Write an essay that compares and contrasts JK Rowling's novel Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone with its film adaptation. You should consider matters of form and technique in your essay.

Essay by laneles August 2005

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The novel, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, is a great success. People from all over the world are crazy about it. Due to the popularity of the novel, a film was produced in correspondence to the literacy text. In this essay, the matters of form and techniques used in the novel and its film adaptation will be compared and contrasted.

Novel and film creates different impact on people. Reading of the novel requires imagining of the scene, the characters and the process, etc. Also, in order for the reader to immerse wholly in the story, the reader needs to have certain degree of proficiency in language. Film is an image projection of a story with audio enhancement where else novel is not. In the film, it used music to set the mood and to add more impact to the visual image therefore the audiences do not have to make their mind work as intensively as readers' mind.

Film uses music to create the different ambience and sound to create realism. In the novel, the speed of the Golden Snitch was described to be so fast that Harry had to "put on an extra spurt of speed" (Rowling, p.138) and "Golden Snitch had disappeared from sight again" (p.138), etc, but in the movie, sound of the Golden Snitch's wings fluttering enhances the effect of the fast speed of the Golden Snitch when added to the motion picture. Another example, in the novel (p. 65), 3rd person narration (effaced narrator) was used to describe the grand hall and the arrival of the first year students. In terms of the words used, the grandness of the hall was well described (p. 87) but in the film, a background marching-in music was added which made the audience felt the majesty of the...