The description is below but you can also check out the exemplars of previous students' work in the content folder or by clicking the links:Exemplar - Adaptation Proposal&Exemplar - compare and contrast. These are not perfect, and they're just one way you can approach it, but it should give you some idea. Like the last one, your assignment should be around 4-5 pages (1000-1250 words).
Here are the assignment descriptions, and remember that you only have tochoose oneof the two options:
Assignment Choice #1 - Adaptation Proposal
You are proposing an adaptation of an existing story from medium to another, a translation that has not yet been done. Important considerations are: What are the challenges of this particular adaptation and how will you address them? What are the natural strengths of the material and the medium to which you're adapting it? What are you going to keep as far as plot points, characters, locations, and why? What are the things you're going to cut, or possibly add, and why? What essential story elements will you keep and how will they change (or not)? Will you stay true to the themes and motifs of the original or will you adapt them to a new application, or put your own spin/twist on them?
The format of the assignment is up to you but it should be clearly organized and written. This could be essay style or it might be done in the style of a lab or business report (with various subheadings). Considering this is a proposal or in other words, a pitch, you might also consider how you might encapsulate your idea for the adaptation in one sentence (like a thesis statement). You will be graded on clarity, originality, and the sophistication of your ideas. In both assignments, try to avoid summarizing the story as this could take up too much time/space that is better used for your analysis. Assume that I know the source material or if you feel it's necessary, point me to a quick reference on the web or do a one-page synopsis (separate from the proposal itself).
Assignment Choice #2: Compare and Contrast
In this assignment, you are going to compare an adaptation that you think was done well with one that you think was done poorly. A common misunderstanding is to simply compare one version of a story to another, for example comparing the book version of Harry Potter to the film version. However, that is only one adaptation. What I'm asking is for you to compare that to another adaptation so for example, you might think the adaptation of Harry Potter (book to film) was done better than the adaptation of Eragon (book to film), and explain how and why.
If you are doing the same story, you might want to look at different media (ex. Superman: comic book to film vs comic book to TV). Or you might want to compare an older adaptation with a "reboot" or a remake. However, if you are doing a different story, you might want to make sure the media and/or genre are the same so there is at least some commonality (ex. two different fantasy stories that were adapted from book to film). Despite the examples above, you can use whatever stories/media you want, including games.
Questions to consider are: what worked, what didn't work, and why? What were the strengths/weaknesses of the medium that helped/hindered the adaptation. Was the adaptation "true" to the original or was it significantly different, and was that a good thing, a bad thing, and why?
This assignment will be in essay format but you can use 1st person ("I") and you don't need a bibliography if it's clear what books, films, etc. you're discussing. It's a good idea to make your introduction and conclusion brief and to the point and to have a clear statement about what you're doing. Focus on the analysis (and less on summarizing) and make sure each paragraph has a point. If you have a long paragraph (page or more), then you might have too many points and need to break it down more. If it's too short (2 sentences), then you're not discussing your point thoroughly enough.