For this assignment, you will be using materials in the MHDL to conduct your own historical
film research – using these digitized archival sources to produce novel analysis on a film from
the first half of the 20th century.
Assignment overview:
1. Choose an American film released before 1950 and then watch that film.
2. The purpose of this assignment is to conduct PRIMARY historical research on your
chosen film. Primary research means engaging with sources that appeared close to (we’ll
say within five years of) the original release date of the film.
Your goal will be to collect a minimum of FIVE primary sources that are directly related
to your film. The sources must be directly about your chosen film – they cannot simply
mention the film in passing. Only a maximum of three of these sources can be
advertisements for the film.
To find primary sources, you will be required to use the following two resources:
The Media History Digital Library (MHDL): www.mediahistoryproject.org . A collection of millions of digitized pages of historical trade magazines and technical
journals.
Lantern: http://lantern.mediahist.org/
A search engine for the MHDL. Be sure to browse the MHDL rather than just searching
it using this tool – not everything in the MHDL will necessarily be included in Lantern,
and browsing the complete collection is a better practice for seeing your sources in their
full context (i.e., what kinds of other material are in the issue), helping you to understand
their function.
After you have collected your five (or more) sources, write a 4-5 page research
report in which you do two things:
a. Summarize each of the sources you found in a logical order, explicitly stating
what the source is and what kind of historical knowledge it gives us – be it about
the film itself, reaction to the film, production/distribution/exhibition history, the
film’s marketing, or something else. If the source has an obvious bias in mind (if
it is studio advertising, for example), be sure to state that in your summary. As
you consider a source’s potential bias, be sure to carefully consider the goal of the
source. Who created this document? What were they trying to accomplish? What
kinds of audiences were they trying to reach? How might those audiences have
made sense of this document/reacted to this document?
b. At the end of your report, include at least one paragraph about what your
research (in aggregate) suggests about the film overall. Consider the following
questions in writing this section
What kind of larger research project (article, dissertation, book) might the
research material support?
– What kind of historical argument, or historical questions, do your sources seem
to support (or at least point toward)?
– What additional kinds of evidence would you need to shore up the argument
suggested by the sources you found?
Include a bibliography at the end of your paper (this does not count toward your
paper’s required length). See more below.
4. The goal of this assignment is to start exploring primary sources related to film history
and to begin thinking about them – it’s not for you to necessarily make a full-fledged
argument about your film. Concentrate on the sources and what they seem to suggest –
it’s perfectly fine to have a speculative argument, as long as you acknowledge what your
sources don’t say or support, and what kinds of additional sources you would need to
actually make a full argument.
Your research report will be assessed based on:
• Whether you fulfilled the guidelines of the assignment (you had at least five sources
pulled from the MHDL, you wrote 4-5 pages summarizing your sources and critically
speculating on a potential argument they might support, you had the required
bibliography, etc.)
• The extent to which your sources actually support your speculative argument. For
example, if your speculative argument is about the sound techniques and strategies used
to produce the 1929 film Applause and your sources say little or nothing about the film’s
sound, you have not fully addressed the prompt.
• Your resourcefulness in finding and analyzing the sources found in your research.
A note about ads:
Probably the simplest way to go about this assignment is to look at your film’s advertisements.
These are easy to find on Lantern. It’s fine if you do this, but it will not fully satisfy this
assignment to simply discuss a bunch of ads. You need to contextualize those ads with other
(non-ad) sources that point to a broader argument about how the film was positioned in the
cinema marketplace, or what plot/text/star elements were emphasized, or what the ads suggest
about the film’s production, or some other broader idea than “here’s the ad campaign.” This is
why you can only include a maximum of three advertisements.
Bibliography:
You need to include a full bibliographic entry at the end of the assignment indicating the date(s)
and page number(s) you are working with so that I can also look at what you are writing about.
For example:
John Doe, “Thomas Edison Does it Again,” Motion Picture World (January 1911): 12.
Formatting:
Please begin your paper at the top of page one and end somewhere on pages 4-5 with a regular
12-point font, one-inch margins, and double-spaced spacing
A few research tips:
1. One of the first things you will want to do is figure out when your film premiered.
Determining this date will help you narrow down when you are likely to find the most
sources about your film. Release dates are slightly more complicated than it might seem
because studios often “prereleased” (premiered) films in New York in advance of their
“general release.” The AFI catalog is a good source for determining both a film’s
premiere date (typically, New York) and the beginning of its general release:
https://aficatalog.afi.com/
2. For your sources, be sure to search around your film’s premiere and release dates (that is
to say, at least six months before and after those dates).
3. When searching, it’s often a good idea to put your film’s title in quotes in the search box
(i.e., “the Love Parade”), but it also helps to be flexible. It will also be worth searching
for other terms connected to your film, such as its director, stars, or its studio/distributor.
(ex.: the Love Parade AND Paramount).
4. If you are looking for reviews, it helps to know that headlines for reviews might not have
the film’s name in them, but something descriptive about the film.
