Fiction Adaptation - My Idea of Adaption

Fiction Adaptation – “The Tell-Tale Heart” – Edgar Allen Poe

The short story I am going to adapt is Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, which is about a man who is very much bothered by an old man’s blind eye, even though he apparently loves this old man. The person who is telling the story is this old man’s care taker and lives with him, and is clearly insane. For no reason other than the fact this white eye bothers him, he kills him and dismembers the body and hides it under the floorboards. Then the police are called because the neighbours hear the old man shriek, and the insane man feeling proud of what he’s accomplished lets them in without a trouble thinking that he has nothing to hide. While talking to the police, he starts to grow nervous. As his nerves increase, he starts to hear the sound again...the sound "a watch makes when wrapped in cotton." It grows louder and louder, and he's going mad trying to figure out why the police can't seem to hear it. He finally loses it and stands up and screams for it to stop and confesses to the murder.

My Adaption

It sounds very brutal, but I wanted to put more of a modern twist on the tale.  In my version I can imagine the insane person as a student who lives in a student house/halls (haven’t decided yet). The old man will be a new student moving into the house/halls and he either has a mole/blind eye that bothers this character. And within the house he plans to kill him, and strangles him. But instead of him dismembering him and putting his heart under the floor boards, I was thinking of the person dragging him into a room and leaving him there but the “old mans” phone being left on the side (he gets attacked whilst on the phone). Someone or one of the housemates hears the commotion and comes to check if everything is ok, and instead of hearing the housemates beating heart, instead the victim’s phone keeps ringing and flashing up and vibrating (similar to a heartbeart) on the screen he sees “your dead housemate”. Or the other ending I imagined was putting the dead body in a cupboard or bathroom, and instead of hearing the heart beating the insane person hears and sees the door banging like a heartbeat.

Cinematography

Death scene – to film this successfully, I thought I could film it focusing on the victims feet whilst he struggles, and when you know he/she is dead his/her legs go limp.

When killer becomes nervous – if I choose the ending where the phone is ringing the camera will see the phone in his/her POV and focus on their face and emotion. If I choose the ending where the door bangs it will be similar but every time we hear the heartbeat or bang the camera will get closer to the door.

The story is a short story but over 3 pages long, so I will probably pick relevant text from the story rather than recite the whole thing so it fits within the 5 minutes.