Movie Analysis: (Remember, this is not a summary)
3-5 double-spaced pages.
Documentation: Chicago or APA – Your choice
Draft due by the assigned due date in your syllabus! = Draft worth 25 points!
Final Revised Copy due by assigned date after your first copy is revised.
Movie: Of your choosing (Please try and avoid the Disney or Children’s Movie Genre).
In college and in life, you should learn to see certain elements of everyday life with a more critical awareness and a deeper understanding. In this paper, you will select a film to watch and analyze. Keep in mind that you will need to brush up on a few of the literary/movie terms to use in your piece, and you will need to focus on not just whether or not the film is good or bad, but also what theme the film focuses on as well as what the director seems to be conveying to the audience about the subject.
For example, the film Blood Diamond portrays the awful reality of the diamond mining trade as well as why American consumers should be more cautious when purchasing goods.
Use the outline and paper sample to help you draft.
Course Learning Outcomes: (keep these in mind for completing your final portfolio at the end of the semester)
Demonstrate a clear understanding of the rhetorical situation, including purpose, context, audience, and genre.
Engage in effective writing processes to include pre-writing, exchanging drafts, and revising.
Use writing and reading for inquiry, learning, thinking, and communicating.
Use electronic environments for drafting, reviewing, revising, editing, and sharing texts.
Produce texts that are grounded in evidence and formally documented
Analyze texts to describe how and why writers use rhetorical devices
Summary of Assignment
For you second major assignment, I would like you to write at least a 3- page movie review. In this assignment, you will continue to use your more rational, academic voice to describe a movie to your audience. Please watch a movie of your choice.
Your movie review should be written for an audience of Amridge students, faculty, and staff who read these types of reviews, but keep the wider and more specific audience in mind. Your primary readers are people on campus who have not seen the movie.
They want you to summarize and describe the movie without giving away the ending. So describe in detail. They also want you to explain whether you thought the movie was worth seeing—use descriptive language to show your audience in writing why the movie sets out to attract and hold the viewer’s attention. In order to do a thorough job with your explanation, you will need to offer a critical analysis of the film. This means discussing the strengths—as you will in your extra discussion posted this week on the Discussion Board—AND the weaknesses.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Movies follow specific genres (e.g. romantic comedy, horror, action, science fiction, documentary). How well does this movie measure up against the genre and other movies in this genre?
Movie goers have some “common expectations” about what makes this kind of movie good or bad. What are these criteria and how well does the movie satisfy them?
Your readers are mostly college students, not the broader public. What values and interests do they have that might influence whether they would like the film?
In this assignment, your objectives are to demonstrate that you can
Write an effective review
Define a subject clearly
Describe or summarize your subject for your readers
Offer a clearly articulated critical analysis of the film
Form and use a solid thesis statement
Use a clear introduction, body, and conclusion to organize your writing
Your movie must be listed on your Bibliography or Reference Page
You must also find one additional source to use in your paper (an article on the theme or subject matter portrayed in the film)
You will, thus, have two sources in the paper:
Film
Article related to subject matter
(Bibliography: Include a reference list as the final page of your essay (not included in the page and word count). At the very least cite the film and the source of the image(s) you include in your essay. But you must also cite any articles you paraphrase, summarize, or quote in your essay.)
Please review the notes below from the UNC Writing Center that will help you better understand summary versus analysis: WHY IS IT SO TEMPTING TO STICK WITH SUMMARY AND SKIP ANALYSIS?
Many writers rely too heavily on summary because it is what they can most easily write. If you’re stalled by a difficult writing prompt, summarizing the plot of The Great Gatsby may be more appealing than staring at the computer for three hours and wondering what to say about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s use of color symbolism. After all, the plot is usually the easiest part of a work to understand. Something similar can happen even when what you are writing about has no plot: if you don’t really understand an author’s argument, it might seem easiest to just repeat what he or she said.
To write a more analytical paper, you may need to review the text or film you are writing about, with a focus on the elements that are relevant to your thesis. If possible, carefully consider your writing assignment before reading, viewing, or listening to the material about which you’ll be writing so that your encounter with the material will be more purposeful.
As you read through your essay, ask yourself the following questions:
Am I stating something that would be obvious to a reader or viewer? Does my essay move through the plot, history, or author’s argument in chronological order, or in the exact same order the author used?
Am I simply describing what happens, where it happens, or whom it happens to?
A “yes” to any of these questions may be a sign that you are summarizing. If you answer yes to the questions below, though, it is a sign that your paper may have more analysis (which is usually a good thing):
Am I making an original argument about the text?
Have I arranged my evidence around my own points, rather than just following the author’s or plot’s order?
Am I explaining why or how an aspect of the text is significant?
Certain phrases are warning signs of summary. Keep an eye out for these:
“[This essay] is about…”
“[This book] is the story of…”
“[This author] writes about…”
“[This movie] is set in…” Here’s an example of an introductory paragraph containing unnecessary summary. Sentences that summarize are in italics:
The Great Gatsby is the story of a mysterious millionaire, Jay Gatsby, who lives alone on an island in New York. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote the book, but the narrator is Nick Carraway. Nick is Gatsby’s neighbor, and he chronicles the story of Gatsby and his circle of friends, beginning with his introduction to the strange man and ending with Gatsby’s tragic death. In the story, Nick describes his environment through various colors, including green, white, and grey. Whereas white and grey symbolize false purity and decay respectively, the color green offers a symbol of hope.
Here’s how you might change the paragraph to make it a more effective introduction:
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald provides readers with detailed descriptions of the area surrounding East Egg, New York. In fact, Nick
Carraway’s narration describes the setting with as much detail as the characters in the book. Nick’s description of the colors in his environment presents the book’s themes, symbolizing significant aspects of the post-World War I era. Whereas white and grey symbolize the false purity and decay of the 1920s, the color green offers a symbol of hope.
This version of the paragraph mentions the book’s title, author, setting, and narrator so that the reader is reminded of the text. And that sounds a lot like summary—but the paragraph quickly moves on to the writer’s own main topic: the setting and its relationship to the main themes of the book. The paragraph then closes with the writer’s specific thesis about the symbolism of white, grey, and green.
HOW DO I WRITE MORE ANALYTICALLY?
Analysis requires breaking something—like a story, poem, play, theory, or argument—into parts so you can understand how those parts work together to make the whole. Ideally, you should begin to analyze a work as you read or view it instead of waiting until after you’re done—it may help you to jot down some notes as you read. Your notes can be about major themes or ideas you notice, as well as anything that intrigues, puzzles, excites, or irritates you. Remember, analytic writing goes beyond the obvious to discuss questions of how and why—so ask yourself those questions as you read.
The St. Martin’s Handbook (the bulleted material below is quoted from p. 38 of the fifth edition) encourages readers to take the following steps in order to analyze a text:
Identify evidence that supports or illustrates the main point or theme as well as anything that seems to contradict it.
Consider the relationship between the words and the visuals in the work. Are they well integrated, or are they sometimes at odds with one another? What functions do the visuals serve? To capture attention? To provide more detailed information or illustration? To appeal to readers’ emotions?
Decide whether the sources used are trustworthy.
Identify the work’s underlying assumptions about the subject, as well as any biases it reveals.
Once you have written a draft, some questions you might want to ask yourself about your writing are “What’s my point?” or “What am I arguing in this paper?”
If you can’t answer these questions, then you haven’t gone beyond summarizing. You may also want to think about how much of your writing comes from your own ideas or arguments. If you’re only reporting someone else’s ideas, you probably aren’t offering an analysis.
WHAT STRATEGIES CAN HELP ME AVOID EXCESSIVE SUMMARY?
Read the assignment (the prompt) as soon as you get it. Make sure to reread it before you start writing. Go back to your assignment often while you write.
Formulate an argument (including a good thesis) and be sure that your final draft is structured around it, including aspects of the plot, story, history, background, etc. only as evidence for your argument.
Read critically—imagine having a dialogue with the work you are discussing. What parts do you agree with? What parts do you disagree with? What questions do you have about the work? Does it remind you of othe