Abstract
From the moment I saw writer, artist and filmmaker Shaun Tan’s evocative and moving animated short The Lost Thing (2010), I wanted to know more. It is a film that is tonally assured. You might even say pitch perfect. How did Tan create The Lost Thing’s distinctive and meticulously thought-through story world, transposing it from an award-winning children’s picture book (with more than its share of adult admirers) to an Academy Award-winning short animation?1 How do you adapt what filmmaker Raúl Ruiz called ‘an atmosphere of story’?2 In the past, notions of what may have been lost along the way dominated much discussion of adaptation from books to screen. Yet, as Salman Rushdie wrote in his own allegorical children’s book, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, ‘No story comes from nowhere, New stories are born from old — It is the new combinations that make then new.’3 Shaun Tan’s process in writing and rewriting The Lost Thing across multiple media provides an illuminating example of the role of improvisation in adaptation. But, firstly, let’s consider the some of the backstory and state of play on adaptation.
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Notes
The Lost Thing, directed by Shaun Tan (2010; Richmond: Madman, 2010), DVD.
Raúl Ruiz, Poetics of Cinema, vol. 2 (Paris: Editions Dis Voir, 2007).
Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (London: Granta, 1991), p. 86.
Random 8, directed by Kathryn Millard (2012; Sydney: Ronin Films, 2013), DVD.
Parklands, directed by Kathryn Millard (1996; Sydney: Magnolia Pacific, 2003), DVD.
Travelling Light, directed by Kathryn Millard (2003; Sydney: Magna Pacific, 2003), DVD.
Thomas Schatz, ‘New Hollywood, New Millennium’ in Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies, ed. Warren Buckland (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2009), p. 33.
Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation, 2nd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), p. 8.
Arthur W. Frank, Letting Stories Breathe: A Socio-Narratology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 9.
Harishchandrachi Factory, directed by Paresh Mokashi (2009; Los Angeles: Disney, 2010), DVD.
Raja Harishchandra, directed by Dadasaheb Phalke (1913; Pune: National Film Archive of India, 2012), DVD.
Bijoya Baruah Rajkhowa, ‘Oral Tradition of the Ramayana in North East India’ in Critical Perspectives on the Ramayana, ed. Jaydipsinh Dodiya (New Delhi: Sarup, 2001), p. 132.
Maksim Gorky cited in Emmanuelle Toulet, Cinema is 100 Years Old (London: New Horizons/Thames and Hudson, 1998), pp. 132–3.
K. Moti Gokulsing and Wimal Dissanayake, Routledge Handbook of Indian Cinemas (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), p. 73.
Christopher Pinney, ‘Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India (London: Reaktion, 2004), pp. 71–2.
See Roy Armes, Third World Filmmaking and the West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 106.
Christa Albrecht-Crane and Dennis Cutchins, Adaptation Studies: New Approaches (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2010), p. 15.
Pierre Bayard, How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read (New York: Bloomsbury, 2007), p. 73.
Victor Burgin, The Remembered Film (London: Reaktion, 2004), pp. 8–9.
Frank Barrett, ‘Coda: Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and Organizations: Implications for Organizational learning’, Organization Science 9, no. 5 (1998): p. 605.
The Lost Thing, directed by Shaun Tan (2010; Richmond: Madman, 2010), DVD.
Quoted by Karl Weick in ‘Improvisation as a Mindset for Organizational Analysis’ in Organizational Improvisation, ed. Miguel Pina e Cunha, João Vieira da Cunha and Ken Kamoche (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 53.
Ralph Yarrow, Indian Theatre: Theatre of Origin, Theatre of Freedom (Richmond: Curzon, 2001), p. 69.
Karl Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995), p. 64.
Keith Sawyer, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (New York: Basic Books, 2007), pp. 62–3.
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© 2014 Kathryn Millard
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Millard, K. (2014). Adaptation: Writing as Rewriting and The Lost Thing. In: Screenwriting in a Digital Era. Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319104_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319104_6
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