Adapting a True Story into a Narrative Feature Film

For those of you that don't know, director Brian Ackley has begun a journal, a book of sorts in blog form about the process of making Uptown, a no budget feature. In the latest installment, he eloquently describes his process of adapting a true story into cinematic form. Here is some of it after the jump:

"If I had to choose between the tedious tasks of rebuilding an engine and building one from scratch, I would be equally disenthralled and equally lost. In both cases, success depends upon the same requirement of mechanical ingenuity; there must be the same general understanding of the basic mechanical principles involved to complete either objective. Therefore, to have the ability to do one is to have the ability to do the other.

Mechanical engineering aside, this rule is just as fit when applied to screenwriting. The difference between invention and innovation has not to do with what those basic principles in building a story are, but with how and in what order they are applied. Adapting a story from a play, novel, television concept, newspaper headline, etc. requires the same set of skills as developing one from conflict to resolution; success depends upon the same requirement of creative ingenuity."

Read the rest of this in depth piece, as well as previous entries HERE.