Well regardless, a TV series adaption would work better imo as a TV series has more time to,draw out the ideas than a single movie per book, so less of the small stuff will be missed. Though the talents would be hard to translate especially things,like empathy and how difficult it could be to differentiate between some of them
Yeah I think it'll be interesting to see how they try to demonstrate the talents, and as you said Wraith, it would be tricky to try to differentiate between them. It is an exciting prospect, especially if Isobelle is involved and writes the screenplay.
Though I'm not convinced that it'd be good enough of a success to go beyond a pilot/first season. Which though it'd be great like that, it'd be disappointing not see more. But something to keep an eye on into the future (along with all the other cool things IC is doing)
The other interesting thing would be whether or not it'd break out of first person (if that makes sense...) - we might get a different look at characters or see some hidden/missing scenes we didn't read about because Elspeth wasn't there to see them...
While I think it'd be good enough a story I think the real trick would be selling the show to advertisers. That's what determines what makes a show a 'success' or not (look at all the crap on at the moment) - it's sell-ability. If it could be picked up by like...BBC or ABC, it might have more of a chance. But genre TV is also more popular right now (thanks, GoT), so who knows.
If you were given the task of translating misfit abilities to something for a visual medium, how would you approach it? I think Xmen approached the idea of what we'd call Farseeking quite well (Prof X). Coercion could be portrayed as simply as - well, seen any vampire shows where they use 'glamouring' (eg True Blood)? There's no cheesy effect, if just comes down to whoever's being coerced to act like it. Empathy could work much the same way...
They're all really tricky things to try visualise...
Ooh that would be exciting Min, definitely would make things interesting to see what else is happening around the place.
Yeah, if only the ABC or BBC picked it up, would be awesome.
My immediate thought about something like empathy is that it's like smells/could be visualised by colours aka auras. Though that seems rather cheesy. And for farseeking, more cheesiness, of having links between people visualised. I guess coercion can be as simple as making someone do something, but they'd have to introduce it so people knew that was happening or something.
I'll try find a half decent, PG-rated scene where someone glamours someone else in True Blood for an example of how coercion could work...bah...this is taking too long :P The way it works there is that there's a sudden 'emptiness' to the glamoured person (varying levels of subtlety based on the actor's abilities - this is True Blood), and the one doing the glamouring maintains eye contact. The suggestion/coercion is verbal, but in the case of Ober Talents it could be voiceover to indicate the suggestion is travelling mind to mind. The shift in the glamoured person's demeanour is enough to let the audience know that one is controlling and suggesting to the other.
I remember reading an article a while ago about how 'magic' is always portrayed in a cheesy way in book-to-tv/film translations (unless the budget is enormous), because magic is something that's supposed to 'happen', not really be seen, and the need to visualise it removes the magic, if that makes sense. If there was some way to portray talents without needing to visually alter/tint the scene (unless it was really subtle, like perhaps a slight desaturation of the world to indicate a withdrawl or something) it would ring more true of the series, since those being effected by Talents never really 'see' anything going on.
Things like using someone else's eyes (Elspeth/Matthew) would have to be altered with special effects, but in those cases I think it's necessary.
What about beastspeaking? Images and human words...do you think it'd simply have to remove the images portion - would that look too confusing - and make it voiceovers? Have there been any other good examples of communication with animals (telepathically) in film or tv?
Lol I'm overthinking this :P but it's just a lot of fun to try figure it out.
I think the really hard thing would probably be the dreamtrails. I have no idea how this would be done.
I think you'd have to make the beastspeaking voiceovers - but beastspeaking often has parts with two words and a slash between, and when I read it I always sort of read the slash, but I was talking to my friend and she doesn't, so that would be another thing to think about.
