| Language is an important tool of communication for people. It takes 31,400,000 years that the communication media evolved from the early symbol media to the language media. And it takes another 396,500 years from the language media to the literal media. Then, from literal media into print media, we have to wait for 4,000 years. It takes us 1,200 more years that the print media develop into the electronic media. However, it only takes 120 years from the electronic media to the network communication; and it’s only been 50 years since the interaction network, which mainly based on computer, started to spread. The advent of the printing press creates the modern press. Besides that, with the popularity of literacy in the 20 th century, the print media has highly covered people’s literary life. And also, books, newspapers, magazines and other publications have become the basic channels for people to get information, knowledge and entertainment in daily life. And the sharp development of the electronic media accelerates the advent of telephone, television and so on, and the new pattern of media, audio-visual media, began to challenge the traditional way----reading. This is the opportunity for novels to be adapted to TV plays. According to the statistics collected by some TV-sociologists in the early 1990 s, 84% of the information received by modern people comes from television. And in the present environment of new media, more and more communication contents have been digitized. And the process of digitization gradually merges the traditional media and new media, which are previously distinct from each other----media convergence. In the age of media convergence, communication system updates more quickly; thus, more and more novels are adapted to TV plays. Under such a prevalent cultural phenomenon, the issue of the conversion process from the literary language to the audio-visual language becomes the basic issue, which is worth studying.From fictions to screenplays, and then to TV plays, there is a subtle change and deviation in the conversion itself. The conversion not only changes the original fiction, but also creates the new communication products in the process and shows them to the mass audiences. And in this process, the foremost thing to produce an excellent work is to have a good grasp of the features of various types of media. If we cannot overcome the obstacles when converting the literary language into the audio-visual language, we will meet many problems. Firstly, the TV paly itself is likely to become an unworthy sequel to the novel. Secondly, in the age of media convergence, people will increasingly rely on the TV play to "see" the entire contents of the novel. Those TV plays with low quality will make the audiences misunderstand the connotation of the novels, so that the audio-visual language will overstepped the literary language, thus, the novel and the TV play will lose their status and identity. If we grasp the main trail from the literary language to the audio-visual language, the hit TV play will make visitors be interested in the novel, so that more people will engage with the written language in the age of media convergence with various ways of media communication rather than just one way, thus improving the positive impact on the social mainstream consciousness.On the issue of conversion process from the literary language to the audio-visual language in the age of media convergence, this thesis takes the literary fiction Empresses in the Palace and shooting script in the TV play Empresses in the Palace as research objects. Teleplay Empresses in the Palace according is adapted by the novel Empresses in the Palace written by Wu Xuelan(Pseudonym: Liu Lianzi), which describes the inner wars of the harem of classic China. The novel is originally based on a fictional history background. But after it is adapted, the TV play is set in emperor Yongzheng’s harem in Qing dynasty. The teleplay has 76 episodes, each about 40 minutes long. Since November 17, 2011, this teleplay was aired in China and overseas TV stations. Mostly, 2-4 episodes were released continuously in the prime time of 20: 00-23: 00. The teleplay Empresses in the Palace has gained many awards after broadcasting, reflecting the social acceptance for the teleplay Empresses in the Palace and its wide influence. This thesis takes the literary fiction Empresses in the Palace and shooting script in the TV play Empresses in the Palace as research objects, based on the theory of semiotics and audio-visual language, taking the scene analysis as the unit of analysis, and providing 11 variables: Novel Text(Chapters—Content) – Shooting Script(Episodes – Actions – Scenes – Atmosphere – Shoots- Screen Content – Characters – Music and Acoustics – Notes). This thesis compares the setting of structure format, takes the context of novel and the shooting script of the teleplay as the samples of comparative analysis, and converts this 76-episode teleplay with more than 50-hour runtime into the statistics, in scene-unit, by watching the TV play episode by episode. According to the statistics, the novel Empresses in the Palace contains 115 chapters of 1,966,000 characters(from chapter 1 to chapter 19 is a total of 332,000 characters, from chapter 20 to chapter 37 is a total of 33,.000 characters, from chapter 38 to chapter 56 is a total of 317,000 characters, from chapter 57 to chapter 75 is a total of 322,000 characters, from chapter 76 to chapter 94 is a total of 327,000 characters, and from chapter 95 to chapter 115 is a total of 336,000 characters), and the adapted teleplay Empresses in the Palace consists of totally 1,900 scenes of 3,040 minutes(76 episodes in all, about 25 scenes per episode with an average runtime of 40 minutes).On the issue of the mass audiences in conversion from the literary language to the audio-visual language in the age of media convergence, this thesis sets A Questionnaire about Adaption from Novel to Teleplay, and combines the results with two related surveys, one is on the modern audiences’ accesses to literature work, and the other is on the present reading condition. And this thesis conducts a statistical analysis of the effect on audiences in different platforms.Based on the above work, this study can be divided into symbols conversion and creation conversion, and the independent analysis of their literary and artistic value. This study also analyzes their actual impact on audiences in different platforms in terms of technicality of different media tools and other factors, comprehensively weighs the artistic value of this adapting phenomenon in different stages, gives a good reference for the popular adapting market and tries to give a reasonable proposal on how literary language and audio-visual language benefit each other in the age of media convergence. |
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