American Psycho Script Pdf Movie The Adapter

American Psycho Script Pdf Movie The Adapter

So how does the filmmaker transfer 300 pages of novel to a 100 page script and still get the most out of it for a two to three hour movie The adapter has to cut elements from the story.

A straight adaptation of a 300 page novel could run for over 20 hours.

There are a variety of techniques that adapters utilize to achieve close adaptations.

These terms and concepts will help you to talk about issues of adaptation, and they will be present on your Final exam, along with terms and concepts from the glossary of cinematic terms in your Corrigan text.

Visualizing, double-tasking, and and voicing exposition are a few techniques adapters, screenwriters and directors use to adapt novels to film.

Desmond and Hawkes point out that since novels often begin with many pages of exposition in which setting is described, background is given, characters are introduced and the initial conflict is suggested (86), film makers must find ways to condence as well as apply these narrative elements to film.

Visualizing such exposition is an intrinsic quality of film and as the saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words.

As an example of this, compare the morning scene in American Psycho to the novel.

You will notice visualization - Bateman and his apartment, character and setting, are established in great detail very quickly, and Batemans voiceover, his voicing of Elliss exposition, further concentrates the scene.

Intertitle cards are used infrequently in movies today, but you may notice single lines of text as transitions, alerting the viewer to shifts in time and place, which allows film makers to quickly and economically skip over some of the novels exposition while keeping the viewer well oriented within the plot structure.

In other cases, filmmakers choose to skip the exposition entirely, jumping right into the action at the start of the movie or moving from one scene to another without expository reference.

Many of you have already recognized this technique being used in the films we have studied so far.

Peripheral and nonessential characters are often dropped in adaptations because they are not necessary to the plot.

Similarly, combining scenes is a technique that is often used to save time while maintaining important plot elements.