Your free exercise
Meet our lecturer Bríd Andrews, who teaches film and media theory here at the University of Bolton, as well as lecturing in theatre and performance and contributing to the theatre theory and history modules on the English and Creative Writing programmes.
In the video below, Bríd discusses the close relationship between Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations, and a well-known film adaptation. This relationship is so close that if you read the first chapter of the novel and watch the opening sequences of the film, you will notice how the screen writers have taken Dickens’ own descriptions of the landscape and characters’ spoken words to create the atmosphere and dramatic action in the important graveyard scene.
For your own writing exercise, find an adaptation you particularly like and have a look at the openings of both the literary and filmic text. This doesn’t have to be Dickens – choose any text/film combination you like! Think about how the film makers have used the original in their design of the adapted version. How similar or different are they? Can you find one example that, like the Great Expectations adaptation Bríd discusses in the video, remains very close to the original, and possibly then find another example of an adaptation that is really quite different and suggest why this is the case?
Type this up as a short essay and upload the resulting text using the form below.
We will read this and respond to you as soon as possible with tailored comments on your submission. This will give you an idea of the type and quality of feedback our students receive, as well as highlighting your own strengths as a writer and critic.
Finally, please check out the rest of our taster pages, and if you’re interested in learning more about our degree programmes, don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll happily organise a face-to-face or Zoom meeting. We hope that you enjoy this exercise and are able to share your thoughts with us about film adaptations that you really love!
About the full degree programme
Our film and television adaptation classes here at Bolton are designed to introduce you to key concepts that will help you to understand the relationship between the mediums of fiction, theatre performance and film and media. Increasingly we are seeing the emergence of hybrid forms of narrative where stories are told and re-told on many platforms and are read and consumed on many types of screens. Adaptation studies provides students with engagement with both traditional and non-traditional media forms from the transposition of Dickens to the screen to comic book and video game fan culture media into the highly successful cinema franchises you are probably very familiar with.
Submit your work here
When you have completed the writing exercise, please type up your submission or upload it onto this form. We will read this and respond to you as soon as possible with tailored comments on your submission.
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