Orchard Fever Film Techniques

Susan Orleans novel “Orchard Fever” adapted into the movie “Adaptations” can be viewed and analyzed as an example of Hollywood’s take of turning a novel into a film using cinematic devices to let the audience see a visual depiction of what they may have read. In the film “Adaptations” most of what viewers read in the novel “Orchid Fever” are told in a similar way, however, the film uses additional tools to recreate events and moments found in the novel. Orleans’ written texts give details of what occurred and what she had known from John Laroche about his pursue of orchids and his expertise in the subject. It can be noted that the film “Adaptations” uses content from the novel and employs further elements such as character behaviours, emotions, and motives, along with use of environments and camera techniques to integrate the written text. Events such as the day John Laroche’s was charged for trespassing at Fakahatchee or Laroche explaining his knowledge of orchid relations with

In “Adaptations” around the 6:35 minute mark the film cuts into frames that take viewers back to the day where John Laroche and three Seminole Indians travelled to the Fakahatchee West Lake. Orleans’ detail of this trip in “Orchid Fever” she had written that the four men “walked through the long cypress strands, over the bunchy cypress domes, and through the muck to a deep-swamp” (p.15). Observing the same event in the film visually viewers are able to see character emotions and other behaviour which give impressions of the overall atmosphere of that day for Laroche and the three Seminoles. Early in the frames as Laroche’s is driving his van a sense suspense is created in the film both by the sound and location, being an empty area where no one travels, along with old recorded tapes of Charles Darwin playing in the