Sketch, Script, Storyboard

What is it about dinosaurs that attract children? Any museum with these huge fossilised structures often gets greeted with a squeal and eager footfall from children. Weekends or school holidays, children with rapt attention gape at what remains of this ferocious creature, scripting small stories for pretend play sessions. One can find a miniature T-Rex cuddled between teddy bears, at tea parties inside doll houses or sitting prim on a makeshift make-up chair, painted with loud lip colours and a dark mascara. The possibilities of a child’s imagination is seamless; the awe-inspiring nature of these giants piques a child’s curiosity, blending in mystery, learning and adventure. 

All thanks to one man who resurrected these extinct creatures on the silver screen; Steven Spielberg. 

To say that these prehistoric lizards had slipped into complete oblivion would be incorrect, but the one who brought them back to mainframe live action in 1993, and turned them into superstars in ‘Jurassic Park’ was Spielberg, through the adaptation of the eponymous novel by Michael Crichton.

Book Adaptation or Literary Adaptation is the process of translating a book into a film, TV show or a play. 

Stormy evening, five people are stuck in two immobile electric cars, and all of a sudden, muffled booms like thunder create ripples on a glass of water on the car’s dashboard. And, erupts into the night a gargantuan T-Rex, with its blood-curdling roar. ‘It tripped a switch in my brain’, mentioned Spielberg, as he found Crichton’s literature visually stunning and scientifically plausible for an adaptation. The film that made $914 million worldwide, is known for its scale-framing compared to the rest of the 6 films in the franchise.

Scale Framing is how the subject of the film, relative to the camera and surrounding environment, is presented within a frame of close-up, medium shots and long-shots to convey different narrative information, emotions or relationships. 

Spielberg apart, if there’s another director known for his scale-framing, it has to be David Lean.

Known for his proclivity towards adapting great literary works like Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, Doctor Zhivago, The Bridge on the River Kwai amongst others, Lean’s masterclass includes his last film, A Passage to India. The perfectionist that he was, he wrote the script for this adaptation, despite the existence of one, as he felt that the original screenplay did not use the Indian landscape to its full potential. Spending six months in Delhi, he rewrote the screenplay, and as a practice, sketched the visuals himself. 

Storyboard is a visual breakdown of a film’s narrative into a sequence of images accompanied by camera angles, dialogues, notes and other details. 

A Passage to India, filmed after a 14 years of hiatus by Lean, was lauded to be one of his best works for its stellar performances, faithful adaptation and most importantly, for its stunning visuals. His sketches took him from Delhi to Bangalore for scouting locales to represent the bucolic beauty of India. 

Another luminary who was known for his sketches and the path-breaking films he gave to world cinema was none other than, Satyajit Ray. 

The world remembers Ray as a master film-maker, a humanitarian and a legend unparalleled. Inspiring the likes of Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Akira Kurosawa and Christopher Nolan, Ray’s ‘mad about theory’ approach built around his meticulous film-making process, gave world cinema aesthetic visuals and most importantly, stories that captured the wonderment in a child. Be it Pather Panchali where children look at a train for the first time awestruck, foreshadowing the changes that take over their lives, to Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne a fantasy comedy for children, about two bad musicians who are granted three wishes by the King of the Ghosts, Ray’s films with children as central characters were in honesty, stories for grown-ups, forcing them to look at the world through the eyes of a child.

As Antoine de Saint Exupery rightly put it ‘All grownups were once children – although a few of them remember it’.

And children have the ability to expand their minds and harness their imaginations. Hence, it’s time that we gave them a platform where they can visualise, adapt, script, sketch, storyboard and create compelling stories. For, if WE don’t offer them a platform to host their talents, who else will?