In the studio Recollecting, Rethinking, Remaking, I worked with James Accaputo and Jess Vega to create our short film Joan Kendall. This adaptation is based on the Australian series Homicide episode “Starring Joan Kendall” (Season 12, Episode 21). Our adaptation repositions Joan as the central figure, reimagining the perspective and being the spokesperson surrounding the events of her husbands murder. By working with only the synopsis of the episode as the script was not available, we had creative freedom to explore the ways we can use adaptation to create a medium form, one that challenges the original framing and emphasis on a female point of view. Our project dives into the studios guiding question “How can Australia’s television past be creatively reimagined to resonate with contemporary audiences?” by looking into the ways point of view can dramatically shift narrative meaning.

Our aim was to change the traditional police focused lens of Homicide, which often placed suspects under police aggression and investigation. We developed this lens to allow Joan to tell her side of the story without the assumptions from the interrogator. We were especially interested in how point of view can act as a form of adaptation, changing not only who speaks but how a story gets told. As Linda Hutcheon states in A Theory of Adaptation, adaptations are not just about transformation across media, but are also about “repetition without replication,” where meaning is generated through difference (Hutcheon, 2013, p.33). Joan Kendall’s voice frames the events and the way she interacts with it. Through this we subtly change the interrogation format.

Our adaptation explores narrative ambiguity and distrust in authority. With societal recognition that motives are rarely one sided and that authoritative narratives often silence personal ones, Joan Kendall reflects complexity. While not portraying her as innocent, the story does not tell the viewer what to believe, but instead to interpret their own conclusions. With the use of lighting, narrative structure and Olivia Farmer’s performance of Joan Kendall, we guide the viewer through these strategies. Through lighting we used shadow to reflect Joan’s mental state. As her narrative progresses, she becomes less visible, increasingly surrounded by darkness, with only parts of her face lit. This suggests a change in truth and trust as she is not fully visible. During the studio exhibition, audiences seemed to enjoy the match cut where the environment changes from the kitchen to Joan’s bedroom where the illusion of the chicken she is cutting shifts to that of her husband. This match cut prompts the possibility of Joan hallucinating, repressing or lying about the situation and what happened the morning of her husbands murder. This moment where the visual does the storytelling, displays our intension to show rather than tell.

One of the most successful parts of our work was the editing and visuals. As director, I wanted the climax to feel haunting and act as a tonal shift. With James’s editing skills and Jess’s cinematography, we created a narrative that supported this transition. We captured plenty of footage for a strong foundation, and collaboration between pre production and post production helped us make this production run smoothly.

Unfortunately, we did face challenges in production, with one of the problematic elements being audio. Due to our lack of access to proper microphones, and trouble setting up the equipment, we had to work with noisy and echo heavy dialogue recordings. We attempted to reduce this in post production, however when layering the soundtrack elements the audio still became hard to hear. Overall, we learnt from these issues the importance of sound to building atmosphere and clarity in storytelling.

If we continued Joan Kendall, our group would aim to expand the setting to develop the environments. Our limited space meant the interrogation room was shot in my hallway, being a small and cramped space. If we had more spaces to work in and diverse locations, we could build a more immerse mise en scene that supports the story with more layers. We could also introduce flashbacks to support Joan’s reflection of her relationship with her husband during the interrogation. This would help support the past and present allowing for more contrast during the beginning of the interrogation.

One key learning from the studio was the potential of adaptation. With the pleasure of accessing the ASRC and archival material of the Crawford Production, we were allowed to use stories from the past and discuss how they still resonate with modern times. I learned that adaptation is not about being perfect and fully faithful to the text, how it is about imaginative interpretation and the way that our society has developed over time. As Jason Mittel notes in his work on narrative complexity, today’s audiences seek ambiguity, emotional depth and non-linear storytelling (Mittell, 2006, p.32). Our version of Joan Kendall offers a new kind of experience and focused on emotional depth with a new perspective.

The collaborative nature of Recollecting Rethinking Remaking highlights how collaboration adds strengths to production. Our clear roles helped reduce stress and allow for mutual trust to receive feedback from each other at every stage. Jess and I worked closely together during pre-production and shooting, while James was able to bring fresh eyes during the edit, helping us refine the story without bias. This collaboration felt aligned with Vera John-Steiner’s concept of “complementary collaboration,” where “generative ideas emerge from joint thinking, from significant conversations, and form sustained, shared struggles to achieve new insights from partners in thought,” (Vera, 2006, p.20).

Ultimately, this studio helped me reshape how I view Australian media. With access to the Crawford archives and seeing the older shows helped provide me with deeper appreciation of the role of adaptation in keeping our history alive in modern aspects. Projects like Joan Kendall are not just creative exercises, but act as a form of cultural continuity. Our adaptation may be subtle or abstract in terms of being faithful to the original episode, however we keep the legacy of Homicide alive and relevant for new generations. It also helps me understand how storytelling is endless and meaningful.

REFERENCES

Hutcheon, L. (2013). A Theory of Adaptation. Taylor & Francis Group. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=1016075

Mittell, J. (2006). Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television. Velvet Light Trap, (58), 29-40. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/narrative-complexity-contemporary-american/docview/222869457/se-2?accountid=13552

Vera, J, S. (2006). Creative Collaboration. Oxford University Press, Incorporated. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=430979

1.Adaptation Idea Blog Post

2. Presentation Reflection Blog Post

3. Pre-Production and Research Blog Post

4. Production Blog Post

5. Rough Cut Blog Post

6.Media Adaptation with Synopsis and CCS

Joan Kendall Video

LINK TO JOAN KENDALL YOUTUBE VIDEO

Joan Kendall

Statement:

This short film adaptation of Homicide: Starring Joan Kendall is an adaptation of the episode through contemporary lens, preserving the tension while amplifying the psychological and emotional undertones. Set with the framework of a murder investigation, our short video explores the fragile line between public persona and private life, using Joan Kendall as a person of interest. A symbol of performative identity in both crime and innocence.

Our creative intention is to stay true to the tone and investigative structure of Homicide, while deepening the character complexity and visual imagery. We employ some heavy shadow lighting with confined interiors as well as homely environments to support the normal life Joan Kendall lives. Though this adaptation, we aim to honor the original series while offering a reinterpretation focusing on suspect driven perspective rather than police point of view interrogation. The film is less about solving a murder and more about the confronting masks we wear.

Synopsis

Joan Kendall is a medium adaptation from the show Homicide, Episode 21 Season 12 ‘Starring Joan Kendall’.

The short video is a retelling of events, where Joan Kendall is being interrogated by a police officer to recall her relationship to her husband and what happened the day of his murder. The short video follows day in the life activities and follows the sequence of events until Joan calls the police about her husbands murder.

In our rough cut, Olivia Farmer’s performance of Joan is very captivating and heartfelt. Her delivery is calm and evolves into a character who feels sincere yet leaves space for ambiguity. The tone of the short film is set clearly through the opening audio of the officer in the interrogation room announcing the beginning of a tape recording. This establishes the scene of Joan’s perspective with the tape recording showing the emotions on her face and her speaking to the camera. Visually, the b-roll and supporting footage in accordance to her narrative contrast the present moment where the murder takes place. The interrogation room is shadowy and tense, while the b-roll is warm and softly lit, providing a sense of a cosy home life feeling. Reflecting memory and emotional distance, Joan partakes in activities that reflect on her relationship with her husband and evoke the desaturated emotions she feels internally from the loss of love in her relationship.

The colour grading is stylistic rather than a portrayal of Joan as sinister. This allows for a subtle psychological reading and doesn’t let the audience perceive Joan in a dark manner. While the structure supports Joan’s retelling of events well, the sound design is missing in the current rough cut that would add suspense and illustrate the emotions swelling towards the climax. Once the music and sound effects are added, the film will be elevated by this emotional tension and clarify shifts through time and the tone of the investigation.

Some technical issues such as audio clarity and slightly awkward transitions will be adapted in the final edit to flow more naturally, particularly when the TV static interferes with the beginning of the interrogation recording.

Feedback we expect includes improving the colour consistency between shots, changing the colour grading to be less dull, and making some changes to help elevate the vibrance in the short film.

We also intend to look more closely to our script and storyboard to help ensure that visual elements align to the narration Joan delivers.

I was not present during the class workshop, though I anticipate these notes will be a focus of ours to improve for the final edit where we plan to refine pacing and emotional clarity.

Rough Cut – Joan Kendall

Our short film adaptation of Homicide: Starring Joan Kendall reinterprets the original synopsis, focusing on Joan’s character driven perspective. Rather than centre the narrative on a police investigation, we chose to frame the story around Joan Kendall and her subjective account in the dark interrogation room. This shift allows us creative freedom to build a focus on her emotional state, personal life, and the fractures in her relationship to her husband that led to the murder of her husband.

Without access to the script, our narrative is constructed to blend Joan’s warm, stylised recollection of her home life with darker tones and shifting emotions. We will use b-roll to visualise her memories and soft muted colours to reveal the tension the morning of the incident. Our intention is to present Joan as someone to sympathise with but also suspicious and not to be trusted, encouraging audiences to question how her narrative shapes the perception of truth.

By focusing on Joan’s point of view, the film uses themes of agency, emotional absence and narrative reliability. We are interested in portraying a female protagonist whose motives are complex and have underlying meaning. Audiences can understand the weight of her actions while finding Joan to be unreliable.

When adapting this episode, we were challenged to engage to contemporary questions around gender and morality and how our trust in authority has changed over time.

As Linda Hutcheon recognises, adaptation is a form of repetition without replication, a double process of interpreting and then creating (Hutcheon, 2012, p.33).  This idea supports our work in the way we interpret the synopsis and reframe it through a different perspective. Creating a new story that stays connected but does not replicate the original.

A4 Pre Production Folder Alisha Jess and James

REFERENCES

Hutcheon, L. (2012), A Theory of Adaptation. Taylor & Francis Group. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=1016075

For our production process for Joan Kendall, I took role of the director as I was heavily involved in both the creative and practical aspects of our production. I drafted a script which was later developed with Jess and James who helped improve the script and added some dialogue. I developed the storyboard which allowed for me to have a strong visual idea of how the short film would visually present itself. We filmed the entire project at my house, which is both our set and production base.

I worked closely with Jess and James who were amazing at helping capture the scenes with my camera, reading supporting dialogue, and shifting furniture or providing insight on scenes we could change or take out depending on our ability to replicate the storyboard and understood through the amount of film we had captured already. We sourced props from around my house, including fake blood which helped elevate the mise en scene and add life to the key scenes. Olivia, our actress play Joan Kendall beautifully and adapted quickly to our filming environment and short notice script and storyboard to follow.

One major takeaway from this process was how much creativity can thrive when we are faced with constraints (Tromp, Baer, 2022, p.2). Trying to find indoor locations as a student is challenging. With the help of my parents, I was lucky that they allowed us to film for the day and helped us secure an indoor location. Working in a home setting though is limited and sometimes we had to be resourceful to create fake locations, for instance the interrogation room being just an empty space in my hallway.

Whether it was finding the right lighting using household lamps, or adjusting the script, every challenge became a chance for us to adapt and problem solve as a team. The experience reminded me that our vision and team work is what mattered the most when it comes to storytelling, and honestly sometimes these challenges create great outcomes.

REFERENCES

Tromp, C. Baer, J. (2022). Creativity from Constraints: Theory and Applications to Education. ScienceDirect. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2022.101184

Feedback from the presentation was not what we expected. Initially we presented our Joan Kendall adaptation as a shifting perspective to a voice over narration of the mental world of Joan Kendall. We wanted to reflect her internal dialogue with perspective of the act she commits. However, we received feedback that it did not make sense that we would adapt source material without a script, and that our whole narrative was confused and did not properly adapt Homicide. Through this feedback, our group deeply wanted to try and find another episode we could adapt or use with our synopsis and follow another episode of Homicide with a similar female protagonist lead. To our disappointment, all available times for meet ups and trying to visit the ASRC were interrupted or were not available. Due to this, our next priority was to tidy up our narrative and focus on ways we can make our story more connected to the nature of Homicide and hold more adaptation qualities. Our feedback from the panel was that we needed more Homicide approach, and that we were overlapping different locations, for instance we mentioned the idea of Joan being in a court room and recalling her story, whilst also stating we were doing internal dialogue of her mental conscious. Instead of focusing on internal dialogue of Joan, we changed the idea to have the audio source come from the interrogation that she was situated in. The visuals would show some b-roll that replicates the backstory of how she met her husband, and then continue to overlay her recalling of events to the murdering of her husband that she is being interrogated about. This feedback helped us tidy our story and create a narrative that was easily understood.

Following a peer group’s presentation of their adaptation, I found Leah, Amelia and Marlow’s presentation to be intriguing. I enjoyed how they experimented with style of noir and chiaroscuro lighting. The lighting test and emphasis on the colour grading were not overly considered in our approach which is something we felt captivated by and wanted to develop for our production. I enjoyed seeing their tests to understand whether they could implement the style before production to ensure they were prepared for filming.

Joan Kendall Pitch Presentation

When looking at the episode synopsis for Starring Joan Kendall, Jess and I were intrigued with the concept of Joan being a character with a hidden life. She has it all put together, is an actor with a great family and a loving husband, but closed behind the medicine cabinets are bottles of pills. We wanted to approach this episode with a medium focus on emphasis of sound and visual storytelling. Instead of Homicide’s approach to police investigation and their perspective of criminals, we are focusing on Joan Kendall’s point of view of what happened the morning she murdered her husband. We wanted to focus on mental struggles mixed with personal reasons as to why she killed her husband, but struggled to come up with a concept that wasn’t confusing, yet also didn’t tell the audience what was happening. We wanted to killing to be a surprise to those unfamiliar to the source material and notice our adaptation as a perspective change and a focus on the character who has committed the heinous act, rather than this aggressive nature of an interrogation.

Our idea was informed by Hutcheon and O’Flynn’s ‘A Theory of Adaptation’, where they explore the ways that adaptation has evolved by raising deeper questions and challenge the source material through audience engagement and point of view. (Hutcheon ,O’Flynn, 2012, pp. 39-41). Through this idea and from the theory, we understand our motivation for our adaptation being personal and interactive. Looking at the synopsis through a modern point of view where instead of analyzing a scene from one lenses, we can describe the point of view of another character in the same sequence.

When brainstorming storyboards from the script, we wanted to follow Joan Kendall before committing the act to illustrate her normal life, and how her mental struggle and medication could be a factor into why she murders her husband.

REFERENCES

Hutcheon, L. O’Flynn, S. (2012), A Theory of Adaptation. Taylor & Francis Group. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/rmit/detail.action?docID=1016075

Component 1 Script – Alisha Bennett

Component 2 – Production notes Alisha Bennett

Component 3 Television Segment/Scene Alisha Bennett

Natalie Bennett Release Form

Melanie Bennett Release Form

For my television scene, I created a coming of age adaptation from the show Homicide, episode Kill or Be Killed (1970). From Meikle’s ‘A Theory of Adaptation Audiences’ (2017) she describes how “audiences adapt to the adaptation industry by offering up their own products”. When finishing my sketch, I thought about how I am adapting purely off the script rather than being familiar to the source material. This helped me craft my genre adaptation and provide my own product through imagining the scenario with my own characters and story in mind. Just like reading a book, my imagination is what helped me formulate the structure of my sketch. I filmed with my sister and my mother who generously helped me out. Filming this adaptation helped me learn about the importance of colour when it comes to genre. When discussing my work with group member Cecilia, we provided feedback to each other about how the colour of the sketches represented the chosen genre. Cecilia gave me positive feedback about how the warm tones suited and supports the genre. Cecilia crafted her comedy sketch of the Kill or Be Killed Homicide script segment through a similar process to myself with a script and storyboarding. Each week we presented components to each other and provided feedback. Through this sketch, I would like to develop a sequence less dialogue heavy. I am still learning about the importance of silence in conveying messages and emotions, and that is particularly evident in coming of age stories. I also would like to try other areas such as voice overs and more show don’t tell aspects of adaptation.

REFERENCES

Meikle, K. (2017) A Theory of Adaptation Audiences.  Literature/Film Quarterly. https://lfq.salisbury.edu/_issues/45_4/a_theory_of_adaptation_audiences.html#gsc.tab=0

Minter, D. (Writer), Emanuel, A. , Miller, G. (Directors), (1970, February, 10). Kill or Be Killed (Season 7 Episode 3) [TV Series Episode]. In Crawford, I. (Executive Producer) Homicide. Crawford Productions.