How story changes when it travels through various media
An Analysis
By
Rishi Bhilawadikar
For
T570- Art, Entertainment and Information
Indiana University, Bloomington
Fall 2005
Words and pictures form the basis of any story. Without their usage a story cannot be seen, told or heard. And obviously for a story to be termed as a “story” it must be shown and / or told. With the wide range of traditional and new media forms that exist in the present times, it is comes as no surprise when the same story gets told and/or shown in these multiple media forms. What is of interest is that each of these media forms has its own unique artistic and technical characteristics and constraints. And thus when a story gets depicted in a particular media form, it must conform to its “rules”.
Let us take the example of Mario Puzo’s story “The Godfather” – a powerful novel that describes mafia or underworld in the early half of this century. It revolves around the Corleone family and deals with many issues and emotions such as crime, loyalty, love, trust, betrayal, violence, cunning and revenge amongst others. Regarded by most as a classic, Puzo successfully created a compelling and powerful narrative world with his story, which continues to inspire many a filmmaker, till this day. Not only has this story resulted in Francis Ford Copolla giving us one of the most artistic and celebrated series of films of the century (“The Godfather” Parts I, II and III), but it has also inspired TV shows such as the “The Sopranos” and Electronic Arts role playing video game “The Godfather”. “The Godfather” thus serves as a great example of story being transformed from text to film to television to video game.
While the essence and premise of the story remains same in all its forms there are a number of noticeable differences and consequences that emerge as a result of story changing its form. First and foremost difference that arises in each of the forms is the length of the story, which is measured as number of pages for a book, screen time for a film, number of seasons for a TV show and number of playing hours for a game. It then becomes apparent that film puts the maximum restriction on the story length while a TV show allows the creator to stretch out the story for years together (currently, The Sopranos is in its fifth season). Of course the author of the novel determines the original length of the story and he is not governed by timing and budgeting constraints of a film or TV show. The author of a novel can make it as verbose, vivid and detailed as he pleases. Case in point: The Lord of the Rings. Over a thousand pages of written text! With “The Godfather” however Puzo creates about 500 pages of crime, drama and action. Every page being compelling.
Which brings us to the pacing of a story in these various forms. A book may afford to slack in pace occasionally. The author may meander into unnecessary details for a particular character or situation. This does not imply disaster for the book. But this is not the case with a film. With a film, the director must ensure that the story progresses at a steady pace with each frame so as to hold the interest of the audience and complete the film within the stipulated time. Not doing so can be disastrous for a film and slow or sketchy pacing does not augur too well for any story being shown on the screen. A TV show works on a completely different pacing pattern. It must reveal the story only at a pace that is suitable for advertising and raising curiosity levels of the audience for the next episode or season. The show must cut-off the story at a point high intrigue each time, if it has to retain its audience. A good example of this is “24”. The first episode of which ends with a plane being blown up. It was a great point to end the story as far as a TV show is concerned.
With video games, both story length and pacing go hand in hand since they involve active audience participation. In a role playing game like “The Godfather”, it is the player who determines the story length and pacing depending upon how much time it takes for him or her to solve the mystery or complete a mission. A skilled gamer might finish a role playing game typically in 50-60 hours while a novice might take months. With cheat codes, a player may seriously shorten the story length and make the pace really rapid.
Since games require participation from the audience they bring in the characteristics of non-linearity and interactivity to a story. With non-linearity, a story need not necessarily progress in a sequence of logically related events. It allows the audience to explore and deviate from the main storyline. In fact EA promotes “The Godfather” game as a “non-linear action adventure” which means that the player plays the role of a character who follows his own story and does his own tasks, and at various points in time during the game his story intersects with the main storyline of the book or the film. This gives rise to another very interesting concept of intersecting story worlds. Video games provide the power of generating these for a story. Neither book, film or television can create such an intersection of story worlds purely because of their linear nature of story telling. Non linearity also implies allowing the audience to move back and forth within a story multiple times, a luxury which film and television cannot afford. Books although not written to be read in such a seemingly haphazard manner can in fact be read that way. Which implies that books along with video games provide the most interactive environment for telling a story. This is because the audience is in control of the story while reading or playing unlike a film or a show where they are being manipulated by the director and have no control what is being shown. However, what must be acknowledged is the degree of control that the audience has while playing a game or reading a book. These are both storytelling environments ultimately mediated by their creators and thus every player or every reader must reach certain common points (albeit taking different paths) in the story for the story to make progress and finally reach a conclusion. A great example of non-linear reading is the “GI-Joe” series of books. At every page, a message redirects the reader to a different part of the book. While this book is structured in this manner specifically, other “regular” books may also be read in such a non-linear fashion if a reader so wishes. Games hold an edge over books when it comes to non-linearity and interactivity. This comes from the fact that with Artificial Intelligence or AI it should soon become possible to generate unique endings for a story. This would truly make a story completely non-linear and unpredictable, an exciting and challenging prospect for the audience.
A story really can either be character driven or event driven. In both cases, a book is the best medium to dwell upon the characters and events. An author can really dedicate many pages for each of his characters. Which in turn allows the audience to understand the mind of a character in very great details. Again, a film does not wield that kind of power when it comes to getting into the mind of the character. Since all words cannot be successfully shown visually, this puts a film at a disadvantage. However, with a great director and talented actors the mind of the character can be somewhat successfully shown. Marlon Brando’s amazing facial expressions, voice and gestures do complete justice to Puzo’s character of Don Vito Corleone but Brando’s on screen magic can never compare to Puzo’s word play and descriptions of the character in the book. While it may be true that “a picture is worth a thousand words”, what is equally true is that some words just cannot be shown on screen. A TV show can fuss upon a particular character for many episodes but it will still fail bringing to the audience the actual thought process of a character. A video game, especially a role-playing one is a parasite in this regard. It completely relies upon the prior knowledge of the story of its audience and then hopes to build upon it further. Specifically pertaining to “The Godfather” game, the player had respect and fear values attached to his character, which rise or fall depending upon the performance in the game. While novel, such techniques fail miserably in helping the audience understand the mind of a character.
These forms of media are also very different creative art forms. Whereas imagination and words act as the most important artistic elements for a book (and the points of accolades), camera angles, color, framing, lighting, editing, acting, directing, sound and a slew of other factors go into telling a successful story on screen. “The Godfather” has a great cast, a brilliant director, excellent use of color and some powerful framing and editing which contribute in making it classic that it is. A story thus needs to be imagined visually, performed and adorned in order to make it compelling on screen. Thus the difference in art of the book and that of the film is what makes “The Godfather” such a riveting story in both forms. Television; although a visual medium; can’t really be spoken much about as an art form. It primarily relies on the script and the cast. It is the writers and actors’ creativity that make a show like “The Sopranos” such an interesting story to watch. Even though the basic premise is the same ie mobsters, mafia and gang wars, the story on television; perhaps by its virtue of being stretched out, loses out on the kind of art a film involves. The concept of art for a story in a video game takes a completely new and maybe even radical form. Graphics, programming, modeling and sound would have to be the primary artistic features in evaluating a game story.
Another important feature that changes for a story while it travels through media is the writing. While the book is primarily descriptive in nature, a film and a TV show needs to be thought of in terms of a script and screenplay. A film is shot in scenes and thus the story needs to be broken apart at various points and thought of in terms of chunks or scenes. Writing scenes is quite different from writing a chapter for the book. Dialogue and description can be mixed together in a book however a film screenplay does not allow such writing luxury. The writers must then break apart the story and think about it logically in terms of locations, talent movement, dialogue and other descriptions. And it is the screenplay that gets translated onto the screen. For game, writing the story becomes even more challenging since now the writers are thinking in terms of scenarios instead of scenes. With each possible scenario there could be a number of scenes and given the non-linear nature of the medium there are bound to interconnections between scenes and scenarios. Thus the treatment for the story greatly varies in the different media forms.
Next we come to the degree of imposed imagination experienced in the various media forms for a story. In a book, a reader allows himself to be manipulated by the authors’ thoughts but the nature of the medium is such that it does not restrict the reader from imagining the story visually in his own mind. A book therefore seems to be the most ideal mediated environment since the participant while being manipulated is also in a sense left free to apply his own thoughts. Sadly, not the case with film or shows; wherein the imagination or interpretation of the story by the director is imposed completely upon the audience. “ The Godfather” (film) follows the descriptions in the book almost word for word, which goes a long way in it being liked universally. There are plenty of examples of films based on books but not quite following the storyline of the book (John Grisham’s – “The Firm”, Michael Crichton’s – “The Lost World” etc) which have not gone down too well with the audience since the visual depictions of the story are completely different from what the audience imagined while reading the novel. Stories from films or books can be very challenging to import into games. Playing the story rather than listening or watching it seems a very interesting concept but is in fact extremely difficult to implement since the question of “from what perspective should the story be played” arises. In the EA game, we play it from the perspective of a new recruit in the Corleone family whose aim in the game is to become the Don. A very interesting take but its success remains to be seen.
This leads into story being told from multiple perspectives. Only a game on “The Godfather” can achieve this. Neither film nor book can get the audience to experience a perspective other than the one created by Puzo. Since the game virtually transports you into the world and times of the story, it provides the best chance of understanding the story from a different perspective. Films such as “Run Lola Run” and “Rashomon” have previously depicted multiple perspectives (& successfully so) but since the medium of film does allow for direct audience participation it therefore does not cater for the audience to “self-discover” a new perspective on the story. A book would never be able to offer multiple perspectives, as it would only lead to confusion and the author being panned for rubbish writing.
Finally, a book and a TV show can afford to have multiple sub-plots and themes imbibed into them. A film can never afford to treat the story in that manner. A good example from “The Godfather” is the character of Johnny Fontane. While the book describes this character in vivid details, the film makes minimal usage of the character sticking mostly to the primary storyline. Same is the case with the character of Luca Brasi. As it is the book contains numerous characters and sub-plots not every one of which is made use of by Copolla in his first two films. The very fact that it took two three hour plus films to cover most of the book goes to show how the film tries to play catch up with all the textual descriptions and yet fails to cover all sub-plots and side characters. In case of a game or a TV show, the more the number of interesting sub-plots and characters, the better it is for their makers as it gives them reason to expand game play and the number of seasons respectively.