Film v Print

How are movies different from books? What can a book show you that a movie can't? What can a movie show you that a book can't? Discuss the relative merits of each medium.

In modern society, young people tend to enjoy watching movies more than reading a book. There are a couple of possible reasons for this. First of all, a film condenses the elements of a story into only a couple of hours. This relative lack of commitment and devotion to the story, as well as a quick entry into the realms of imagination. A book, however, requires a significant amount of devotion and commitment in order to read and analyze it. With the factor of time playing a major role in modern society, we naturally will choose to commit ourselves to watching a couple of hours' worth of films verses reading a book for several days.

However, when movie spectators come back from a novel-inspired film, a lot of people usually complain that "the movie was not as the book." This occurs because the film is analyzed and interpreted through the eyes of the director, producers, and screenwriters, and as a result their movie screenplay is unique and may be possibly slightly controversial.

A book allows the readers' minds to paint their own picture - create imagery - through the descriptions provided by the author. This sense of being "drawn away" into another fantasy world is usually what enraptures so many to read books. A film, however, paints the picture for you, and you just sit back to enjoy the already-hanging scenery shot.

Films sometimes have a hard time capturing subtle details and side plots (sometimes because they cannot find a filming technique that will work for them or due to time constraints). Books and novels are a lot better at portraying such.

In the end, it all comes down to the fact that books allow the readers to create their own images through their imagination. This merit is impossible to portray in films.