Writing for 2D and 3D video |
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Writing for 2D and 3D video
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Object Description
| Rating | |
| Title | Writing for 2D and 3D, Iowa City Public Library, September 21, 2005 |
| Creator |
Liu, Heng, 1954- Chŏng, Yŏngmun, 1965- Sirees, Nihad Yim, Phil-sung |
| Creator - Nationality |
Chinese Syrian South Korean |
| Contributor |
Merrill, Christoper |
| Date Original | 2005-09-21 |
| Description | In Liu Heng's talk, titled "Wandering between the Novel and Film" Liu orients his comments around his experience writing novels and collaborating with directors, who at times alter his "artistic design." Young-Moon Jung discusses how verbal and visual languages provide "affluent soils to each other and make themselves more rich." Nihad Sirees focuses his talk on the differences between writing for the reading and watching audiences, distinguishing between the "charm of words" and "the charm of the picture." |
| Note | No transcript for Yim Phil-sung is available at this time. |
| Venue |
Iowa City Public Library |
| Geographic Subject | United States -- Iowa -- Iowa City |
| Chronological Subject | 2000-2010 |
| Transcription | International Writing Program http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp Liu Heng (China) Wandering Between the Novel and Film Due to the limitation of time and also of my thinking, I am not able to discuss our topic from more comprehensive perspectives. What I can do now is to draw from my restricted personal writing experience, and simply to tell you about my feelings and my puzzlement. When I was enlisted in the army, I was only fifteen, having barely finished my second year of study in the secondary school. And I was almost a child and without much education. My literary experience came from a limited resource of books as well as an equally narrow resource of films. In the novel, I felt the charm of the artful arrangement of words that can touch the human soul, while in film, I was overwhelmed by the immediate and strong affective power of pictures. My literary dream was seduced from both sides. I made up stories from words, but I sometimes also recorded from my memory what I had seen in a film. I set out on my literary journey, using two legs. I was then hardly twenty. I began to publish my creative works at twenty-three, and became known for my novels. I was recognized as one of the best novelists in China. Thereafter, film directors came to ask for my collaboration. I adapted my novels into film scripts. Thus, I established my reputation in the sphere of film and was recognized as one of the best screenwriters in China. I was then full of delight and believed that I had realized the double dream of my early youth. However, an obsessive perplexity began to take its root in my heart. I was then forty. Confucius teaches: “There is nothing that can puzzle a man when he is forty.” But, I was deep in bewilderment. I once believed that the artistic purpose that I was seeking in the novel could be attained in film. However, I quickly realized only when I am writing novels on my desk am I my only master; whereas when writing films I become a part of the whole procedure, an instrument or someone who provides sketches for the architect. When my artistic design is altered, distorted and mutilated, I am completely helpless and even have the feeling that the works of my heart’s blood are gradually becoming irrelevant to me. What I seek in film has deserted me in film; this is my first puzzlement. I once believed that the limitation of literary expression in the novel could be perfected by visual images in film. However, with the accumulation of writing experience, I find out that the limitation of visual expression is far more serious than the limitation of words. The chance of a mutual-perfection or reciprocal improvement between the two ways of expression is very slim. Once the film is finished, the imagination of its author becomes congealed on the cinematic pictures, almost without any room to extend continuously. When the words of a screenwriter are turned into pictures, words themselves become corpses, and the screen on which these pictures are shown serves as the grave and the tombstone underneath which these words are buried. I pursue the freedom of expression in screenwriting, only to find out that freedom is quietly buried in films. This is my second puzzlement. 1 International Writing Program http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp I once believed that my thinking embodied in my screenwriting could reach more people and families whereas what was expressed in my novels could only influence a small group of people who are still reading novels. However, in writing my novels, I can indulge myself and let my thinking explore the extremes, without considering the feelings of readers. But what can I do in screenwriting? The investor cares about sales and profit; the issuing company only considers the current trend of the film industry and the taste of the audience; the director worries about the evaluating standards of film festivals and the infinite possibility of visual effect.... When all these factors find their ways into the film studio, where is the room for the idea of the screenwriter? I’m afraid you have to go to the rat’s hole to find it out. I try to bring out my thinking in screenwriting, but my thoughts become fragmented in film. This is my third puzzlement. I once believed that the royalty on my books wasn’t the reason why I wrote novels, and also that money was not the purpose of writing for film. But when the payment for screenwriting is tens or even hundreds of times higher than what you will get for writing your novel, can I remain unstirred? I must confess that I am seduced by worldly desire. I seek after art in film, but film rewards me with money and kidnaps art. This is my fourth puzzlement. I once believed… My puzzlements are too many, so I shall not let them take your precious time. What I want to say is: I am not going to give up what I have chosen as my cause despite all these puzzlements, for they are part of my life. In fact, what I really want to say is: I am unimportant and humble, and therefore my puzzlements are even more so. Whether I succeed or not, the sea of novel will still billow and swell without rest and the river of film will roll on endlessly. I am only a tiny drop of water in it. I once told an interviewer jokingly: “the novel is my wife, and film is my lover. Both make me feel it would be very difficult to give them up.” Confucius teaches again: “A man should know his destiny when he is fifty.” I am already fifty-one, and so I have decided to accept the arrangement of my destiny. With my wife on the left arm and my lover on the right arm, I am going to spend the rest of my life in these endless puzzlements. I cannot think up a more inviting end for my life than this one. Allow me to express my deep thanks to every one of you! My lecture also ends here. Translated from the Chinese by Hua Jiang IWP Panel: “Writing for 2 and for 3 Dimensions” Iowa City Public Library September 21, 2005 2 IWP Panel: “Writing for 2 and for 3 Dimensions” Iowa City Public Library September 21, 2005 International Writing Program http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp Young-Moon Jung (South Korea) Either in literature like novels and poetry, or in movies or plays, the foremost common ground is verbal language, because verbal language is the basis of thinking itself. Even the feelings or senses need to be processed and interpreted in their final stages by the thought. Of course, verbal language and visual or oral language are quite or sometimes diametrically different in that they appeal to different consciousnesses or senses and therefore induce different reactions from readers or audiences. In a sense visual or oral languages are more primary and the reaction could be more immediate than verbal language. A movie or a play precipitates our emotional reaction, but a novel induces reflections. They both have their own grammars, laws and mechanisms. But they share common ground in that they require a rumination to fully understand the meaning or beauty of a work. And they need some form of narrative as their integral part, although some of them ignore that need intentionally, as could be seen in Samuel Beckett. Personally, I am very interested in multiple dimensions of writing because I not only write novels, but also want to make a film in the future myself. And I wrote a play which was staged in Korea a couple of years ago, so I had a good opportunity to delve into the similarity or difference, and vicinity or chasm, between the two genres. My play, whose title is Donkies, is a play of absurdity. It's my first play, and when it was staged it was very different from what I thought it would be like. The director put much emphasis on what was being seen whereas I put an emphasis on the dialogue. I wanted a minimalist setting, but the outcome was an over-decorated stage. The director wanted to dramatize the play with the tools of theatrical language, while I wanted the literary element to be retained as much as possible. In a movie or a play you have to take account of the sound, the smell and even the unexpected. You need to consider the scenes, in the case of a movie, and a stage, in the case of a drama, first. In a movie, something that is captured by camera but unspeakable in verbal language can be very effective or critical. For example, in some of Michelangelo Antonioni's films, especially in L'Avventura and Blowup, the actors' gaze or the barren landscape says so much about the suffocating void or a person's agony, which is hard express in verbal language. Sometimes the limits of verbal language can be overcome by images. In a movie, things themselves put in certain spaces in certain situations can play great roles. It is true that in the last decades movies encroached on literature profoundly and subjugated it as its sub-genre. In the last century there were rumors, which were a little bit exaggerated, about the death of literature, and concern and fear prevailed for a while. Actually, literature is in a crisis everywhere in the world. Surely it's because literature could not create its own new form, for nearly every conceivable experiment was performed in the past. The history of the novel is more than three centuries long and so many stories were told in the forms of the novel, so there is scarcely any space left in the zone of absolutely new tales to be told or explored. All the stories of the future will be either revised or modified stories of the past. I personally think nearly every conceivable experiment was performed for the last time with the French Nouveau or Nouveau-Nouveau Roman by writers like Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Natalie Challotte, and Samuel Beckett who have sought a way to express the unspeakable. They pursued this to the extremity, I think. After them, any conspicuous literary experiment either has not appeared or is still to come. And that's the one reason that 3 IWP Panel: “Writing for 2 and for 3 Dimensions” Iowa City Public Library September 21, 2005 International Writing Program http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp literature today is a little bit in decline, and will be more so in the future, if it does not get invigorated by something yet unknown. Movies have prospered greatly in the last century and become a kind of core of the contemporary culture. Surely it's due to the amazing developments of technology. But in my opinion film itself is stagnant in creating its new form or grammar now too. I see that the new movies show the new technology of cinematography, but I don't see an entirely new film either in its content or form. I think the movie has fallen into its own trap these days. It tends to be heavily dependent on its own possibilities of technical development and lacks much self-doubt and self-questioning and a self-reflective system. I presume even movies will not prosper or survive without the ongoing supply of materials from literature. Actually, most of the really good movies are adapted ones whose origins are good literature. Such cases are so common that it's hard to enumerate them all, among which John Fowls' The French Lieutenant's Woman and Harold Pinter's Betrayal are good examples. And without exception, good movies contain literary qualities, like Ingmar Bergman's or Michelangelo Antonioni's. Verbal language and visual or oral language are interactive, and therefore they can provide affluent soils to each other and make themselves more rich. In fact, I get a lot of inspiration from movies or plays in creating a story. Even a piece of a photograph inspires me enormously. Often when I see an impressive scene in a movie or play I visualize a setting for my story, from which the story flows out and I catch it. Literature and other artistic forms do not exclude each other. More properly put, they are compatible in every aspect. Literature can expand its own domain by absorbing the elements of other genres all the more, and vice versa. 4 IWP Panel: “Writing for 2 and for 3 Dimensions” Iowa City Public Library September 21, 2005 International Writing Program http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp Nihad Sirees (Syria) The movement of people away from reading is one of the things that bothers the writer and makes him/her feel frustrated. A few days ago, we listened to other writers who don't come from countries in which illiteracy is widespread, rather they come from countries in the European Union such as Belgium and Germany. They complained of the low rate of interest in reading literature. We also heard remarks by Nataša, of the IWP, that a large segment of Americans has abandoned reading and only watches TV. Here, we are talking about advanced countries, whose people consider culture a priority, and where illiteracy was eliminated a long time ago. But how is reading in our countries, the countries of the Third World, where illiteracy is widespread and reaches shameful rates? The 2003 Human Development Report issued by the United Nations reported that in one year Spain translated into Spanish the same amount that the Arab countries have translated over their entire history. George W. Bush said that Greece publishes annually more than what is published by all the Arab countries in one year, though the population of Greece is 9 million while Arabs number over 200 million. At best, the writer in the Arab World publishes three thousand copies of his/her work, and waits many years for this edition to run out. We the Arab writers have not surrendered to these frustrating statistics. We still write literature, and every year we read from new writers, and a new generation of writers is always born, and takes its literary place. Shall we talk about the other side of the equation? Yes. Without the reader—or let us call him the recipient—the book loses its meaning. The presence of the recipient is the other half of the writing-reading process. In the absence of the recipient, the writer's voice is lost in the void and vanishes into oblivion. However, the writer has the ambition not to be forgotten. This is in fact a desire to continue; without that desire, the development of human culture would stop, and the existence of the whole human race would be in danger. I have suffered myself from the scarcity of recipients. A few thousand wouldn’t satisfy my ambition to convey my ideas and views to the audience and have a dialogue with them. I had already published many novels and short stories, when something drew my attention, that is the people's attention to visual arts, including TV. Therefore, I decided to go to the people, not being able to make them come to me. I have noticed that all people, men, women and children watch TV with passion, including, of course TV dramas which satisfy their love to see and follow stories, and which lead them to discover a new way of life. But, something of importance made me think intently. I am treating, in my books, difficult issues. I look into our near history for the reasons for our backwardness, I look for seeds of enlightenment, and I urge the people to think about their reality and seek to make them think of change. How can I put forward issues of politics and enlightenment 5 IWP Panel: “Writing for 2 and for 3 Dimensions” Iowa City Public Library September 21, 2005 International Writing Program http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp in a TV series, and make the audience enjoy daily a long series that may reach forty nights? It was hard, but my desire to reach a wide audience of millions of TV viewers made me try this new experience, which has been successful. I am not only talking about the topics I had discussed in my novels, but I am also talking about my use of polyphony, the building of my characters, and the building of the novelistic space with the help of details and other elements. I may also discuss the imbrication of real facts (historical facts) with the imaginary world and the openness to possibility of the novelistic space, the fact which makes it possible to create dozens or hundreds of imaginary characters and their interaction on one part, and the circumstances of their novelistic world on the other. In brief, I had to tackle a new experience, importing the novelistic technique, but in a new language, which is the language of the picture…the finished picture. It is known that the novelist presents his novel with words. This means that the word is the link between the novelist and the reader. In other words, the reader reads written words, while the film viewer follows sequential pictures, which lead the viewer on a trip in which he follows the story and uncovers the unknown. The reader reads written words that make him enjoy the charm of words, to a lesser or greater extent according to the writer, while the viewer follows pictures to enjoy the charm of the picture. What is important about reading is that the reader not only enjoys the charm of the words, expressions, etc…, but they allow the book to take him away on an imaginary trip. What is being imagined? The pictures, realms, characters and relationships the writer wants him to imagine. Then, the game is almost won. It is definitely a joint relationship between the writer and the recipient, in which the main factor is dealing with the picture, or using the picture to get to the heart of the recipient by drawing the picture with words or through the finished picture. There are bold differences between literary writing and writing for the screen. Based on the above, the main difference is whether the recipient is a group of readers (in the case of a book) or a single director (in the case of a film). In literature, each reader is vulnerable to falling into the trap of imagination set by the writer, while in writing for the screen, the director is the person whom the writer is trying to inspire. So, in literature, there is no limit to those whom the writer is pushing to imagine; while in cinema or TV, it is only one person, that is the DIRECTOR. The director imagines the picture that the writer wants, and then finishes the picture so that the writer reaches the audience with the images in the director's mind. But, reading is not like seeing. I will give you an example to differentiate between what the word does and what the picture does in the mind of the recipient. Let us suppose I am describing in one of my novels the house of one main character. I do that briefly, and I mention some elements that are of interest to me in the course of the events of the novel, and I leave it to the reader to imagine the house he wants; while on the screen, the house of the hero reaches the eye and the mind of the recipient fully. 6 IWP Panel: “Writing for 2 and for 3 Dimensions” Iowa City Public Library September 21, 2005 International Writing Program http://www.uiowa.edu/~iwp There is no place here for imagination. The viewer here only enjoys the charm of the picture shown before him. In writing “The Beauty of the Place,” the French philosopher Goston Bashlar talks about the creation of nostalgia for a certain place by reading. This nostalgia is generated when the reader comes across a description of a certain house in the course of the novel. Each person has his own intimate place, and his intimate room for which he feels homesick. Such nostalgia comes out of the memory only through reading. When a certain person reads a story that tells about a certain house, the reader is in the process of imagining, and since the novel will not mention every detail in a certain corner, the reader will recall from his memory his own intimate corner from when he was a child to complete the drawing of the picture in his imagination. The finished picture received by the viewer through the screen doesn’t have this characteristic, since it is already finished and contains all details, so the viewer doesn’t have to complete the details from his own intimate place. The director has already done that, and the viewer has only to enjoy the charm of the pre-made picture. Naturally, other things will reach the viewer such as dialogue that contains ideas, encourages change or conveys information, but we are mainly concerned here about the picture. Lastly, there is a very important thing in the finished picture that reaches the viewer through the screen, whose importance mustn’t be ignored, so that we don’t oversimplify things. While writing his screenplay mainly directed to the director, the writer seeks to present pictures full of his ideas and political ideologies without any dialogue. This is a very important characteristic of the picture. The writer can, through one picture on the screen, express a certain idea that he would need a page or many pages to express and get through to the reader. The picture may express a thought or a whole sermon by a politician. It is sufficient that a film shows a boy with an amputated foot, walking with the help of a walking stick beside an announcement warning of the presence of a mine field, to explain the political position of the writer or his thoughts on the atrocities of war, without an additional word. Thank you. 7 |
| Type (DCMIType) | Moving image |
| Type (AAT) |
Presentations (Communicative events) |
| Language | English |
| Digital Collection | Virtual Writing University Archive |
| Contributing Institution | Iowa City Public Library |
| Subcollection |
International Writing Program Collection |
| Rights Management | Educational use only, no other rights given. U.S. and international copyright laws may protect this digital object. Commercial use or distribution of the object is not permitted without prior permission of the copyright holder. |
| Contact Information | Contact the VWU Webmaster: http://www.writinguniversity.org/index.php/main/info/25/ |
| Date Digital | 2005-09-21 |
| File Name | iwp-icpl_05writingfor2-d.mp4 |
| Original File Name | iwp_05writingfor2-d.mpg |
Description
| Title | Writing for 2D and 3D video |
| Type (DCMIType) |
Moving image |
| Type (IMT) |
mp4 |
| Duration | 01:34:28 |
| Digitization Specifications | Received as MPEG2 and converted to mp4 for streaming. |
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