# Analyzing Film Adaptation through Narrative Alignment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.04020 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04020/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Nov 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Neural Machine Translation by Jointly Learning to Align and Translate](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.0473/) (2014)
- [MS MARCO: A Human Generated MAchine Reading COmprehension Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.09268/) (2016)
- [Aligning Books and Movies: Towards Story-like Visual Explanations by Watching Movies and Reading Books](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.06724/) (2015)
- [Distributed Representations of Sentences and Documents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.4053/) (2014)
- [SGPT: GPT Sentence Embeddings for Semantic Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08904/) (2022)
- [What time is it? Temporal Analysis of Novels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.04124/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Previously on the Stories: Recap Snippet Identification for Story Reading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07271/) (2024)
- [Interconnected Kingdoms: Comparing 'A Song of Ice and Fire' Adaptations Across Media Using Complex Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.05453/) (2024)
- [FocalLens: Visualizing Narratives through Focalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14456/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Novels are often adapted into feature films, but the differences between the two media usually require dropping sections of the source text from the movie script. Here we study this screen adaptation process by constructing narrative alignments using the Smith-Waterman local alignment algorithm coupled with SBERT embedding distance to quantify text similarity between scenes and book units. We use these alignments to perform an automated analysis of 40 adaptations, revealing insights into the screenwriting process concerning (i) faithfulness of adaptation, (ii) importance of dialog, (iii) preservation of narrative order, and (iv) gender representation issues reflective of the Bechdel test.