Main Task: Brief

For our main task we were given the brief:

Research a range of possible pieces of literature that could form the basis of an adaptation you plan to make into a piece of moving image. The text must not, in anyway, have been adapted, in any form, previously.

MAIN TASK:

The titles and opening to a new fiction film, to last a maximum of two minutes. All video and audio must be students own work. Audio may be obtained from a copyright free source.
 

Firstly, finding a piece of literature that was not already adapted in any format was difficult. 

However, we soon came to the conclusion of doing Jodi Picoult's novel Nineteen Minutes.

Synopsis:

Sterling is a small town in New Hampshire, and the home of Lacy Houghton, whose job as a midwife is to bring new life in to the world. But on March 6^th, her son Peter did the complete opposite, when he walked into his high school with a gun instead of books, shooting down 10 people. The book travels between the time before and after the shooting occurred, showing the knock on effect that the shooting has on everyone around Peter. As the narrative continues, we begin to realise that despite Lacy’s every efforts, she barely knew her son at all, and we follow the turmoil as Lacy wonders if there was something she could have done to stop Peter. The novel creates many questions in our head, especially, is the victim ever allowed to strike back?

We all agreed that 'Nineteen Minutes' was the right choice for our group when we saw the beginning chapter of the novel which began with a letter. Instantly, we were all thinking of how we could transfer this onto the screen. Could we have a narrator reading this out with a montage? Could we have the main character directly speaking the letter to the camera? A suicide tape? We knew that there was so much we could do with this piece of literature. What also helped was the fact that our group member's (Andrea's) mum was a big fan of Jodi Picoult and so we thought that people may recognise the author.