Film Courage: What was your process like for adapting your own novel into a short film?
Adam Cushman, Author/Filmmaker: Great I love talking about this.
So a little back story I had created a company that does trailers for books and novels
that sort of took off right away just because they had been a thing but they weren't done
very well and I was like oh what if we do them really well and make them cinematic?
It caught on and I was able to through producing those really get a feel for how to streamline
in a way that's faithful to the book but at the same time isn't obsessively clinging to
plot elements that no one is really going to care about who's watching a one minute trailer?
That prepared me for about a year and a half to make cut because originally when I wrote
the script for the short it was all straight up adaptation it was like faithful to the details but
you know I was even talking to some of the actors about it about their characters like this doesn't
make sense to me i'm like you know it wouldn't actually unless you read the book and then I kept
hearing myself say that and I was like well then this is for you you're making this for yourself
not an audience and so I kind of switched it around and I stopped doing that and by
by just letting go and letting it evolve into a new form like i'm faithful to the spirit of the
book i'm faithful to most of the characters in the book new characters emerged for the trailer
plot lines that just kind of got diluted that weren't necessary to know at that
at that level and I think it turned into a much more organic piece than it would have been
had I clung to these details that you know what I mean and I think that's I think that's true of any
adaptation I mean you're never going to please the people who love the book when you're making
the film not entirely everyone's going to have something and why not I mean why do it if you're
just going to film the book I feel like you got to let it evolve you like you got to let it become
it's film it's film form or whatever I don't know what i'm trying to say but I think it's a separate
a separate piece altogether and you have to let it be I like how you said you had this realization
that you were making the film for you and not for the audience and then you wanted to switch it yeah
at what point did that become clear to you during like during pre-production and just talk because
it's an ensemble cast in the short and they're all representing different characters from the book
and I realized that I was having them I was going to ask them to perform
details that were taken straight from a chapter but which someone watching a one minute video or
even a four minute video isn't going to understand the context of at all they would after they read
the novel and went back but that's not the point of making the video you're trying to entice people
to you know come to you as an author and come to come to your book so I just let go of that
and it was very rewarding I think it became better as a result and just I think that's just
true of any sort of journey from from the page to screen is you're not going to film the page
I mean for the most part you're going to let it become what it needs to become hopefully
and then you said something else that was really fascinating which I know a lot of adaptations
the book lovers usually slam the film i'm thinking too speaking of david foster wallace I think it's
end of the tour I love the film when I okay so great and I if you look in the comments
underneath the trailer people are just like bashing it and I absolutely love this film
yeah I thought it was so well done I actually wish there was a sequel to it I wish there was more to
it but but being at peace with the fact that book lovers and film lovers are not going to be have a
meeting of the minds I mean they might and i'm not saying everyone thinks that way but I know
what comments you're talking about in general I mean it's it's always like well you the hair
color is wrong so therefore this doesn't work for me well okay I mean but don't I think people are
very literal and they can be too literal and and you know part of part of adaptation is changing
you know and I think it's inherent in the word and you have to you have to allow that to happen it's
now it's tricky because I was in the unique situation of being the director and the author and
you know that's sort of a conflict unless until you come to that realization that you can just let
that part of yourself go and just put on this hat and then do your own thing there but you can I can
definitely see like being your worst enemy in that situation and in the beginning I definitely was
with the book trailers you have a really amazing website is it film filmhyphen14.com yeah okay
and I mean that's I looked at all like the you have all these little book like
covers the enemy it's just amazing you came up with the idea no not necessarily so there was
no I was approached by an author around 2011 who's a friend of mine who wanted a trailer for his book
and I didn't really know what that was at the time and so I went on google and I looked around
and I saw that they had been making them since like 2002 just really poorly like really bad
like just they put 15 minutes into it you could see it they just threw some slides onto imovie
and some scrolling text and that was the thing and i'm like wow how do you do this for 10 years
and it doesn't evolve at all like how does that work I mean and then I started to realize like
this is huge I mean because if you remember at the time e-readers had just come out and there was
this question oh is print dead are books dead and obviously they're not they're more popular than
ever but you know at the time that people were saying that and thinking that and so you know my
feeling was like if we can use video properly we can employ independent filmmakers in a new format
and bring people back to books and do it cheaper than most production prices you
know the most production houses would would charge by just keeping it really indie driven
and that's sort of the the way I designed the company and how i've been looking at it
ever since but again the one the trick to it is that you are effectively making the
author a producer and so that comes with you know whole special set of circumstances and things to
to dance around but the biggest one being like letting go of certain plot elements in your book
and just letting it sort of represent an overall taste of what you're trying to do just to entice
people it's like music videos it's the same thing it's not like you watch music videos even back
in the 80s the the images you're seeing aren't necessarily mirrors of what the song lyrics are
sometimes they go their completely own direction and it becomes like a standalone work of art
right how long are these book trailers is there like a a standard length roughly
between 30 seconds 90 seconds oh and that's all the time you have to tell the little
things you can go longer if you want but the ones that perform better seem to be shorter yeah
and so it's not the just still images with text that's moving you're using actors yeah music
wow so then how is that working with an author who may not be as visual or
maybe i'm i'm that's not true they are visual everyone's different I think you know there's
it's just it depends who you get it depends who you're working with I mean there are some
authors that come to us and they see what we do and they're like I want that and I you guys
just do your thing and there's a process I mean we make treatments for them and then we
we develop it with them so that they know what they're getting and then we they're involved in
casting and stuff like that then there's others who come in and and they know exactly what they
want and they're like hey I wrote this script and so we'll read it and sometimes it's totally doable
and you know we might make suggestions or anything like that but there are other times when the they
have a script idea there's just 20 million dollars if you want to do it and that's not going to work
then it's just really helping them you know get to something more manageable and at the same time
being faithful to what it is they're trying to say and then with this book trailer this would go with
their social media right so so they would have it on their own website or the publisher's website
ideally you have it everywhere that's the thing you want to have it on your author's website all
the social channels the Goodreads is the Amazons and the more people posting about
it the better obviously wow and so all genres why a thriller non-fiction everything I mean
they're they're exceedingly popular with young adult just because I think that audience is more
movie-minded too like they they actually are they have a stake in seeing the material get adapted
to film and they realize that a really good trailer is sort of a conduit to that or could be
at least a suggestion so you hadn't done your adaptation until you'd already been doing other
people's right and then you finally said why don't I try this well I mean it was around
that time I published my book and so I was I was in that mode so i'm like oh we're going to
do this really cool video for it we're going to make it very elaborate but certainly I i think
the letting go part of it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't created that groove in my brain with
making the you know the trailers originally that I made for the company very cool yeah I recommend
everybody to go to the site it's really beautiful the way you have all the covers thank you.
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