This 4-page, typed assignment will demonstrate the student’s reading and/or other research in film history, based on an influential “creative”—a director, cinematographer, actor—from the list provided or another approved topic. In the paper, present the person’s innovations, influence, or “signature.”
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Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Do not lift entire sentences, or even phrases, from other authors, without using quotation marks in the body of your paper and a proper citation in a footnote or an endnote. Do not use facts from other authors without a citation. Common knowledge does not require a citation. If all of the books say (for example) that Orson Welles’ infamous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast aired on October 30, 1938, as part of the CBS “Mercury Theatre on the Air,” you needn’t footnote this fact (but you should write it in your own words—avoiding any creative use of adjectives, adverbs, or other vocabulary that belong to the author). However, information that you couldn’t know on your own requires acknowledgment;this might include research results, information about a person’s state of mind, and quotes.
Example: He was tired of playing the “heavy” and famously turned down the lead roles in “High Sierra” and “The Maltese Falcon,” which went to Humphrey Bogart and made the latter a star.[1]
(How does the student writer know the actor’s state of mind? The biographerhas some evidence of this—perhaps from research using the actor’s own diary, studio memos, and other artifacts—but you, the student reading that source, must quote and footnote such information.)
Another style of citation does not use footnotes, but puts the author’s name and the date of publication in parentheses:
In the production of entertainment programming, women comprise only 15 percent of producers, 25 percent of writers, and nine percent of directors (Steenland, 1991). The few women who have made inroads on the visually oriented professions are operating in a system and discursive practice that they, for the most part, did not help to create. As CNN anchor Mary Alice Williams said of television news, “Men got in at the birth of television in 1949—women got in en massein 1971” (Nash, 1989, p. 312).
Don’t let textual excerpts take over your paper! Just because you are quoting sources to avoid plagiarism doesn’t mean that large portions should dominate your paper as a means of increasing your page count! Direct quotation may not exceed 30% of your paper’s content.
If you have learned a particular citation style in another course, you may use it in your term paper. This includes APA style, MLA style, and Chicago style. A final bibliography must appear at the end of the term paper,regardless of citation style used throughout the paper. Depending on the style you use, this bibliography might be referred to as “Works Cited” (MLA), “References” (APA), or “Bibliography.”
No wiki may appear as a source in your paper(e.g., Wikipedia, imdb.com), although you’ll probably get your initial ideas from such. Avoidwhat I call “laundry lists”of facts or ideas. You should provide some sort of discussion of what is academically, socially, technically, historically, or economically significant about the things you list. I shouldn’t reach the end of your paper and think, “So what?” Try to develop a particular “angle” on your topic, based on (for example) what are its implications for filmmakers or audiences or critics, etc.
Avoid details of the subject’s personal life. We don’t really need to know about the parents, spouse, and children of this person (unless they’re part of an acting “dynasty” or something); their romances, foibles, and other “gossipy” information is also not likely to be relevant (unless it was career-altering, as in the case of director Roman Polanski).
Papers will be prepared with one-inch margins all around, 12-point Times New Roman, double line spacing—with no extra spacing between paragraphs—and a separate cover page. The bibliography and the cover page are not part of the 4 minimum pages required.
