A Book about Movies or a Movie about Books

Introduction

Nowadays, whenever people are free, they either spend time watching a movie or reading a book. Both movies and books are a source of information and entertainment. There exist many arguments on how one is better than the other and what benefits any of them provides. Then there exist some opinions that both are interesting and beneficial in their way, and both have some pros and cons. To debate over the preference of written literature over films or movies or vice versa, we will try to provide a compare and contrast paper that will explain the similarities and differences between movies and books. For this purpose, we will take help of five factors and then observe how these factors are linked to books and movies. Movies and books though both are good sources of entertainment and knowledge differ in idea growth, entertainment factor, time consumption, availability, and understanding.

Discussion

Idea growth and imagination is an important factor while selecting between movies and books. The books help us imagine the situation, characters, nature and behavior of characters and holds a good transition between scenarios to help the reader imagine the prompt of the story and make up his mind for the next part of the story. The movies, however, do not help the viewer go deep in imagination. The viewer is more focused on the character’s appearance, environment and other details in scenes and cannot imagine much what the story is going to present next. In movies, we cannot focus on one thing because our attention is towards what actually scene is showing rather than why this character is behaving like this or what can be outcomes of the event in the previous scene.

When it comes to discussion about the entertainment factor in book and movie, again book gets a more positive response. The books provide entertainment to the reader by involving him in the story and allows him to predict the next event by using his imagination, the level of interest increases throughout the storyline and reader feels himself part of the story when he thinks about the behavior of characters and how story follows. Movies, on the other hand, provide a different type of entertainment. The viewer enjoys the colorful scenes and likes the attention to detail that directors provide in the movie.

Time consumption and availability varies in both books and movies. It is dependent on the reader or viewer to how much time he will devote to reading a book or watch a movie respectively. Nowadays, with the advent of the internet, we have access to both literature and movies. It also depends on person to how much time he can devote to the movie as the average length of the movie is about 2 hours and the average time a book on the same concept will take up to 4 hours. Here again, the factor of imagination arises, while reading a book person can take a pause and analyze what the author is presenting, which is not possible in movies as a person becomes too involved in the scenes and camera effects that he does not like to pause and think or provide his analyses of the movie.

We have heard a popular term from most people that “Movie was nothing like the novel,” this statement verifies that the level of understanding is more in books than it is in movies. In books, the author explains the personality of a character and his behavior with others in the form of declarative sentences. Reading the text helps him understand the character more and allows him to make up an image of the character in his mind. Whereas in movies the characters are understood by their physical appearance, and their interaction with others and the viewer understands the character by these aspects.

Conclusion

We cannot provide an argument which source of media is better as it all depends on the reader or viewer.  Factors like age, interest, and personality change our likeness of each. Both movies and books have a different way of presenting the story, but they are similar to the main ideas and both complete their end goal in their way, i.e., personal satisfaction.