Arrival is a science fiction movie adapted from a short story by Ted Chiang. I’ve written here before about my love-hate relationship with movies from books, or at least about the dichotomy they present. I found this video about how the story was adapted to film a fascinating look at the process of taking a story from one medium to another, and why certain things are done.
This is a story I’ve only seen in the movie adaptation. I haven’t yet read the story it’s adapted from. When this is the case, sometimes I wind up preferring the movie, as was the case for me with the Harry Potter series. But there are other stories that once I read the book I liked it better. But liking or not liking is a superficial way to describe my reaction and response to stories, and that’s why I like to take a deeper look sometimes at both the process of reading and that of viewing a movie, and of course there’s a deeper level to that, in the process of writing and the process of screen writing and the follow through to that, of actually making a movie. Writing I’m familiar with, because I’ve done it myself. But I have not written a screenplay, and I know next to nothing about movie making. So I have only a limited scope to examine those processes through. That’s why I found the video so intriguing.
Two things we have in common whether we read, write, or watch or make movies, is the love of story and the curiosity that goes into each process. Every new experience of this type is a learning process, and is experienced best with an open, questioning approach. Anything is possible.