The Fall Of The House Of Usher Essay

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It was never my intention throughout the process of adapting The Fall of the House of Usher into a screenplay to fundamentally alter the source material; rather I sought to take the classical gothic elements that Poe employs in all of his narrations and take them to the next level. The Fall of the House of Usher holds a bit of a special place in my heart as it was the first time I was introduced to Edgar Allan Poe’s writings around the age of twelve or thirteen. I fell in love with the sheer drama of it: the idea that the macabre could be tied up with madness in such beautifully written and described packaging as Poe did it.
Aside from the source text of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, I relied heavily on another piece of literature …show more content…

Poe gives the impression that the mansion/home of the Ushers is almost a living thing and I wanted to up the drama of that idea thus I tried to convey the idea that the house had a sort of power and like it was ever watchful of the events taking place within its walls to my adaption by signaling specific camera angles that focused on the interior of the house and its inherent vastness and its hold over the characters. I thought back to The Great Gatsby, in the way that the eyes of Dr. J.T. Eckleburg look down at the Valley of Ashes like the eyes of god. So too, did I want the House to be the ‘eyes of God’ but in a much more sinister and vengeful way. Though not much of my narrative take on my adaptation makes it into the final format other than the basic actions and descriptions, there was something I wrote that I thought establishes the mood I was trying to create while writing the screenplay adaptation, “The fades floral wallpaper seemed sinister in the darkness. The portraits and paintings, relics of past tragedies and atrocities adorn the walls, like the veil of a bride. The house seemed to have such a weight to it, as if it were slowly dragging the Ushers to hell.” After writing out that brief feeling of mood, it was much easier to set up the scene and give what little description the screenplay format