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Stage-to-film adaptation

Film Craft

Stage-to-film adaptation describes a motion picture adapted from a stage play, a practice as old as cinema itself and one that has produced many award-recognized films. Adapters commonly face a stagy problem, in which dialogue-heavy scenes and lengthy speeches drawn from the theater read as unnatural on screen, along with the structural limits of action confined to a small number of rooms, as in adaptations of Eugene O'Neill's plays, since film traditionally favors short, realistic dialogue and physical action over sustained talk. Filmmakers have addressed this by having playwrights themselves rework their scripts for the camera, as Peter Shaffer did adapting his own Amadeus, or by substantially reimagining the material while keeping its plot, as with Cabaret and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, with The Sound of Music cited as an example of successfully opening up a play for the screen. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Domain (category)
Film 1
Concept Domain
Film Adaptation 1
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In Medium

Film, Media Forms
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1. Stage-to-film adaptation (Wikipedia)
introductory section
Quote, introductory section
Stage-to-film is a term used when describing a motion picture that has been adapted from a stage play.
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