I joined Maria Lopez Castaño’s “Adapting IP for Film and Television” workshop last evening, and it was in the style I love most. It was intimate, with only ten people, and very interactive, with both individual and group exercises in breakout rooms. We also got to chat for a few minutes with other creative professionals from around the world during the breakout exercises. I met a lovely Spanish development executive in my breakout room, and while working on an exercise about adding more drama to a story, we ended up comparing some of the tricks Spanish and Turkish TV series use to heighten the drama. I could have happily kept that conversation going. 🙂
Maria Lopez Castaño is the creator and writer of Netflix’s TV series Valeria, based on the novels by Elísabet Benavent. Actually, that was the main reason I joined the event in the first place. I really love Valeria’s down-to-earth, entertaining writing style, and I was curious to hear how the books were adapted for the Netflix series. But she is also known for The Bad Girl, based on the novel by Mario Vargas Llosa. As someone actively working on adaptations, she was very generous in sharing practical tips and examples from her experience.
I especially loved that she made a clear distinction between adapting a story for TV and adapting it for film. And the timing couldn’t have been better: my own workshop on that very question is coming up, where I’ll explore the differences between film and TV storytelling through the film and series versions of Call My Agent!. So I found this workshop particularly inspiring in that sense too.
It was organized by Professional Writing Academy & John Yorke Story, and you can find their upcoming events here: https://tixoom.app/pwalecturer
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