Drawn

Drawn! reader Victor pointed me towards this interesting live action adaptation of Brian Biggs‘s graphic novel Dear Julia. (Previously on Drawn!: Mr. Biggs)

Watching the short film with the book in front of me, it’s a very accurate recreation. There’s no denying the influence that film has had on the world of comics; modern graphic novels borrow heavily from the visual storytelling conventions of movie-making — varying “camera” angles, static shots to establish mood, non-linear timelines, etc. So even though it’s not the greatest short film, it’s interesting to see the process come full circle, and have these conventions re-borrowed, and magnified.

UPDATE:
Filmmaker Isaac Gozin wrote in with a little more info about the film:

It’s been 5 years since we filmed that short. I was still in my third year of film school. I’m glad you noticed the “reborrowed conventions”, we tried our best to create a world that connects to this world but has the feel and look of the comic world. We worked with fix shots (like comic book panels) and dialogue is heard one shot at a time (not overlapping the cuts). We put a lot of effort and thought into the art direction without straying too much from the source material. Converting a b/w story into colour was a bit trickier but we tried to give it a palette that suits the story best. Mr. Biggs was very supportive when we asked permission to shoot it and volunteered to help around. He didn’t eventually because we shot all of this in Belgium. When we were in contact with Mr. Biggs he also told us a little fact we weren’t aware of when we started pre-production; there was already a version of Dear
Julia filmed a year before by Alistair Banks Griffin. I have not seen this film yet (because I didn’t wanted to get influenced too much and also because short films are not easy to get a hold of), yet there used to be a clip floating around the net, I believe on Mr. Biggs’s site, although I can’t find it now.