I’ve recently found another unpaid creative outlet … I’m a producer on a short independent film! Check it out on its Indiegogo page: Alligator in the Pool. It is low budget but professionally done, so I’m getting some excellent on the job training. Naturally, I am looking at the things from a writer perspective. One question I had is how are the written characters translated to film? I mean, it must be hard to cast the perfect person who fits the description of the main character written in the screenplay. In this case, the director wrote the story himself and seemed to be looking for actors in a specific age range that were able to interpret the relationship driven plot the way he envisioned it. He had no specific “look” that he wanted. Other films may require specific physical characteristics that the plot revolves around, which would make casting doubly hard.
When translating a beloved character from a book to the big screen, the filmmaker runs the risk of alienating an entire audience of readers. She must be true to the author’s description which can be extremely limiting. Fortunately, many bestselling authors, particularly in the mystery genre, do not go into much detail when describing the protagonist physically. David Baldacci pointed this out when I saw him speak at Sleuthfest 2017. His Memory Man character, Amos Decker was all about what was going on in his brain and physically we only really knew he was big (ex-Football player). The descriptions of his personality were so clear that I could picture him in my mind but my vision of him could be totally different than another reader’s. I am a believer in this way of writing a character descriptions in my own novel as well. I like to let the readers picture the character in a way that they can relate to. One may picture the feisty and beautiful best friend who stays calm in a crisis as a young Lucy Liu, while another might picture a young Julia Roberts. My future director may find an actor who looks like neither of them and still stay true to my description. And that’s just fine with me (more than just fine!) because that means my novel is being made into a movie. And I’ll never reveal that I actually picture her as a young …
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