Many  great movies started out as books and short stories. Examples of adaptation include “Gone with the Wind,” “The Maltese Falcon,”  “The Birds,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” “The Graduate,” and “Blade Runner.” Hollywood’s time-tested strategy of taping earlier sources for cinematic story ideas works equally well with short movies. As evidence, take a look at  “Dulcinea.” Written and directed by Madrid-based filmmaker Francisco Lidón Plaza, this short comedy—shot on an iPhone X— is loosely based on “Don Quixote.”  The film won the Best Short Award at the 2018 Las Rozas Movil Festival, and earned the director Cinephone 2018’s  Best Film Artist award.

Tips for Finding Cinematic Story Ideas Via Adaptation

1. Look everywhere. Memorable movies have been based on short stories, novels, plays, newspaper and magazine articles, songs, poems, and comics.
2. Don’t worry about length. There are plenty of examples of very short stories being turned into a feature film—Hitchcock’s “The Birds” comes to mind. ” And as we see with “Dulcinea,” an extremely long novel can be adapted as a short movie.
3. Feel free to rework the material, for example, by adding new plot elements or changing locations. A famous example of filmmakers taking liberties is the film “Bullitt,” based on Robert Fish’s novel Mute Witness. In Fish’s book, there is no car chase, and the action is set in New York City, not San Francisco. That said, if the source material is  well-known, it makes sense to include the core idea in the new work.
4. Do not allow the source material to limit your creativity. Many adaptations, such as “The Godfather” and “Spider-Man,” surprise us with their originality. In case you’re not persuaded, remember that many of Shakespeares greatest hits were based on earlier plays.

If you’ve shot a mobile movie based on material found elsewhere, we invite you to share it with us. Email: info@mobilemoviemaking.com.

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“Dulcinea” has been chosen by the editors of MobileMovieMaking.com as a Mobile Movie of the Week.