Officially Beaten to the Punch
My last post was about an animated attempt at The Oval Portrait that can’t really be considered a threatening precedent because of its rudimentary nature. What I mean by “threatening precedent” is something that has been completed before your production that covers the same subject matter and is competent enough in story-telling execution and production value to be counted as a definitive and sufficient adaptation of that material. In other words, to those who have seen it, it is “the” visual (or specifically in this case – animated) adaptation of that literary work. It would make someone say something like, “I love that story, have you seen the cartoon version?” As far as the Lego version goes, no one would really consider that the definitive animated adaptation of the story, even if only for the reason that it was not a serious attempt at film-making.
So where I’m going with this is… I finally found an authentic, animated adaptation of The Oval Portrait that was completed in 2004 and has already been in at least one film festival. Those who know me well know that originality means a lot to me. I have been known to abandon what I considered really good ideas after finding that I wasn’t the first to come up with them, despite being urged that the overlap is “no big deal.” Obviously in this case we are dealing with pre-existing literary material, so of course I have no claim over that. But before beginning this project, I tried my best to see if there had previously been any attempts at adapting this particular story, especially for animation. At the time I couldn’t find any evidence of anything in the works. Furthermore, despite being a Poe fan in early high school days, I myself had never come across this story before, so I assumed that it was relatively unknown to others as well. I have since learned that The Oval Portrait is pretty common reading material in high school lit classes across the country.
Anyway, I’m ranting further and further from the topic. Basically, if I had found a significant animated version of this story before I started, I probably would have moved on to something else. However, now that I have come as far as I have, I don’t think I’ll abandon it. I believe that the way I can portray the themes of the story is unique enough to stand apart and still be important. I hope that my version is significantly distinct enough to avoid unpleasantries like confusion and accusations of theft, unoriginality, redundancy, etc.
The Short in Question
The first evidence I found of the prior film was at this link, which gives some production info and a thumbnail still. That was all I knew about it for months until today when I did another search and found the animator’s website. From there I finally found a link to watch the short online.
I liked it. I think overall it’s definitely a valid interpretation. I’m relieved that it’s a different take than I have in mind. There are things I can learn from this and even the Lego version. I think it’s funny that they both end with the poor girl as a skeleton. He definitely has great music, looks like he got it professionally composed and recorded for his piece. That seems to be the way to go. Of course his painting session is a montage sequence like mine… not really any way to avoid that. Those close-ups of the brushstrokes are dead on with what I want to do… oh well. I like how he chose the light/shadows moving across the floor to show time pass; I’m not planning on using that at the moment. His artist character seems more villianous than I want mine to be, and I would say there are things about both characters that aren’t developed enough for this to be a stand-alone film that a viewer could fully appreciate without knowing the story already.
Anyway, I could go on over-analyzing it, but the point is there is a lot for me to learn from it. I’m sure I will be changing some things around as a result.