First Writing Assignment:
The paper is due by June 16th.

PART 1

Write a 2 to 3 page paper on the prompt below.

Compare these two films:

How are these films similar, and/or in what ways might they be different? Apply the analytic tools and writing strategies presented in Maria Pramaggiore and Tom Wallis, "Writing About Film."

You must cite material from your textbooks. Be sure that you accurately apply the Chicago Manual of Style (see Diana Hacker's handbook). I also encourage the use of outside resources (e.g., books, scholarly journals), however, refrain from using the internet as a resource.

NOTE: It is advisable that you review David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art, "Chapter 12 – Film Art and Film History” when researching and writing your paper.

I've created a general outline for the papers. You must attach the filled-in outline to your paper (click here for outline).

PART 2

Using the form provided here (click here) create a proposal for a "Kiss" film of your own. The proposal should be 1 to 2 pages.

Second Writing Assignment

The paper is due by June 28th.

PART 1

Write a two to three page paper on the subject below.

Discuss the affect editing has on this sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954). How does the audio track work with the editing to help intensify the suspense in the sequence. (Note: In this scene Tony has hired another man to kill his wife, Margot. Tony instructs the hired killer to kill his wife once he calls.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBoL2vMJkCs

PART 2

Provide a shot list for the selected sequence above; describe each shot. Include information about audio design as it relates to the respective shot. Click here for shot list template. After you've identified each shot, imagine that you're the unit production manager (UPM) explain how this would be most economically shot - i.e., group similar shots together to create a production shot list.

Third Writing Assignment

The paper is due by July 7th.

PART 1

Write a 2 to 3 page paper on ONE of the prompts below.

Discuss the “Men in Black” sequence in Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience (Richard Robbins, 2007). Address some of the questions below:

• How does the mise-en-scene effect the meaning of the sequence?
• How does the composition effect the meaning of the sequence?
• How does the voice-over correspond to the visual material?
• Does the reconstruction of events with animation impinge the ‘truth-value’ of the sequence?

• Apply Laura Mulvey's ideas about the male gaze and the female form to the selected clip from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.
  

• In what ways does Larry Clark's Kids conform to the tradition of Realism? Would André Bazin characterize Clark's film as a Realist film? If so, why? If not, why?

Lionsgate will not allow the selected clip to be posted on YouTube - see this link instead (click).

• Manthia Diawara says at the conclusion of his essay that cinema should “question the passive role of the spectator in the dominant film culture. One of the roles of black independent cinema, therefore, must be to increase spectator awareness of the impossibility of an uncritical acceptance of Hollywood products.”¹ In what ways might Baadasssss fulfill Diawara’s assertion? How do Mario and Melvin Van Peebles challenge representations of black (male) characters?

PART 2

Create a 5-page script (approximately 5 minutes of screen-time) from the selected clip from Luis Buñuel's 1930 film L'age d'or [The Age of Gold]. Use the standard script format (i.e., not a shooting script) to create a script for the selected sequence below. For basic screenwriting formatting see Professor Hoxter's blog.

NOTE: the selected clip is about 10 minutes, so you're not obligated to script the entire sequence, only about 5 minutes worth - i.e., 5 pages. Also you have complete liberty here to construct whatever narrative you like, feel free to integrate, or disregard the subtitles. You could do something like Woody Allen's What's Up Tiger Lily, or construct a narrative (and dialogue) that is relatively "true" to what happens onscreen.