You may pick one of the movies to do a screening on.
It should be one to two pages (250-500 words) and analyze the film’s theme and formal elements like camera work, lighting, composition, color, sound, and editing. It is helpful to use the “screening checklist” questions in each chapter as a prompt.
1) A useful initial step in analyzing any movie is to distinguish an individual scene’s content from its form. First try to identify a scene’s subject matter: What is this scene about? What happens? Once you have established that content, you should consider how that content was expressed.
What was the mood of the scene? What do you understand about each character’s state of mind? How did you perceive and interpret each moment? Did that understanding shift at any point? Once you know what happened and how you felt about it, search the scene for those formal elements that influenced your interpretation and experience.
The combination and interplay of multiple formal elements that you seek is the cinematic language that movies employ to communicate with the viewer.
2) Do any narrative or visual patterns recur a sufficient number of times to suggest a structural element in themselves? If so, what are these patterns? Do they help you determine the meaning of the film?
3) Do you notice anything particular about the movie’s presentation of cinematic space? What do you see on the screen? Lots of landscapes or close-ups? Moving or static camera?
4) Does the director manipulate viewers’ experience of time? Is this condensing, slowing, speeding, repeating, or reordering of time simply practical (as in removing insignificant events) or is it expressive? If it is expressive, just what does it express?
5) Does the director’s use of lighting help to create meaning? If so, how?
6) Do you identify with the camera lens? What does the director compel you to see? What is left to your imagination? What does the director leave out altogether? In the end, besides showing you the action, how does the director’s use of the camera help to create the movie’s meaning?
