Cinematic descriptions

Hi,
When I write, I often more on movies then on books. Then, when I have written something to create an atmosphere similar to one scene in a movie, I think it’s to superficial or too detailed.
Can you even write properly with a movie scene in your head?

A movie scene is more like an omnipotent point of view, where the action and dialog is played out in front of the reader but in a book a reader can dwell in the first POV and third POV rather easily and also depending on the POV can give insight to a characters mental thoughts and actions where as in a movie we only see what is played out before us so many times a movie lacks “depth” in the insights and feelings of a character (unless a narrator is over dubbed)

If that makes any sense?

I’m not sure I agree with you here. In a movie, I would say that it is unusual for the POV to be Omnipotent. Most films will engage the viewer in the point of view of one or more characters in a very similiar way that a novel will; it’s only because the camera may see things the character can’t - but that’s simply a photographic distinction, not a narrative one.

Films give insights to the characters thoughts and feelings in a variety of very complex ways far beyond the “overdub”. The sound design, for example, including incidental music, is often vital in this, as is the performance of the actor; the way the shot is photographed, edited (how is it paced for example?), colour graded (for example a warm colour temperature gives a very different mood to a cold one), even mis-en-scene (not always, depending on the level of naturalism being employed) all provide huge clues into the character’s state of mind (this is extremely subtle, but extremely important and it all works, generally, on a subconscious level).

So a movie can express emotions about a wide set of hints, while a book lacks these devices, but can express it smooth and directly?
Could be that those details I talked about were part of these devices - I mean, when you look at a scene in a movie, you maybe spot a lot of details which don’t have much importance. When you mention these in a book, man, you won’t get to the story in the first 100 pages.
Okay, so a movie induces feelings at the viewer more indirectly with all these devices - picture, sound, music, perspective - and a book can do it more directly. That would explain why transferring a scene that is more like a movie into a text is rather… weird. :slight_smile:

Precisely. A book and a film are very different mediums. I don’t like this view that books are somehow “better” than films, or vice versa.
I think adaptations can be tricky you’ve got to a get a balance of being literal and essential. You’ve got to get enough of the literal events of the book there for it to not be a completely different thing completely, but really get the essence of it there (which, of course, is down to interpretation). Fight Club is, I think, an amazing adaptation - it was really far from “accurate” to the exact events of the book, but got the core feeling of it VERY WELL (in my opinion anyway).

Adaptations can be VERY fun though. I just finished a theatrical adaptation of The Trial by Kafka and we took ALOT of… creative license (we added a whole set of characters that weren’t in the original), but I still think the core story came across very clearly; and I think it was very successful.

The difference between the two is simply this.

Books are fueled by imagination in order for the reader to identify.

Movies are fueled by presentation in order for the reader to identify.