Film Adaptation Proposal Outline

Title: I am not exactly sure what I want to call my movie but I do know that I want to change the title. Management of Grief is too formal and not catchy at all. Most of my favorite movies are two words, “Fight Club, Old School, The Notebook..” and I think a shorter title could still convey the message that a woman is dealing with grief but in a more appealing way.

Character: I want to change the setting of my short story to England so I want to cast actors who have accents and would fit the roles of the main characters. Also, because I am changing the culture of the characters, they will probably have to have different names in the film version since: Bhave, Vinod, and Mithun are so culturally specific. I don’t have a final cast in mind but I was thinking about Kate Winslet for Shaila, and maybe Christian Bale for her husband and for the kids maybe Freddie Highmore who was the little boy in the movie Neverland or Jamie Campbell Bower. All of these actors are British and would be able to fit the roles extremely easily.

Setting: My setting will change from the short story. It will still be in modern times but I want it to take place in England. Since I am writing this movie for American audiences I still want there to be the cultural differences that were evident in the short story but I want viewers to feel like they can easily relate to the characters. If the characters were from a completely different cultural lifestyle I feel like many Americans would be less sympathetic to their situation because it was so different from their own life experiences.

Plot: I will be using a series of dream sequences and flash backs to lengthen the film. The whole short story takes place after the plane crash had already happened and I definitely want to go back to when all the family members were alive and describe their lifestyles. I also want to depict the actual plane crash happening and what events led up to it since they later found out it was a bomb on the plane. I will try to focus more on man vs. man conflicts rather than man vs. self unlike the short story. I think if I focused the entire story completely on Shaila’s inner struggle audiences would become bored because she handles the deaths of her family members in such a calm way. By creating more action I with man vs. man conflict I would still be able to depict Shaila’s feelings without losing audience interest.

Irony: I think most of the irony I will use will be situational since this is the story of a tragedy. There will also be levels of understatement when Shaila describes her grief but the plane crash will be unexpected and create situational irony for audiences.

Symbolism: in the short story Shaila encounters things that are symbolic of her family which I will use in my film as well as using foreshadowing to predict the plane crash and other events in the story. I don’t remember a whole lot of symbolism in the short story but I need to re-read it to get a real feel for how I would want to expand on this point for my film.