SUSPENSE AND MULTIPLE POINT OF VIEW

THE BOOK ADAPTATION

This project is part of my attempt to create various adaptations of James Ellroy's novel "The Black Dahlia". As I worked on creating animated sequences, I realised I was more and more addressing the intangible aspects of the adaptation process. I was dealing primarily with pace, light, and texture on the screen. When I considered infusing these sequences with a layer of narration, I realized I needed to better understand the voices I would be dealing with. Playing with the layout of words on a page, and the relationship of pages to one another in the book format would allow me to really understand how I want to use language in reconfiguring this story.

This book is OWN my re-telling of “The Black Dahlia”. I will use typography on the page to extract and then re-combine different points of view that will constitute my own adaptation of the original story. Once I began considering these different points of view, I realised these voices come from WITHIN the fictional novel and also OUTSIDE of it. First is the ‘voice’ of the actual novel – Ellroy’s fictional retelling of this infamous 1947 murder. This would constitute the relaying of the events – through places, characters, dialogue, and snippets of plot. It is Ellroy’s voice funneled into fictional characters and fictional events. My fascination with the story stems also from the non-fictional event at the core of the novel, the murder of Elizabeth Short. The voice of this real-life investigation would be told through the actual FBI and LAPD files from the case.

Moving even further away from the fictional world of the novel and the murder then is the voice of the author himself. This is particularly relevant as the murder of James Ellroy’s own mother is often discussed by the author in interviews; as to how it feeds into his need to write and even exploit his own history. There is a fascinating parallel between the author’s own obsession with his mother’s murder, and the fictional detective Bleichert’s obsession with the Black Dahlia. The voice of the author is therefore transcription of his interviews talking about his past and his writing.

The final voice is the opening quote of the novel – a quote from Anne Sexton’s poem “All My Pretty Ones”. This is the ultimate subtext of all these narratives – it is the skeletal foundation upon which these lines of narrative hinge.

This book is a fascinating challenge to me in that I can really play with a way of re-telling, re-designing and actually re-writing this novel. Through my method of using multiple viewpoints that span the fictional and non-fictional worlds of this murder mystery – a new sense of depth of storytelling might be achievable. This re-combination method also might create a new sort of poetry. At which point will one voice be interrupted by another – and what is the nature of this interruption? The audience is forced to ask: who is telling the story? At one point the apparently primary narrative (the novel) can be subsumed by the words of Ellroy talking about why he writes novels. The juxtaposition of different narrative lines allows readers to experience between odd interstitial space between fictional and non-fictional worlds. They bring the reader in and out of the official viewing frame – the novel before us. Ultimately, this is a chance also to explore how suspense can be created through the gradual build up of story and narrative clues.

Storyboarding

DEFINING AND VISUALISING DISTINCT VOICES

As always, I begin by mapping out a macro view of the story before I get too immersed in nuance and tone within the telling. I am trying at this stage to work out the interplay between the different points of view. When does context need to be established? How much repetition of the central Sexton quote is necessary? How can I give enough information to keep the reader engaged but still build suspense through some sense of ambiguity?

Once roughly mapped, I move on to my frame and my content; the words on the page. Where do these small spark points between voices occur? Where does it make sense? Where does it have maximum impact? Where does the type need to be soft and where does it need to bellow? How will repetition create both an underlying structure, and the appropriate emotional undertow?

At this early stage, I was aware of my role as orchestrator as well as author and designer. Designing this book was about my handling (defining, intertwining, and then clarifying) different points of view. I approached them as actual voices - as characters and performers on the stage of the book. What was pivotal was how I handled the shift in voices - at first a subtle shift - and then a radical shift halfway through when the ground on which the reader thought the story was built suddenly cracks. This book is a play within a play in the Shakespearean sense; in the vein of Calvino, Greenaway, Stoppard, and Beckett.




























ANNE SEXTON QUOTE

I have chosen letterpress to convey the voice of the Anne Sexton quote. I want these words and letters to have a very physical presence on the page - a sense of how they were made still visible. This will interplay well with computer-generated type and the type from actual police documents.




























ELIZABETH SHORT MURDER

In considering ways of visualising different levels of voice/point of view - the most obvious and maybe best solution was to go to the source. This line of narration is about providing real world context, a glimpse into the language, visual look and evidence of 1947 Los Angeles. This is one of many LAPD documents about the investigation of the murder of Elizabeth Short. Such documents were used as both as historical reference and at times as texture that obstructed and also revealed other voices in the book. My approach with the use of this 'voice' was similar to the use of the words from the Anne Sexton quote - they gain meaning and significance through repetition and juxtaposition with other voices. What might have begun as a small containable page from a newspaper later in the book becomes a frame through which readers might view a vital clue.















I also considered including other archival imagery from the time and place of the actual murder - fictional images from Hollywood film posters and pulp magazines. It was the very visible 'fictional' feeling of these images that appealed to me in that they could work as a perfect foil to the utterly non-fictional voice of the author in the second half of the book. Images like this pin-up are absolutely staged - they are pure fiction, and yet there are curious intersections with the reality of the time and place. Something in the juxtaposition between images like this one and forensic documents from the actual crime was reminiscent of Ellroy's novel. He deliberately blurs fictional and non-fictional characters and events - the very premise of this novel is a weird blurring between a famous unsolved American murder, and the murder of his own mother in a similar time and place. There seemed to be potential for a beautiful tension between these two viewpoints, these two ways of seeing the events at the heart of the novel.
















NOVEL AND NOVELIST

I assigned a distinct typeface, size, and placement on the page to the two remaining voices. The key was not their individual characteristics, but their relative traits and context to one another. It was vital to the communication goal of the book that readers/viewers understand the voice from within the novel is distinct from the voice of the novelist. I deliberately introduced the novelist's voice ambiguously (in that readers don't identify the speaker), but realised it was essential that there was enough difference in the appearance of the voice that is stood out on the page. I opted for the simplest solution - colour.

OVERALL APPROACH

I am rethinking my approach to designing this book while the book itself is still in the embryonic stage of being developed. I realize my way of making the book is not reflective or true of the content and purpose for this book.

The book was a chance for me to deal with content; the formal qualities of the motion sequences were overcoming any communication objective. The book would allow me to work intricately with the language; define voices or points of view and then let them speak on the page. Creating letter-press type for the Anne Sexton quote gave me a real sense of the words – the physicality of them and the impact they can have when they are broken apart. While I am also happy with the visual outcome from this process – there is a preciousness to these words on the page that is restricting my ability to combine them with other voices and letterforms.

I feel this book needs to be physical manifestation of the mental ‘piecing together’ that is occurring. This book is a recombination and reconstruction of voices; it makes sense that it is physically put together in this manner and readers can see that process. I am now considering collage, hand lettering, cutting and overlaying as methods to make this book.