone et al., 2008). Taking into consideration colour meaning, the theatre production developed the idea of having lighting and hues as describing devices within the advancement of the diegesis. As said by Paule Constable, the lighting designer, it was utterly important to give the audience a sense of location very quickly (Bickerstaff and Grabsky, 2009). Through light, the theatrical version is able to define both words by using contrasting angles and varied colour temperatures (Ibid, …show more content…
As a consequence, the moving picture acquired an “episodic format”. This signifies that it experiences war through the journey lived by a neutral character who makes connections with all the people he comes across. On the whole, the cinematography reflects the tonality of the story and its dramatic changes as the War progresses because the surrounding world keeps gradually getting darker (Curtis and Hiddleston, 2012) (See fig.