FICTIONAL ADAPTATION: THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION RESEARCH

When aiming to gain inspiration and also ideas I looked into some successful adaptations from short stories. One which everyone has always told me about is Frank Darabont's "The Shawshank Redemption". This has always been one of my favourite films for both story and style of Directing.

Released in 1994, The Shawshank Redemption is the story about Andy Dufresne (portrayed by Tim Robbins), a banker in America, who gets sentenced to Shawshank State Penitentiary after being wrongly accused of the murder of his wife and her lover. Andy throughout the film and during his trial pleads innocent and we discover during the film that he is innocent but this doesn't change his sentence. Andy ends up becoming friends with Ellis Redding, nicknamed 'Red' (Portrayed by Morgan Freeman). The film tells us about Andy's life in Prison and ends with him finally escaping from there.

When researching into this film, I learnt that it isn't actually adapted from a short story. The film is based off the novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" which was published back in 1982. The rights to adapt into a film were then purchased in 1987. However, this isn't a short story and I found the novella was actually adapted from a Russian short story "Bog pravdu vidit da ne skoro skazhet" which translates to "God see's the truth, but waits". The English translations of the story are titled "The Confessed Crime" and "Exiled to Siberia". So the film itself isn't actually fictionally adapted from a short story but it is still a Fictional Adaptation so I went on and watched it for inspiration.

What I took from this film mostly was the use of Voice Over. Below is a scene from the film as an example:

In this scene, Andy escapes Shawshank. It's a high climax in the film. Here we see an example of what is hear throughout the film. Morgan Freeman's voice over. This is the character Red telling the story. It's a classic film technique but what I love about this mostly is that the main character isn't Red, it's Andy. Red and telling us Andy's story rather than Andy telling us his. I think it's a fantastic add to the film, made all the more better by Morgan Freeman's well known voice. But this technique is something I feel I could use for my film. 

After watching this and seeing the impact the a voice over narrative has on the film I feel it's what my script needs. Have the character Stacey telling us and talking to us through the film. I feel this would seriously help with the idea that Stacey isn't dead but is always around us and I think the voice over would seriously help with the idea that she isn't dead. As well I think it would work better to get across what she is feeling other than having her speak since she can't really talk if she's a spirit.