Lifetime Films: TV Movie Dramas ⇒ Parody News Articles
I checked how many Lifetime movies have been written, cast, shot, and distributed–I suppose out of curiosity–and there’s over 630 of them. This would be quite an achievement if they weren’t all fundamentally the same, equally low-quality, and constantly over-the-top. In fact, the genre’s been stretched to the point where the drama that appears on-screen is outrageous, unbelievable, and oversaturated with random kidnappings and decade-long revenge plots. What’s interesting to me about the genre is that viewers are so used to the drama itself that it can be easy to overlook how unintuitive or unrealistic the plot is. I haven’t chosen a specific movie yet, but I’d love to rewrite the plot of a ridiculous Lifetime film in a journalistic, seemingly real, news article (almost like a mockumentary). Tracking the police’s ineptitude, explaining how every relevant teenager has NSA-level hacking skills, taking film dialogue as witness testimony, and illustrating all the ridiculous twists and turns seems as entertaining as it is insightful. I think breaking down the plot in this way can reveal how vapid and directionless Lifetime can be at its worst. It’ll all make much less sense on paper.
Horror Movies: Films ⇒ Graphic Novels
Just considering the limits of the medium of comics, it can be hard to imagine an effective horror movie adaptation to a graphic novel, especially considering the modern overreliance on jump-scares, movement, lighting, and sound design–I’m looking at you, horrible violin that gets me every time. Instead of reframing plot or parodying or providing commentary, this idea would examine the benefits and limitations of both genres in question to make a proper transition possible, including techniques to portray sound visually, theory in building suspense and never placing a scare in the same page as the suspense-building (since most people glance at each page with their peripherals and will notice imagery that sticks out), or any other workarounds to translate the horror we see on-screen. This new medium could be incredibly appealing among cult followings and different subcultures around. Most bookstores have a section for this kind of graphic novel, and I think the challenge of it is very interesting.