Posted by: @col-klink

One thing I think future cinematic adaptations could try though is to have different music play for each character's face. The ones I've mentioned do this for Edmund. If I remember correctly, the BBC version plays ominous music when his face is shown and in the Walden Media one, the happy music for the other characters' reactions has trailed off by the time the camera reaches his face. But the same musical theme is playing over Peter, Susan and Lucy's faces even though they're each supposed to be experiencing something a bit different. Maybe instead you could play a martial theme for Peter, an ecstatic one for Lucy and Susan can get the kind of gentle music BBC and Walden played for all of them. Then again, maybe that would make the moment seem even more ridiculously over-the-top to viewers who haven't read the book.

That's a pretty good idea, really — I can imagine it working if it's only a few seconds' worth of close-up and musical theme for each of the children. That is, it'd be better to do it fairly subtly — maybe with the camera panning relatively slowly around the four of them (if they're standing huddled around Mr Beaver at this point, as they are in the book) and pausing for just a moment on each child, rather than cutting between direct close-up shots of each one.

The accompanying music, as you've suggested, could be something ominous for Edmund, martial for Peter, serene for Susan and ecstatic for Lucy (that's the order in which their feelings are described in the book), but preferably only a small snatch of music for each, not a whole extended theme. It would take a really skilled composer to write a passage of the score that moves seamlessly through those four different moods, so that they all segue naturally one after the other as the camera's focus moves over each child, but I reckon it could be done.

My point about it being subtle — both the visuals and the music — is that if it's done too heavy-handedly, viewers who aren't familiar with the story will probably think "Huh, what was that all about? Yeah, right, I guess they're trying to signal that this Aslan is Someone Really Significant, but that's a pretty weird way of doing it..." But in the hands of the right director and composer — whoever those may be, if they exist at all...  

(Sidenote: I hate to say this since I want adaptations to follow the book, but if they try to capture this moment, they probably shouldn't have Lucy immediately ask about Tumnus afterwards like a comical record scratch sound effect.) 

Yeah, good point. Perhaps, in this proposed way of doing it, since Lucy is the last one we see as the camera moves around, then after her little snatch of music, she could speak up with something like "Aslan...? Who's that? And please... what about Mr Tumnus?" That way, we can get something of her sense of wonderment on hearing this name, then see her thoughts quickly turning back to her anxiety for her friend, which I think would make for a more natural change of subject than her immediately cutting in with "And what about Mr Tumnus?" like she does in the book.

If they played music when Aslan’s name is first heard would just a few seconds of it be enough? And of course there would have to be some appropriate video to accompany the music.  Perhaps classical music or something like it would work for the Pevensies, and I can imagine them appreciating it except for Edmund, who experienced horror at the mention of Aslan’s name. How long should it be for each of the Pevensies?  Would more than a few seconds or a minute be enough or would that be tiresome or artificial for a movie or television series?  It does seem like something like that would work only if it shows the greatness of Aslan.