ENGL 101: 300 Adaptation - Scene Analysis and Presentation Project

This assignment is a presentation analyzing the film adaptation of the comic "300." The student examines a specific scene, highlighting the use of dialogues, metric montages, and aesthetic elements to build intensity. The analysis contrasts the film's visual storytelling with the comic's format, emphasizing how film enhances audience understanding through visualization. The presentation includes an annotated bibliography citing sources on film adaptation, visual aids, and the challenges of translating written works to film. The student argues that films effectively bridge the gap between a creator's vision and audience comprehension, making complex stories more accessible through simultaneous presentation of elements like time, location, and story components. The bibliography includes sources that discuss the purpose of adapting a story or comic into a film to make the audience understand the context and the occurrences of the story better and how visual aid is the key to retention of a message in any form.

Running head: ENGLISH LITERATURE
ENGLISH LITERATURE
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1ENGLISH LITERATURE
Introduction
George Bluestone points out that the main motto of adapting a piece of written
document into film, is to make the audience see, feel, hear and visualize overall, about the
story which the writer had intended to convey (Bluestone 1968). He argues that words of a
writer can fail sometimes in making an audience feel what the writer has intended to make
him or her feel. This is the purpose which a film tries to fulfill while adopting a story. The
argument is that films make audiences understand a story better, through the help of
visualization and adding realism.
Scene analysis
In the film, “300”, which was an adaptation of the comic of the same name, by Frank
Miller and Lynn Varley, there is a scene where Leonidas meets Xerxes. It is a scene which is
heavily loaded with dialogues, with dialogues themselves playing the single most important
aspect in building the intensity of the scene. It is through a series of metric montages that the
editor and the director of the film has portrayed the expressions of both of the characters, to
build that intensity. The background is a very aesthetic coast, with the lighting conditions
adding to the appeal of the scene. The voices of both the characters were low and bold,
adding to the intensity of the scene. These factors, of course, could not be presented through a
series of depictions in the comic, to provide the same feel as that of the movie.
Annotated bibliography
McDonald, K.I., 2016. From Book to Screen: Modern Japanese Literature in
Films: Modern Japanese Literature in Films. Routledge.
The main purpose behind adapting a story or comic into a film is to make the
audience understand the context and the occurrences of the story better. The idea here is that

2ENGLISH LITERATURE
reading takes effort from the audience, which makes it difficult for them to extract the
scenario which the writer attempts at conveying. Forevermore, different audiences have
different ways of perceiving, which do not always coincide with the writer’s perspective.
Giving this a singular perspective helps all of the audiences to understand the story better, by
the mode of visualization.
Guneratne, A., 2016. Shakespeare, Film Studies, and the Visual Cultures of
Modernity. Springer.
Visual aid is the key to retention of a message in any form. In other words, when an
audience watches a story unfold in front of his or her eyes, he is able to retain that story
better, and also understand it better. This is because a novel or comic story has several parts
and pictorial depictions, and it is a common occurrence that the reader only remembers the
most important parts which link to the story, even if some other parts had a great deal of
significance as well. Visualizing those parts through a film makes it easier to retain those
parts, thereby helping the audience relating to the story better.
Dmytryk, E., 2018. On film editing: An introduction to the art of film
construction. Routledge.
Elements in a story are several and it is impossible to put focus on each of them, given
the limited space that a writer has to convey to the reader. Furthermore, it is important to note
that novels and comics do not provide for simultaneous messages, but films do have that
capacity by putting focus on more than one element on the screen space. Film is the only art
form which can portray time, location, story elements and space, all in one space at a given
point of time, to help the audience understand the entirety of the story’s different dimensions.

3ENGLISH LITERATURE
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be said that films fill a gap which written stories fail
at filling. That gap pertains to aiding an audience to visualize things from a creator’s
perspective.

4ENGLISH LITERATURE
Bibliography
Bluestone, G., 1968. Novels into film. Univ of California Press.
Dmytryk, E., 2018. On film editing: An introduction to the art of film construction.
Routledge.
Guneratne, A., 2016. Shakespeare, Film Studies, and the Visual Cultures of Modernity.
Springer.
McDonald, K.I., 2016. From Book to Screen: Modern Japanese Literature in Films: Modern
Japanese Literature in Films. Routledge.
Snyder, Zack. 300. Frank Miller, 2006.