Choose Your Film. Begin by choosing any film that you want to write about. Perhaps it is a film you’ve already seen and want to see once again—with a critical eye and toolbox you’ve learned in this course.
Analyze the Film. You will have an opportunity to express yourself as a film critic, someone who knows, and is passionate to write about, an aspect of film. Your review should demonstrate careful reading and close engagement with the film that you are reviewing. Think about writing a piece that could appear in the New York Times, the New Yorker, a trending blog in film or cultural studies, or in the online journal for undergraduates, Film Matters (Links to an external site.). Here’s a link to a published piece from Miami student Leah Gaus, an essay she wrote about ideal femininity and gender performance in Little Miss Sunshine and Dumplin’ (Links to an external site.). Be sure to refer to Writing About Movies for tips about creating your review.
Your review should also incorporate your opinion and astute analysis of filmic elements (such as camera shots, lighting, sound, camera angles, and mise-èn-scene).
To enrich your overall analysis, also observe the following (not in any particular order, but rather fold these items organically into your paper):
Personal Evaluation. Include your personal evaluation (that is, response) about the production. This should go beyond “I really liked it. . .” to make more substantive claims like “the production values were poor”). Do include your opinion (it is perfectly okay to use “I” when doing so), and be sure to give examples and evidence about why the production was successful or not.
Production Values & Cinematic Elements. Director’s concept, camerawork, acting choices, costumes & make-up, lighting, sound score
Close Reading. Refer to at least two specific moments in the film that exemplify your overall analysis. Describe in detail.
Context & Research. Research is important to this project. In order to know how this production created meaning, you will need to access:
Factual overview of the production, actors, and production details. Have a look at IMDb (Links to an external site.) or Rotten Tomatoes. (Links to an external site.)
Reviews of films. Use Film & Television & Literature Database or MLA Index (on Miami’s library page). Please use 4 sources for your paper. You may use up to 2 sources from our class readings for a total of 4 sources. Of course, you can always cite more than 4 sources if you feel that will help your paper.
Length: Your paper should be 5-6, double-spaced pages and a Works Cited.
Finishing & Polishing the Paper. Polish your prose, using proper MLA or Chicago citation style.
Category: Art : Film
Movie Options: Tampopo, Seven Samurai, Pather Panchali, Tokyo Story, Enter the Dragon, Sholay
Primary Guidelines
1. 7-8 pages long, double-spaced, size 12 font.
2. Assume that you are writing the paper for an imaginary reader who saw the film 15 years ago. Thus provide a critical synopsis of the film to refamiliarize them. A critical synopsis should be dictated by the topic of the paper. Thus, if you are writing about gender and race in Enter the Dragon, that should dominate the synopsis rather than the fighting. If your paper is a psychological exploration of the complicated Kikochiyu, Mifune’s character should dominate your synopsis of The Seven Samurai.
4. Illustrate your thesis with close, cinematic readings of two symptomatic scenes. Please remember, you are writing about a film, not just a plot. Bring in cinematic elements, music score, aspects of editing, etc.
5. You can write a paper on either 1 or 2 films.
Possible Paper Options
1. Tradition versus modernity
2. Country/village versus the big city
3. Agrarian feudalism versus industrial capitalism.
4. Caste and class
5. Transformation of gender roles and changing family structures from extended family/clan to nuclear families.
6. Traditional time consciousness versus clockwork industrial time. 7. Nature
8. Traditional storytelling versus cinematic time (are some of these films ‘slow’?)
9. Genre transformations (Seven Samurai or Sholay as western, Enter the Dragon as spy film).
10. Cinematic techniques (Ozu’s shot taking for example), melodrama, indigenous theatrical traditions, editing, performance, music etc. What can be an ‘Asian’ cinematic contra Hollywood? How do these films fare in a test of ‘realism’?
11. Historical contexts. India of the 1920s or postwar Japan. The present/absent state. (The village without a policeman in Sholay).
12. Mythic or epic styles of presentation.
I can send the pdf files for citations after you choose the 1-2 movies to write about.
Should films about the Anthropocene tell their audiences a progressive (things are generally getting better) or a declensionist (things are generally getting worse) story? Why do you think that? In an essay (1500 words), we are asking you to compare two documentaries about the Anthropocene and explain which documentary—in your view—offers a better interpretation of the Anthropocene:
1) David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet,directed by Alastair Fothergill, Jonathan Hughes, Keith Scholey
and
2) All That Breathes, directed by Shaunek Sen
You don’t need to do any outside research, but you need to read and respond carefully to the director Shaunek Sen’s interview with Amy Goodman and Jerrine Tan’s “Watching A Life on Our Planet”.
Please use the following prompt to write your essay.
-The essay must have 1500 words, about 5 pages (don’t worry if your word count goes over that number by ~200 words)
-Each paragraph is about 200 words. Each paragraph should discuss both documentaries (EXCEPT for the scene unpacked paragraph) AND clearly explain which doc does a better job with the paragraph prompt.
Introductory paragraph:
-How should the Anthropocene be filmed—things are getting better or things are getting worse? Why do you think that?
-Explain which documentary—in your view—offers a better interpretation of the Anthropocene
-Paragraph 1 on Aesthetics (how the films are put together in terms of looks and sounds)
-Paragraph 2 on Telling a story (what is the narrative that the filmmakers created? Is it the best choice about beginning, middle, and end? Does the narrative have the best trajectory—things getting better or getting worse or hard to tell?)
-Paragraph 3 on Who exactly is the “we” in the story? Is it mostly a single person? A group of people? From a specific time or place? Why do you think the filmmakers made that particular choice?
-Paragraph 4 on how (if at all) do the filmmakers tell their audiences to do something political, economic, social, aesthetic, ecological, etc., about the Anthropocene? In other words, do you think film should be primarily an instrument for change in the world or is it enough to make something beautiful and/or provocative for viewers to experience?
-Paragraph 5 in the doc with the “better interpretation” pick one important five-minute segment (scene) from the documentary that you want to unpack in detail. You will explain what you think the filmmakers were trying to accomplish in the scene and how the scene itself “worked.” How did the choice of subject, shot selection and duration, framing within the shot, narration and interviews (or lack thereof), music, and/or editing come together to make the scene work together? Why does this scene capture the Anthro the best?
-Conclusion paragraph: Imagine what you might remember from this film in five years? What parts or take-aways do you hope to remember from watching and writing about these two films? Which piece—Sen interview or Tan review—made a bigger impression on you regarding the Anthropocene on film?
-In addition, your essay must be organized (what are the links among your insights, evaluations, or evidence? how does one paragraph lead to the second and so on?), well-written, proofread, and it must demonstrate your critical, thoughtful response to both films. Can use first-person pronouns like “I” or “We.” You should include a bibliography or works cited list or footnotes. Whatever citation style you use (Chicago, APA, etc.), just use the citation style consistently and correctly.