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Chloe Babauta - Final Essay

Page history last edited by Chloe Babauta 10 years, 3 months ago

Into the Zone: A Study of Adaptations

 

 

By Chloe BabautaInto the Zone: A Study of Adaptations

 

 

     The team project entitled “Into the Zone: A Study of Adaptations” explores the process of adaptations into different forms of media. The team members, a group of seven students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, studied the adaptation process from a Russian science fiction novel Roadside Picnic (1971) by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, to the film Stalker (1979) also written by the Strugatsky brothers and directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, to the PC video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (2007) by GSC Game World. The team then created a series of videos through the social media platform Vine, along with analytical visuals and research papers, and displayed the research and adaptation pieces on a website. The vines and website created by this team serve as a new resource on the alternate universe of fiction in which Roadside Picnic and its adaptations take place. This research project provides a comprehensive look into each adaptation of the Strugatsky brothers’ work and presents an interpretation of those works with a new form of social media, bringing these works from decades ago and renewing their relevance through adaptations in modern technology. Medium highly affects what is kept, cut out, or added in the process of adaptation into different media forms. The team project contributes to this understanding of the effects of medium on adaptation through its work on creating their own adaptation of the story of the Zone, which is the main setting and theme of each work and adaptation, into Vine videos.

 

     The project sought to study adaptations and see what is continued into new adaptations and what gets lost in translation when reformatting the works into different forms of media. The hypothesis of the research team was that tone and theme would translate well and maintain consistency throughout the different adaptations and the original work. The team divided into pairs; each pair studied one of the three different works, between the novel, film, and video game, and reconvened to take an emotional survey and answer a detailed questionnaire on themes of the works. One team member served as the coordinator, who had already experienced the novel, film, and video game prior to this project, and gathered the data. After the team coordinator organized the results of the emotional survey and questionnaire, the team discussed their understanding of the novel, film, or video game, expressed their experiences with the assigned work, and found common ideas and themes from the questionnaire and survey answers.

 

     When experiencing their assigned works individually, comparing answers from the questionnaire and survey, then discussing the works in a group, the team discovered how much of an effect the medium has on a work of adaptation. According to their analyses and emotional survey answers, the team members who read the novel Roadside Picnic experienced higher levels of personal connection and empathy with the novel because it was written following a main character whom the team members and other readers could relate to. In contrast, the survey and analysis answers from the team members who played the video game showed that these team members identified less with the main character because there was less story involved than there was random violence, even though the video game is played from a first person point of view. The team members who watched the film expressed high levels of boredom and annoyance from their subject of observation because the film did not present relatable characters or an emotionally engaging plot. Regardless of the disparity in emotional responses, each team member still had a shared understanding of aspects of the three works and were interested in how these themes stayed consistent even through different forms of media. They found that the medium affected the way they perceived the works emotionally, even though the themes stayed relatively consistent, which proved that medium highly affects the works and adaptations.

 

     Through the questionnaire answers, the team created different Wordles--a tool that analyzes texts and creates a visual that shows words by largest to smallest, from most frequently used to least, respectively--to show the commonly used words in the team’s questionnaire answers. The team created Wordles for each medium and one for a combination of all the collective questionnaire answers. Through these Wordles, the team discovered that some of the main themes of the adaptations and original work included “Zone,” “Stalker,” “Red,” “know,” “room,” “wish,” and “artifacts.” These words were themes pervasive throughout all three works, so the team sought to convey these themes in their own adaptation, to stay true to the essence of the Zone and its fictional world, as the other adaptations did.

 

     The team agreed that the Zone was the most important theme throughout each work, as it is the main setting and main topic closely explored in the novel, film, and video game; therefore, the team worked to capture the essence of the Zone as they each understood and perceived it in their respective works. Each member agreed that the Zone was elusive, could not be fully understood, had mystery to it, could quite possibly have powers although that was subjective, and was the most important aspect of each work. The team worked to convey each of these aspects of the Zone in their own adaptation, through Vine videos.

 

     The questionnaire and emotional survey questions and answers, as well as the annotated bibliographies and research reports serve as unique academic, analytical resources on Roadside Picnic and its adaptations in a way that has not been done before. The team members each researched their novel, film, or video game and resources related to the works, and none found very many other resources that compared the three works in a comprehensive way. The team put together a web page with a wide breadth of analysis of each work, then analyses of the works in comparison with each other. Although this team’s research page is limited in depth, it has a moderately wide range of ways through which the team analyzes the works and goes in depth with their own understanding of the works from both academic and artistic perspectives. The web page serves as a helpful, one-of-a-kind academic resource for anyone else interested in such a specific topic as Roadside Picnic and its following adaptations individually, in comparison, and of the fictional alternate-universe in which the works take place.

 

     Although the team’s research page and its contents serve as a helpful resource on the topic of the Zone, the works discussed, and adaptations, the project has its many limitations. The team only consisted of seven members, and each cell within the team assigned to a separate work or adaptation consisted of two members. All members, aside from the team coordinator, experienced or discussed their assigned novel, film, or video game with their paired member. This affected the way some members perceived their assigned work, which may skew the results of both the emotional survey and the analytical questionnaire. For example, two members watched the film Stalker together and reacted aloud to what was happening in the scenes, discussing their thoughts, criticisms, and predictions for the plot and underlying themes with each other. This discussion during the movie may have led them to a better understanding of the deeper meaning of the film, but leaves the question of whether their answers to the emotional survey and theme questionnaire would have been different, had they each watched the film alone, and had gained a different understanding of the film and its themes. Furthermore, if their understandings of the film were different and they perceived different themes as integral to the film, the overall themes of the three works collectively may have been different too, which would may have caused the Vines to be produced differently. The team was satisfied with their final product and analyses, but these factors of subjectivity are also important to consider in research endeavors, in order to allow for improvements or possible faults in procedure.

 

     After experiencing their own works and analyzing them individually and collectively, the team worked together to figure out the most efficient, yet creative way to express these themes through a media form different from the already existing adaptations. The team first explored the idea of using a graphic novel or comic book-type work to create a story within the Zone about a stalker, the main type of character from each adaptation. The team wanted to divide the work between a group of story writers and a group of artists to create the graphic novel, as creative roles for writing and visual arts are divided when making a film. The graphic novel idea fell through when the team later decided on using the recently-invented social media tool, Vine, to create their adaptation portion of the research project. Vine is a type of video recording software for iOS and Android smartphones, in which users record video clips for up to six seconds per piece, and upload them to their profile. The group saw Vine as an innovative choice for their adaptation because it was newer than almost any other form of art media they could have used, as Vine was just released in 2013. The team also learned that Vine had not been previously explored in an academic context at the time of this project, which proved as more of an incentive to use this media tool, to create their own contribution to the available resources on Roadside Picnic and its adaptations. The team then went on to create their own adaptation through a collage of Vine videos in which each video could be seen as its own individual object that contributes to a viewer’s perception of the Zone and the team’s interpretation of it, but as a whole, serve the same function of representing the Zone through the eyes of the team members.

 

     Creating the Vine videos brought up the issues of how to express the essence of the Zone through the team’s creativity, how to translate the Zone’s essential elements into this media form, and how to work within the parameters of Vine. The team settled on the themes of the Zone that they wanted to convey in their adaptation, then struggled to figure out how to convey those themes in the Vine videos. Without the appropriate amount of time to create a dialogue, or even a monologue, with characters, the team found it difficult to convey ideas essential to the Zone to an audience who had never experienced any of the adaptations or the novel, and had no prior knowledge of the worlds of the three works. The concepts of the Zone, stalkers--the works’ main characters consistently, and the wish room or golden ball--which grants its user their innermost wish--are all complex and difficult to define through a six-second video clip. The team discussed the possibility of delivering all the essential aspects of the Zone through short cuts of a fake news show, through snippets of conversation through team members acting as stalkers, or recording each video as a tour guide style tips to acquainting oneself with and navigating through the Zone. Each idea was too complicated to put into fruition, so the team ended up with the idea of filming vines from an objective point of view, for the most part, watching stalkers navigate the Zone in their daily lives.

 

     While filming the short Vine videos, the team learned to cut down their ideas for each clip down to the essentials. This kept the portrayal of the aspects of the Zone concise. Furthermore, the team found an art in making the Zone appear elusive while simultaneously trying to define it through the short Vine videos. After going around the UCSB campus, playing around with Vine on their phones to become acquainted with the tool, the team created a list of suggestions for different Vine videos in which each video would define a different aspect of the Zone or the world of the studied works in six seconds. The group made around ten different acceptably sharable Vine videos, but cut the selection down even further to four essential Vine videos shared on the team web page.

 

     One of the videos sought to define stalkers and the Zone, and portray the Zone’s powers, elusiveness, and danger all at once. The team did this by having two members walk through the frame dressed in grungy, dark layered clothing, with beanies, scarves, satchels, and a gas mask; the clothing expressed what the stalkers might look like in the minds of the team members or in the film and video game, as well as expressed how stalkers are concerned foremost with functionality of clothing and accessories when in the Zone. The video also showed the two members walking toward an abandoned, vandalized barn with a fence around it, upon which the team put a customized “no trespassing” sign with warning words against stalkers written on it. This showed how stalkers are unwelcome in the Zone, although they are walking up to a sign warning against them anyway, because it is their duty and calling to do so.

 

     Vine is also limited in that it has no color or visual features beyond ones it offers to help record the videos. The team had to work around this additional creative barrier by creating their own visual effects. In the earlier mentioned Vine video, the team used natural visual effects and filmed on a cloudy, dark day. They also brought colored smoke bombs in order to create a mystical, supernatural effect in the shot. Both visual effects were used to show the power and elusiveness of the Zone as the team saw it through the novel, film, and video game, and such effects were created by extra methods beyond what Vine could offer. The team had to work past Vine’s parameters to create these effects and learned about the difficulties of using Vine when defining a topic so elusive, other-worldly, and complex as the Zone. Through this experience, among others while working on recording their Vine video adaptations, the team learned more about the effects that a medium has on its creative work. By working with Vine and discovering its limitations on creative expression, the team found that medium has an effect on creating adaptations and affects the ability of creators to express key aspects of their work.

 

     Through creating an adaptation through Vine, the team found that medium greatly affects the elements of a work that are translated into its adaptations. Each media form presents its own challenges for those who use the medium, and creators must cut down to what is most essential about the work they want to adapt, keeping what they want to convey and discarding what they do not. Using Vine had its time constraints, which made for short videos that conveyed the essential elements of its preceding works in a concise way, while keeping the ambiguity of the Zone through the shortness of the video clips. Vine is new and relevant, while the original works are almost outdated in comparison, created in the 1970s and in print media, a form of media rapidly decreasing in popularity. Using Vine as the newest adaptation of the Strugatsky brothers’ original work brings back the story’s relevance as the student research team gives its new take on this story. This project is not only a contribution to the resources on the original novel and its adaptations, but a pioneering academic resource on Vine itself. Through the study on adaptations, the analyses of the three works discussed, and the work with Vine, this project serves as a unique resource on all three areas studied. With more time, research, capital and participants in the surveys, this research project could expand to be an even more comprehensive resource on adaptations, the Zone, and Vine.

 

 

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