I've gone to using a custom credit because too many people have trouble wrapping their heads around what an adaptation is in order to give it an OMB credit.  I'm not going to bother rehashing this all over again, suffice to say that without the adaptation, the screenplay would never exist in it's final form.

It would appear that the original thread has rolled off somewhere as I can't find any of my posts on the subject when searching through my history.

The short version is that an adaptation takes a story and makes it filmable.  The same thing occurs for stage productions.  Locations are condensed, multiple characters may be condensed, entire plotlines may be condensed.  Then, from this new version of the story, a screenplay is written.

The point is, a story can encompass a million different locations, characters and subplots because there is no cost involved with simply writing the words.  However, a film or stage production operates on a budget, both financially and time-wise.  The adaptation attempts to grab the essential part of the story and make it fit the production constraints.

Quoting mdnitoil:

Quote:
It would appear that the original thread has rolled off somewhere as I can't find any of my posts on the subject when searching through my history.

The short version is that an adaptation takes a story and makes it filmable.  The same thing occurs for stage productions.  Locations are condensed, multiple characters may be condensed, entire plotlines may be condensed.  Then, from this new version of the story, a screenplay is written.

The point is, a story can encompass a million different locations, characters and subplots because there is no cost involved with simply writing the words.  However, a film or stage production operates on a budget, both financially and time-wise.  The adaptation attempts to grab the essential part of the story and make it fit the production constraints.

That makes sense to me.

So broken down to it's most basic:

A story is written.
An adaptation of that story is written.
A screenplay of the adaptation is written.

Making both the original story and the adaptation Original Material By.

I'm good with that.

Thanks for the explanation!

For the reasons mdnitoil stated, I always enter it as OMB.

I thought OMB had to be an original work. Since an adaptation is something else (it has to be based on something), wouldn't it be better to have Adaptation By as a unique entry in the crew chart? Otherwise we lose the distinction between the two which makes them pretty useless.

Quoting mdnitoil:

Quote:
The only other option is to lobby for a new credit, but do we really want to go through and audit everything again?

I guess that depends on whether you want DVDP crew credits to reflect what the actual credits are, or just be a close approximation.

I'd prefer to see a proper crew credit added to the program, rather than dilute the OMB credit with credits that really aren't OMB.

If you use custom credits for this stuff, audits wouldn't be required when the program gets updated.

Quoting Danae Cassandra:

Quote:
Quoting KinoNiki:

Quote:
I thought OMB had to be an original work. Since an adaptation is something else (it has to be based on something), wouldn't it be better to have Adaptation By as a unique entry in the crew chart? Otherwise we lose the distinction between the two which makes them pretty useless.

This.

I do not believe Adaptation By fits any of the categories we currently have under writing.  I would like to see it added to the list, but currently I do not believe it is a credit we can properly track.

This.

Quoting KinoNiki:

Quote:
I thought OMB had to be an original work. Since an adaptation is something else (it has to be based on something), wouldn't it be better to have Adaptation By as a unique entry in the crew chart? Otherwise we lose the distinction between the two which makes them pretty useless.

While I don't have an issue with someone putting it in as OMB, I wouldn't do it myself for these reasons.

IMO, adapted by is not original material at all. Someone is adapting someone else's characters and ideas for a movie, they aren't creating something original themselves.

As mdnitoil wrote, it's more than just writing something new down, and there's a lot that it entails (which is partially why I can understand why they should get some sort of credit), but I would rather see it in its own field.