Band Of Brothers: Comparison Of Book And Movie

Authors and directors work in different ways to produce the same output, a story. Authors use their voice to illustrate the plotline, while directors use their vision. A book and a movie may tell the same overall story, but the mood and tone of each can differ vastly from each other. This can be seen in Band of Brothers, both a book and a movie mini-series. Band of Brothers demonstrates a very different mood and tone, from the intense, vintage movie to the extremely bitter, anxious book. First, the overall feel of the story in the movie is far different than in the book. Through the use of film techniques, such as color grading and different camera shots, the director was able to quickly establish a time frame, atmosphere, and energy in the

The book uses multiple detailed sentences, leaving out more chances to use imagery. An example sentence from author, Ambrose, is, “With 80 miles covered, there were still 38 to go, the last 20 or so on the highway leading into Atlanta.” This definitely helps describe how far the men are running, but this overwhelming amount of detail almost disconnects the reader from the actual men of Easy Company. This disconnection is what changes the reader’s mood from the author’s intended tone. Taking a look at a later specific scene in the movie, the heptagon battle scene, one can see how the director uses a variety of shots, sound effects, and scenery to display the vision prefered. The tone intended by the director is to be extremely intense in action; it’s loud and hectic with lots of special effects. The mood interpreted from the scene is exactly that, intense. The loud sound effects and music blended with the flashing light from the guns and the commotion of excitement from the actors gives this feeling of

The writing uses a variety of sentence syntax to help create effect. The book also uses a lot of detail. Between certain sentence syntax and lots of detail, the mood of the reader may change from an exciting battle to a sluggish reading. An example of this detailed writing is when the author, Stephen E. Ambrose, writes, “Captain Hester, S-3, and Lieutenant Nixon, S-2, both close friends of Winters, told him there was a four-gun battery of German 105 mm cannon a few hundred meters across some hedgerow, connected by a farmhouse called Brecourt Manor.” The author intended for the overall tone of this scene is to be exciting, and that is just not the mood projected. Through the use of connected sentence syntax, very detailed writing, and militrian diction the author loses the excitement of the reader’s mood.

Band of Brothers, both as a book and mini-series, creates a different mood and tone, such as the intense, vintage movie to the bitter, anxious book. The author uses his voice to his full advantage with cases of diction, imagery, detail, and syntax to create his intended tone, but the reader’s mood just comes off different from intended. The movie was able to fully entice the director's tone and viewer’s mood through the use of color grading, multiple camera shots, and audio cues (sound effects and