‘Molly’ writes: I went to the Randy Testa (Walden Media) talk tonight at Boston College entitled “Building Bridges between Books and Movies.”
It was an interesting perspective on this rather controversial practice of adapting books into movies–we all know most viewers will say, “The book was much better,” but Walden Media doesn’t see movies as handicapping the quality of the book. The crowd was mainly teachers and librarians, so much of it was focused on how children are affected by the way things are taught.
Essentially, his points were that movies reinvigorate interest in books (they always sell more in the months before and after a release), that teachers put far too much stock in reading levels and rushing kids through books so that they’ve read enough for college (instead of encouraging them to ignore reading levels and choose what they enjoy/want to reread), and fantasy is necessary for kids to grasp hold on reality. This last point was especially interesting, because he tied in some C.S. Lewis wisdom: fantasy must be grounded in reality.
All in all, a good talk, but sadly, no new Caspian footage. Testa showed some scenes from LWW and the newer behind the scenes clip as narrated by Ben Barnes. Someone in the audience asked if it was intentional that we’ve barely seen any media of the Pevensies, Miraz, etc., and Testa responded, “Completely!”
Also cute: the presentation was held in the Irish Room of Gasson Hall at Boston College, about which Testa remarked, “There’s no more perfect place to talk about C.S. Lewis. He would love it here.”
