Methods

 My methods for the exploration into my question “How do architectural descriptions of fictional buildings get adapted into visualizations for film?” involve many methods of exploration into the topic. The overall process will take place in two parts. The first process will be an examination of the actual process of translating a literary medium into a visual one. This will be through literary review of case studies of specific movies that have been adapted from previous literary iterations. Of these case studies they will be Maze Runner, Dune, and Lord of the Rings as previously explained in the project background. I will gather this information from recorded interviews with their production designers and filmmakers. I will read the books to find architectural descriptions of the buildings as seen in the movies. I will compare their characteristics with their described feel in contribution to the plot, story, and themes. Through these, I will be able to deduce the reasons the buildings look the way they do. Form, material, location, certain characteristics, etc. The film’s visualizations are often reflective, not only of the physical descriptions of the book but of the general feel of the movie. The architecture itself often acts as a character in movies. I will also conduct an interview with production designer, Merideth Boswell, she was nominated twice for an academy award for set decoration and was the lead production designer for many movies. I will inquire about the process for set visualization and how the creative process is performed at a high level. From this investigation I will develop a way to create a process for developing a visualization that can be applied to any piece of literature. 

The second overall process I will explore will be creating my own visualization from an unadapted source. I will draw from the process that I developed and examined in my previous work. I have not yet found the unadapted piece of literature specifically. The way in which I will do so will be through a 3d model rendering, sketches, and a general building form. This will prove my process for answering my question about how exactly a visualization is created. 

An optional process I have is using Artificial Intelligence to create a visualization and compare that to my work done previously. This will allow me to further prove that my process is true and complete. Or, to the contrary, it will disprove my process and correct it. 

I believe that these methods will take a fair amount of time to complete so, to facilitate the process, I will begin the first process in the summer, promptly. This will primarily include re-reading my selected books.