Analyzing Film Adaptation through Narrative Alignment
Tanzir Pial Shahreen Salim Charuta Pethe Allen Kim Steven Skiena
Novels are often adapted into feature films, but the differences between the
two media usually require dropping sections of the source text from the movie
script. Here we study this screen adaptation process by constructing narrative
alignments using the Smith-Waterman local alignment algorithm coupled with
SBERT embedding distance to quantify text similarity between scenes and book
units. We use these alignments to perform an automated analysis of 40
adaptations, revealing insights into the screenwriting process concerning (i)
faithfulness of adaptation, (ii) importance of dialog, (iii) preservation of
narrative order, and (iv) gender representation issues reflective of the
Bechdel test.