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Student Film Study Projects
he following projects are examples of what students can do to supplement class screenings and discussions. I have used them all in my
classes.
1. Group Viewing Profile
Complete the following questionnaire about your movie viewing and then compare your findings with those of several other students. Prepare a group profile
that reflects the preferences and habits of your group. What is your group's preferred format for watching films? What genres do you have in common?
A. How many films do you generally watch a month? Distinguish
between films that you see at a theater, on television (broadcast
TV, cable, pay-per-view), on the Internet, and on video or DVD.
B. What are your favorite movies and movie genres (action, comedy, science fiction, romance, and so on)?
C. What special habits do you notice about the way you watch
movies? Do you like to eat while watching them at home? Do
you prefer to watch films alone, with a friend, or in a group? Do
you watch videos straight through or do you jump around with
the remote? How do these habits depend on the kind of movie
you are watching or where you're watching it?
2. Oral Presentation
This is an opportunity to study one film in some detail and share what you learr;
with others in the class. You are encouraged to work in groups of two or three frx
each presentation. Each group selects a film from the course listing (films we wi...
be screening later in the term) and prepares a brief introduction, handouts, and
questions for discussion.
The introduction will be oral. It may include background information abou;
the film's origins, its creators and cast, its reception, or its main themes. You ma~
also want to point out particular things to look for in the film. Please limit yo
introductory remarks to ten minutes or less.
The handouts should include film credits (director, scriptwriter, prin .
actors, etc.), further readings (books, articles, reviews, Web sitesj.and study quptions. Please bring enough copies for everyone.
Using your study questions as a guide, lead a class discussion after vie- -ing the film. You may want to focus on the acting, directing, film techniques,
theme. You may explore the class's emotional responses or examine the film s
symbolic levels.
Student Film Study Projects
Note: You will be graded as a group, so full group cooperation is a must.
Be sure to select people you can work with.
3. Behind the Scenes
We often appreciate a movie more when we know how it was made. What went
into its creation behind the scenes? How, for example, did the art director design
the sets for Citizen Kane? How did the photographer achieve those striking camera movements and lighting effects? Where did the ideas for the screenplay come
from, and what did each writer contribute to the script?
This assignment is an opportunity to look behind the scenes at a particular
aspect of filmmaking that interests you. First, select a film you would like to learn
more about. Then, choose one of the following topics and write a report on what
youleam.
A. Script Writing. Who was responsible for the film script? Where
did the main idea originate? If the film is based on literature,
consult the original text and compare it to the final film.
B. Photography. Who was the film's chief cinematographer? What is
he or she most noted for? Are there any technical innovations in
camera work or lighting? How were they achieved?
C. Set Design. Who was involved in selecting and creating the film's
sets? Were any special problems encountered in making the sets?
How were they solved? How important are the sets in the final
film?
D. Music. Does the film use familiar music or an original score? What
musical decisions were made by the composer? What effects was
the composer striving for? Are different melodies used for different characters or scenes? How do they contribute to the total
film experience?
E. Direction. Some directors have a stronger hand than others in the
making of a film. Directors may be interested in different elements of filmmaking. What role did the director have in producing the film you chose? What are the director's hallmarks in this
and other films?
F. Acting. Select two or three actors in the film and find out more
about them. Why do you think they were chosen for the film?
What other roles have they played? Are they versatile or stereotyped? What can you learn about their behavior on or off the set
during the film's production?
G. Reception. Do some research to find out how the film was received during its first release. What did the critics say? How did
the general public respond? How do you account for the reception in its own time and today?
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4. Shot-by-Shot Analysis
Good movies, like good stories, poems, and plays, are best read more than once.
Under close analysis, a well-made film can reveal qualities and meanings that we
miss the first time through. The purpose of this assignment is to take another,
careful look at part of a familiar film in order to appreciate how it was made and
how it works.
A. Select a film to study from the course list. View the entire film
and then choose a scene (from ten to twenty shots in length) to
analyze.
B. Do a shot-by-shot analysis of the scene. Your analysis should
include the following for each shot:
1. A brief description of the shot (action, setting, characters)
2. Framing (close-up, medium shot, long shot)
3. Camera angles (low angle, high angle, eye level)
4. Camera movement (tilt, crane, zoom, pan, tracking, none)
5. Lighting (high key, low key, back lighting, front lighting,
normal)
6. Sound (describe any dialogue, music, voice-over, or sound
effects)
7. Transitions (cut, dissolve, wipe, other optical effects)
ote: You may list the elements (1-7) for each shot or describe them
in paragraph form, but they should all be accounted for.
e. Answer the following questions about your chosen scene:
1. Plot. How does this scene contribute to the ongoing story?
Give a brief overview of your chosen film (whatis it about?)
and explain how the scene fits in.
2. Point of tneu: Does this scene present an objective view of
events, or does it represent someone's subjective account?
Explain. How is the camera used to emphasize this point of
view?
3. Character.What does this scene tell you about the major character or characters? Refer as specifically as you can to the
actors' movements, words, and dress as revealed by the
camera.
4. Tone. Describe the overall mood of this scene. Is it mysterious, funny, sad? How do the lighting and camera work help
to create this mood?
You are encouraged to complete the shot-by-shot analysis in groups of
two. Students have found that collaborative viewing helps them see more clearly
(four eyes are better than two) and think more sharply (discussion nourishes ideas)
than they would alone. You are expected to answer the qu~ons in part C by
yourself.
Student Film Study Projects
5. Contemporary Film Review
This assignment is an opportunity to apply what you have learned this term to a
contemporary film of your own choice. Select a new film that has just been released or one that has been made available recently for home viewing. Choose a
movie that genuinely interests you or puzzles you-a movie that you want to
think about and examine more carefully than usual. Since this will be a critical
review, you need to go beyond a simple statement of your likes and dislikes. Be
prepared to use what you have learned about film technique, theory, and history
to illuminate this film. Find out more about the director, the actors, and the issues
so you can make an informed evaluation. You might want to consider some of the
following topics in your review:
A. Personal Issues. What struck the most responsive chords in you?
How can you account for such a strong emotional or intellectual
response? To what extent do you believe that your response can
be generalized to other viewers? Why?
B. Technique. Were there any exceptionally good (or bad) uses of
music, dialogue, camera work, editing, or special effects? Considering what you now know about the process of producing a
film, what are the film's technical strengths and weaknesses?
C. Acting. What were the principal roles and how well were they
performed? Were the actors typecast or miscast? How credible
were their performances?
D. Plot. Outline just enough of the story so a reader who has not
seen the film can understand your comments. How original, how
compelling, did you find the plot?
E.
771111S. What are the main ideas or issues of the film? Is it a simple
love story, or does it make a thought-provoking statement about
certain kinds of relationships? Are there any hidden or blatant
messages? Are the messages distracting, intrusive, or integrated
with the plot?
F. Genre. Does this film belong to a class of similar films, such as
Westerns, horror films, or musical comedies? If so, what other
films does it resemble? What are the common characteristics of
these films? Why do you think this geme is popular today?
G. Representation. How does the film represent different kinds of
people: men and women, rich and poor, various ethnic groups?
Why do you think it represents them in this way?
H. Ideology. What cultural beliefs (e.g., about sexuality, politics, family) were challenged or confirmed by the film? How was this
accomplished?
6. Fiction into Film
Most movies these days seem to be based on books. Literary classics are revived
for the modem screen, bestsellers are converted into box office sales, and even
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obscure stories become major motion pictures. This is your chance to adapt a
work of written fiction into film. In the process, you'll learn what goes into the
making of a movie, you'll appreciate the differences between two important media, and you'll become a better reader of both fiction and film.
Begin by reading lots of fiction: short stories, novels, and narrative poems
that might lend themselves to adaptation. Your job is to find a promising story
and explain its cinematic possibilities to the others in your group. This can be
done in a written film proposal that outlines the plot, sketches the main characters, suggests locations for the major scenes, and speculates on the technical challenges a camera crew might face.
Re-read the original story closely with the film in mind. Look for details of
character to help you cast the principal actors. Pay attention to the setting so you
can scout locations and design interior sets. You'll need to be aware of the story's
point of view in order to decide on camera setups for each shot. Most important,
you'll need to understand the story's tone and theme if your film is going to be
faithful to the original.
Once the group has decided on a story, the film proposal can be transformed into a storyboard or shooting script. A storyboard tells the story, shet by
shot, in pictures and text. The pictures show what the camera will see. The text
provides the dialogue and action; it also gives cues about camera position, lighting, editing, and other production technicalities. A shooting script describes each
shot, but without pictures. Like the storyboard, the shooting script is a blueprint
for constructing the final film.
In addition to the actors and scriptwriters, your group will need production specialists, including a director to direct the action and overall shooting of
each scene; a script supervisor to plan each day of shooting and check the results
against the storyboard or shooting script; a cinematographer to set up and operate the camera; a set designer to create the sets or furnish them with props; a
lighting crew to illuminate each indoor scene; a sound technician in charge of the
sound track (sound effects, music, dialogue); and an editor to splice together the
final film, or combine the final video electronically if you use videotape.
A successful film production depends on many things, not the least of
which is responsible group participation. Every member of the group has a specific job to do. The group depends on everyone doing her or his job reliably. Only
if everybody works together can a work of fiction come alive on film.
7. How Films Are Made
This is a competitive activity. Your group will compete with other groups in the
class to identify the steps involved in filmmaking and the specialists who perform each task. In your group, list as many steps-in order-as your group can
think of, from the original conception to the final screening. For each step, try to
give the professional title of the person or people responsible for that phase of
film production. The group that can prepare the most complete, accurate list wins
the competititon.
8. Evolution of a Genre
Select several clips from films that illustrate changes in a film geme over time.
You might choose, for example, combat films from the time of World War II, the
Student Film Study Projects
Korean War, Vietnam, and other recent conflicts. Or you might choose films from
a single war (The Green Berets, 1968;Apocalypse Now, 1979;Platoon, 1986). Explore
the changes reflected in these clips. How do these films reflect historical attitudes
toward combat? How do they show changes in film technique and popular taste?
Other genres to consider include science fiction, Westerns, romance, comedy, adventure, and film noir.
9. Compare the Classic and the Remake
Select comparable scenes from two versions of the same story and screen them in
succession. You might show scenes from J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear (1962) and
Scorsese's 1991 remake in order to explore the evolution of film noir. You might
compare the original King Kong (1933) with one of its more recent incarnations
(1968,1976,1986)to trace changes in special effects.Or you might show The Searchers
(1956)and Star Wars (1977)to see how Lucas borrowed from Ford to re-create the
sci-fi genre in the image of the Western.
10. Case Study
Do a case study of a movie star. Identify the star's three levels of identity: the real
person, the actor's roles (the kinds of characters he or she plays in the movies),
and the star's persona (the image projected in the popular media). Cull your information from sources such as movie magazines, advertisements, posters, talk
shows, documentaries, the Internet, and the films themselves. Analyze the images you find. What impressions are they intended to convey? How do you account for your own response to these images? How do you explain the star's
popularity?
11. Content Analysis
Sociologists do a lot of counting. They count the number of violent acts or instances of "explicit language" in films to study trends in social behavior or censorship. They analyze the roles given to women or minorities in order to follow
patterns of representation over time. Do some counting of your own to prepare
for a discussion of representation and influence: to what degree do movies reflect
reality or help shape reality?
12. Film Segmentation
A film segmentation breaks down the structure of a film into its component parts.
It identifies the main elements of the story and shows how these elements are
arranged. Sometimes the story is told chronologically, as a straight narrative. Sometimes it is presented as a flashback or a series of jumps in time, as in Pulp Fiction
(1994) or Memento (2001). Use this partial segmentation of To Kill a Mockingbird
(1962) as a guide:
1. Credit Sequence: Close-ups of objects set nostalgic mood and
introduce thematic symbols.
2. Maycomb, Alabama: Daybreak. Sets story in rural South of1930s.
Introduces Scout, Atticus, [em, and Dill. Atticus is "too old to
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play football for the Methodists." Dill learns about the mysterious Boo Radley next door.
3. Finch Yard:Atticus and the children greet the ornery Mrs. Dubose.
4. Scout's Room: She reads aloud to Atticus and asks about her
dead mother.
5. Front Porch: Judge Taylor asks Atticus to take the case of Tom
Robinson, a Negro accused of raping a white woman, Mayella
Ewell.
Select a film you want to study in this way. Identify the major scenes and
notice how they are arranged. Write an explanation of your findings, including
any patterns of narrative progression, symmetry, zigzagging, or circularity. What
is the overall shape of the plot? How does the narrative pattern contribute to the
movie's theme?
13. Direct This Scene
Read the following descrption of a scene from Brian De Palma's Scarface (1983):
Miami 1950. The inmates in a Cuban refugee camp have begun to
riot. Hundreds of men are burning tents and attacking guards with
pipes, sticks, and rocks. In the general mayhem, one man is pulled
out of a telephone booth. Blinded by broken glass, he is pushed
through the crowd and staggers into a tent where boisterous prisoners are shouting and wrecking everything in sight. Suddenly, he
looks up and sees that he is being followed. One of his stalkers peers
at him from beyond a bunk bed. Another, closer, holds a knife. The
hunted man tries to escape through the crowd, but he is struck two
knife blows in the stomach, one by each assailant. He staggers and
falls. He is dead.
How would you shoot and edit this scene if you were the director? Use a storyboard
to help you visualize it shot by shot. For each shot, draw a rough sketch of the
actors (stick figures will do fine) and any significant props. Beneath each sketch,
describe the following: (1) action (what happens in the shot); (2) framing (CU,
MS, LS, ECU, ELS) and camera angle (low angle, high angle); (3) any camera
movement (track, boom, pan, tilt, zoom); (4) lighting (low key, high key, backlighting); and (5) sound (dialogue, sound effects, voice-over, music).
Example: MS of the stalker from below. Camera zooms in to CU of
his brooding face in shadow, then tilts down to show a knife cradled
in his hand. The switchblade flashes as it opens. Stalker: "I have
something for you, Tony." Music swells.
