Multidisciplinary conversation
A Boy Named Flora A was adapted from a short story by the young author Yang Fumin. “We have filmed adaptations of works by Yang Qingchu, Wang Zhenhe, and Kenneth Pai, but they were all written a while back. So this time we hoped to find a work by a younger author.” From its script to its cinematography, the show earned praise as a successful adaptation, and it was widely viewed in literary circles.
Q Series has intentionally fostered a conversation between music, fashion, animation, literature and other arts. In A Boy Named Flora A, Crowd Lu played the main character, and he also composed the show’s opening and closing theme songs. With their warm guitar playing, lyrics that blend Mandarin and Taiwanese, and soft emotive singing, the two songs “He-R” and “Hope One Day” add a lot to the whole show. On Facebook, the outfits of the characters generated discussion about clothing and fashion. The show is also going to be turned into a cartoon, providing creative fodder for Taiwan’s animators.
In fact, the move from solo industry efforts toward greater cross-disciplinary exchange and cooperation is still in its early stages. What is most important is that this interchange produces greater creative vitality on all sides and adds to the robustness of the works produced. Only then will it have produced value. Qu says: “Literature enriches the imaginative potential of images, allowing imaginations to fly free.”
Yang Fumin says that the opportunity provided by this adaptation has prompted him to take another look at the general context for literary adaptations and at the differences between creating with images and with words. For the adaptation, that was the first challenge he had to overcome.
“Working with the TV series makers, I learned a lot about various narrative methods,” he says. “Previously, I only knew how to use words to tell a story. But during this process of cooperation, the people, the script, the setting and every link in the chain all had to be considered differently. The same event had to be understood from many different angles. That was the most rewarding part of the experience for me.”
Crowd Lu and Tsai Chen-nan have at each other; Yang Fumin, author of the short story from which the show was adapted, makes a cameo appearance; characters appear as half human, half grub…. Excellent scenes such as these have earned A Boy Named Flora A great popularity.