| Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? | Blade Runner |
| Form: Novel:
Language,
silent reading, words, symbols, mental imagery Time: 10 hours Primarily produced alone. Requires no to limited technology to produce and deliver. Inexpensive. Reader's expectations of experience. Aesthetics, Seduction, Pleasure, Rhetoric Dramatic Elements: Plot, character, setting, symbols Information = Theme: Empathy vs. Otherness |
Form: Film: Moving images, sound
(voice, environmental effects, music), actors, symbols, metaphors... Time: 1.5-2 hours Produced by large group. Requires high technology to produce and deliver. Expensive Viewer's expectation of experience. Aesthetics, Seduction, Pleasure, Rhetoric Dramatic Elements: Plot, character, setting, symbols Information = Theme: Empathy vs. Otherness |
The basic questions turning a book into a film asks, then, are:
1) Can the same information be transmitted thru very different media (novel, film)?
2) If yes, then specifically how, given the massive differences in the experience?
3) What processes are used to translate the information from one medium to another and then transmit them to the same and different audiences?
4) How is the theme necessarily changed through this translative process, and does it matter?