For your final assignment/exam in this class, you will critically and creatively analyze a single scene from any film available on the LBCC Library Sony Pictures Classic Collection. You will contextualize the scene within the narrative, thematic, and/or character development of the movie and examine how the various techniques and concepts used by the cast and crew contribute to the movie. This is the capstone project for the course, assessing all of the learning outcomes.
You will model your essay after the sample student essay (with lots of useful annotations) provided below. For this assignment, you write a 4-5 page double-spaced analysis essay and submit your accompanying shot-by-shot notes. The Scene Analysis must properly use at least six vocabulary terms from the Moving Pictures textbook in order to earn a passing grade. Note that the model essay linked below is longer than the one you are required to write, so a useful exercise might be to read that chapter and the professor's comments and think about how you would trim the essay to 4-5 pages like your own essay will be.
This is your final assignment for the term. Submit your essay and notes as a single PDF, Word, or Google document, There is no exam during finals week. Late papers will be accepted until Wednesday of Finals Week with a 10% penalty for each day it is late.
You are required to take notes on your scene before you start writing your essay. You may choose any film available on the LBCC Library Sony Pictures Classic Collection. Your notes will be worth 75 points and your essay 175 points. If you type your notes, include them at the end of your essay. If you take handwritten notes, snap photos of them and paste those in to the end of your essay or post them with your Essay to Canvas. You do not have to include all of your notes in the essay but you should use at least some of them.
There are several ways to slow down a film or tv show shot by shot to notice the editing and other elements. You might try: using screen snip or your phone to capture individual shots; use a DVD player with a frame by frame advance option; download a clip from the web into Microsoft Movie Maker (a standard program on Windows machines) to use the frame by frame advance option.
Keep the following rubric in mind as you write your essay.
* Begin your essay with an introduction that invites the reader into your paper and provides a clear thesis statement providing your argument about what makes this particular scene important to the overall development of the film's themes and/or characters (or film history).
* Begin each body paragraph with topic sentences that build on your thesis. Discuss and describe very specific details and examples from the film, do not provide unneeded plot summary since the people reading your paper will all be people in the class who just watched the film as well.
* Make sure to include a conclusion paragraph that does not simply repeat your thesis but instead explains how your essay was organized to prove your thesis and what the broader implications of you analysis are for the study of this film or tv show, this writer or director, or this period of film or tv history.
* Do some basic formatting (have a title, page numbers, etc) and proofreading before posting your essay. You should not need to use any sources other than those provided by the course, but if you do reference any of the course texts be sure to include proper citation.
*Be sure to cite movie timestamps as in-text citation in your essay.
Here are links to the scenes analyzed in the sample student paper in the Sikov textbook.