Introduction. Books and adaptations. Please watch: American Fiction (2023; dir. Cord Jefferson) Photography, adaptations and cinema. Please watch: The Rear Window (1954; dir. Alfred Hitchcock) + read: "It Had to Be Murder" by Cornell Woolrich (1942) Television. surveilleance and cinema. Please watch: The Truman Show (1998; dir. Peter Weir.) Sound, music, language. Please watch: Sound of Metal (2019; dir. Darius Marder) + Babylon (2022; dir. Damien Chazelle) Acting, lighting, color filters, mise-en-scene. Please watch: The Third Man (1949; dir. Carol Reed) + Traffic (2000; dir. Steven Soderbergh) Camera angles, Distance. Please watch: Citizen Kane (1941; dir. Orson Welles) Camera Movements and Editing: The Differences between Continuity and MTV style editing. Please watch: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010; dir. Edgar Wright) Narrative Perspectives in Cinema. Please watch: Gone Girl (2014) + The Last Duel (2021; dir. Ridley Scott) Documentary filmmaking, realism and discontinuity. Please watch: Breathless (1960; dir. Jean-Luc Godard) + Nouvelle Vogue (2025; dir. Richard Linklater) Adaptations, Media and Psychology. Please watch: Fight Club (1999; dir. David Fincher) + read: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (1996; extract). Endterm test.
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This course examines visual culture, especially cinema, through the lens of narrative film analysis and adaptation theory. After providing an in-depth introduction to narrative filmmaking techniques, it provides various approaches to literary adaptations in cinema, television, and social media videos. Students will gain theoretical and practical knowledge of film adaptations that will enable them to create a short project or seminar paper at the end of the semester.
Critical visual analysis reading cinematography (camera angles, distance, movement), lighting, color, and mise-en-sc?ne as deliberate narrative choices rather than incidental style Adaptation theory and comparative analysis evaluating how novels, photography-based fiction, and true events are transformed across media (page to screen, and screen to social video) Editing literacy distinguishing continuity editing from MTV-style/discontinuous editing and identifying their different rhetorical effects Sound and narrative perspective analysis assessing how sound design, music, and shifting/unreliable narration (multi-perspective storytelling) shape meaning and audience trust Practical filmmaking and collaborative production (optional) applying these concepts by scripting, shooting, and editing a short film in a group, translating theory into a finished creative work
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