Why I watch the film first, or "Give me back my face!!"

 (x-posted to This Is Where The Voices Go)

So just a quick pre-birthday blog brought on by workplace discussion about Game Of Thrones, and my holding out on the books until I've fully seen the show, and my propensity towards watching the film before reading the book.

I don't know how common this is, but I have a fairly visual imagination. Make a joke about a coworker's privates or mention a particular video involving a jam jar, and my horrible horrible brain will throw pictures of it at me. It's a double edged sword for writing, since seeing everything so clearly makes for an easy scene to set, but also limits me in recalling just how much of the scene I've painted.

No matter how film differs from the book it rips off or its eventual novelisation, a film-before-book approach will always colour your reading with images grabbed from the screen. Which is fine. You've been given a set of premade puppets to work with, and while the book might have them dance to a different tune or story than the one you're familiar with, and maybe flesh it out a little, but it won't suddenly mash up character faces unexpectedly. Unless you're reading the novelisation of Vanilla Sky. I seriously hope such a thing does not exist.

But if you read the book first, you make the characters first. Sure there's guidelines in the text but ultimately you paint their faces and gait yourself, deciding upon their most likely expressions and mannerisms. Maybe you're told that they smile or scratch themselves, but you ultimately set the framework for those actions, and decide how they scratch or smile. 

Along comes the film and suddenly what you have in your head is at odds with what you're seeing. That isn't Edward Rochester, it's Orson Welles. That isn't Anton Gorodetsky, it's Konstantin Khabenskiy. you're not watching the text, you're watching a film interpretation of the text, populated with actors and props and budgets and limited suspension of disbelief that steadily pisses you off and alienates you. When I pick a fight with a text I want it to be for mature and thought out reasons, not because a character "doesn't look right".

There are exceptions. Intentionally one dimensional nobodies like Neuromancer's Henry Dorsett Case can be played by anyone, as can anyone whose characterisation is much more about their actions or feelings than how they appear to themselves or others.

My primary exception to the rule was to rapidly consume the Harry Potter books before exposing myself to each of the films, an exception I find mainly excusable because of the flexible relevance the films seemed to hold to the books, be it for marketability, dumbing up, or trying to put David Tennant's face in as many scenes as possible.

Comics and graphic novels, as a medium, tend to hold a little more sway over their cinematic product, their already existing prominence as visual mediums and die-hard, often rabid fanbases influencing casting choices, or as in the case of Ultimate Avengers, causing casting choices based on who the original designs were denied to mimic.

Closing with that point, I'm off to see Cobie Smulders in a onsie The Avengers, and see if there's anything in there worth ranting about...

Nick

xx