What do “The Wizard of Oz,” “Gone with the Wind,” “Blade Runner,” “The Graduate,” “War of the Worlds,” and “The Maltese Falcon” have in common? Along with hundreds of other memorable feature movies, these hits were based on previously published material. Often the source was a novel. But in some cases the underlying text was a short story (“Shawshank Redemption”) or a magazine article (“Saturday Night Fever”). If you want proof that adapting a story works equally well when producing ultra short movies, consider “A Strange Feeling,” an entry in this year’s MoMo Film Fest and the SmartPhilm Fest. The film, directed by Philipp Andonie and shot with an iPhone 7 Plus, was inspired by Juan J. Ruiz’s two-sentence horror story posed on Reddit:

“I begin by tucking him into bed and he tells me, “Daddy check for monsters under my bed.” I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, under the bed, staring back at me quivering and whispering, “Daddy there’s somebody on my bed.”

Here’s further evidence that adapting a story is creative. Ruiz’s 45-word text has been adapted by many filmmakers around the world, not necessarily shot using mobiles. Each tells the story in a unique way. One of the more interesting examples is “Tuck me in” directed by  Ignacio Rodó.

Rodó emailed us that he almost always writes original stories and felt that doing so was more likely to get success. But as he points out, “Tuck me in”  has been shown in 200+ festivals, including Filminute, winning 30 prizes.

Regarding the challenges in making his movie, Rodó says: “We actually wanted to shoot in 16mm. We had the camera and some film, but then the camera didn’t work properly. I had asked the DP to bring his 7D in case something went wrong, and this proved a good idea, as we lost 1 hour trying to make the 16mm camera working and then finally decided to go digital and shoot with the 7D”.

A  Spanish filmmaker, Rodó thought that  he’d get a wider audience by doing the movie in English. After he found an American-born actor in Barcelona, the actor’s young son said he also wanted to be in the movie, and he did a terrific job. Rodó’s speculation about doing the movie in English proved to be correct. Whereas most of the other adaptations of Ruiz’s story had fewer than 3,000 views, Rodó is up to 15 million on YouTube alone. It didn’t hurt that the Huffington Post published a feature article about “Tuck me in.”

Rodó has seen dozens of other versions of Ruiz’s story. He comments, “All of them are very different and I really can’t say much. When you adapt a story you have to find what connects you to it and make it your own. In my case, and I guess it’s the big difference with most of the versions I’ve seen, I thought the scarier part of this story would be finding a doppelganger of your son and not knowing which one is yours. Or are they both? Or none? The unknown is what I find really scary. I like more this psychological terror than just going for the scare jump in the end.”

You can learn more about Rodó and his work here.

Another adaptation of  Ruiz’s story is Jay Clarke’s “Monster in the Room.”

And finally, Jamie Miller’s  “Under the Bed.”

While many adapted works come from famous writers who request  fees, when a filmmaker asked Ruiz for permission, the writer replied: “sure thing go for it! as long as there’s story credit for me I don’t mind.” Seeking permission and then giving credit is a very good thing to do.

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In Hollywood, beginning producers are often given the assignment of reading new fiction, newspaper articles, and magazine features, looking for ideas that can be made into movies. If adapting a story worked for Hitchcock and Spielberg and the filmmakers shown here,  it can work for you.

If you try adapting a story into a short film, we hope you’ll share it with us.

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“A Strange Feeling” was chosen as a Mobile Movie of the Week by the editors of MobileMovieMaking Magazine.