[Assigment 1] [Assigment 2]] [Assigment 3 ] [Assigment 4] [Assigment 5 ] [Assigment 6] [Grades]
ASSIGNMENTS
Assignments are due in the instructor’s mailbox during the week indicated
on the “Outline of Assignments” listed on page 6 of this Guide.
By pre-arrangement with the instructor, assignments may be submitted via e-mail
when time, unavoidable circumstances, and/or distance constraints make regular
mail submissions difficult.
Week 1 is the first week of the beginning date of classes and Week 15 is the
final week of the trimester. Inclusive trimester dates are indicated on your
registration form and trimester schedule.
Assigned papers must be typed, with footnotes or parenthetical citations, bibliographies
and all documentation in accordance with the MLA Style, as listed in your text
requirements.
A self-addressed, stamped envelope must be included with assignment submissions
if they are to be returned. In the event that an assignment is not clearly understood,
or if extra assistance should be required, students should feel free to contact
the instructor by mail, e-mail, or by telephone.
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NOTE:
See Instructions for Sending in Assignments from the Humanities External Degree Online Catalog for specific details regarding approved methods of turning in assignments.
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Read Chapters 1, 2, and 3 of Giannetti. These chapters are a substantive introduction to basic motion picture styles, offering the student the opportunity to investigate such diverse aesthetic approaches to motion pictures as Realism, Classicism, and Formalism. All approaches are at the disposal of filmmakers and deeply affect the associations with which viewers regard the motion picture experience.
The function of style — the manner in which motion picture form shapes content — depends on how the filmmaker you choose to study approaches the narrative structure of the story he has decided to tell, the manner in which the visual materials are staged and framed, and the depth to which moving images are affected by the art of motion.
The implications of movement in film should be of considerable attraction to students interested in kinetic space. Moreover, the symbolism of movement affects a variety of film genres and is particularly generic to the aesthetics of ritualism as exemplified in historic iconography and its manifestation in a wide variety of dance movements.
Task
You are to view one motion picture from the suggested list of films in Appendix
F and write a critical analysis of that film in terms of the material covered
in these chapters. A substantive variety of questions needs to be asked (and
answered) if you are to write a meaningful response to the film you have selected.
Appendix A: Film Terms in Context (the verbal and non-verbal grammar and syntax
of film) and Appendix G: A Guide to Meaningful Criticism should be helpful in
an approach to critical awareness.
NOTE: Film substitution is permissible in this, as in all future assignments.
It is understood that film availability is limited in certain geographic locations
and that approximation may become a necessity. Please clear changes with
your instructor.
Read Chapters 4 and 5 of Giannetti. They explore the art and craft of film editing and the various functions of film sound, which together comprise the heart and soul of film production. To trace their technological and aesthetic development is to examine a profound change in artistic responses on the part of movie audiences from early 20th century flickering, hand-cranked, silent, and mostly pedestrian reproductions of manifest reality to a whole new world of imagery; from grainy trivia explained by simplistic titles to cybernetic, three dimensional sound explosions delving into nearly limitless explorations of social, political, sexual, and psychological issues. Studying a century of film arts allows students of the humanities to view history through the kaleidoscope of a camera lens. Movies allow us to review the past in a way that cuts across old divisions between the arts.
To trace their development, technologically and aesthetically, is therefore a way to examine a profound change in the artistic responses demanded by our modern world. The old clichés about sculpture, that the sculptor finds the statue waiting in the stone, applies equally to film editing. The gifted editor finds the film waiting in the hidden frames, fully aware that kinesthetic perceptions by filmmakers and audiences have changed dramatically. Transition from Thomas Edison’s simple-minded kinetoscope peep-show to digital miracles of computer-generated spectacles constitutes more than a graphic depiction of a changing society. It suggests a fundamental alteration of aesthetic sensibilities. Contemporary images are often delivered at warp speed and clash in both construct and focal points. Their language is often coarsened to the point of obscenity while their accompanying music insinuates itself or blares with calculated cacophony. Contemporary films explore strange lands and even stranger personae. The challenge to the student of the Humanities: to recognize a deep and abiding need to understand how edited moving images and a limitless range of sounds have changed and continue to impact and manipulate contemporary society.
Task
View one of the films cited in Appendix F, selected for their appropriate relationship
to these artistic developments, and write a thoughtful essay that signifies
your understanding of how film, as a creative medium, impacts your perception
of it and your beliefs about the nature and value of artistic creation.
Let me cite some possible approaches to this highly complex (and often far too subjective) aspect of cinematic art. For example: If you select a film from the silent era, like Birth of a Nation or Battleship Potemkin, you would most likely, in order to reflect the material of this chapter, focus on the seminal contributions to editing made by film giants D. W. Griffith and Serge Eisenstein, both of whom fused directorial genius to stunning editorial innovations. You might then analyze how the editing of your film choice effectively guides your thoughts, associations, and emotional responses from one image to another so that smooth continuity and coherence are achieved. This would be an essential approach to the “Odessa Steps” sequence in Potemkin. In the Griffith film (which I have always thought was far too long) your questions might focus on what segments of the film seem overlong or boring and which parts could have been cut without altering the total effect. These are merely suggestions, of course; many other approaches will be suggested by the text and the syllabus. For a deeper understanding of this subject, your text cites fascinating background material, such as Bernard Malmuth’s Introduction to Film Editing and Edward Dmytryk’s very readable On Film Ediiting, both available from Boston: Focal Press.
If, on the other hand, your reading of these chapters stimulates a greater
interest in the immensely important area of sound and its function in contemporary
films (The Matrix Reloaded, U.S.A., 2003, and Australia’s Babe
are fine examples), you will be delving into elements that create exciting levels
of meaning and increase the range, depth, and intensity of your experience far
beyond what can be achieved through visual means alone. A thorough study of
the text and the appropriate syllabus material will lead you to analyze the
relationship between the three basic elements that make up the soundtrack: sound
effects, dialogue, and the music score. While film dialogue dominates the sound
tracks of most films, Humanities students, interested in movie music or in the
impact of the Talkie Revolution on world culture, will find lively additional
reading in Eyman Soctt’s The Speed of Sound (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1997) and Roy Prendergast’s brilliant Film Music (New
York: Norton, 1977).
Read Chapters 6 and 7 of Giannetti. These chapters steer the course into the arcane realm of performance, the esoteric milieu of actors, directors, designers, costumers, makeup artists, lighting specialists, and a host of cinema “artists.” The change from silent films to “talkies “ implies more than significant technical progress. It marks the coming of age of motion pictures as a major industry, the onset of a pervasive “star” mythology, and a spectacular impact of motion pictures on the world’s cultural perceptions in general, and on America’s to a profound degree.
The American’s obsession with talking pictures, even in an era of corrosive economic depression, is of far-reaching historic importance. The astonishing popularity of movies expanded the scope of the motion picture industry, introduced a startling variety of dramatic and comic performance styles, bred a wide range of film genres, defined the significant role of the film director and imported vitalizing aesthetic paradigms, such as Expressionism and Realism, that pointed movies in compelling artistic directions. Of considerable interest to Humanities students should be this crossover of styles and their invocation in filmic art, devolving as they did from historic origins in classic western aesthetic traditions, and acting as seminal infusion into America’s evolving cultural development.
Task
View one of the films in Appendix F, a list selected for its appropriateness
to this aspect of film, and write an essay that illuminates your understanding
of the individual contributions made by its artists to the success of the film
as a whole.
After thoroughly viewing the film you have selected, you might ask (and of course answer) questions such as: How noticeable are the film’s techniques; for example, its editing, camera work, lighting, and sound effects, including its use of music? How appropriate is the style of each of these aspects to the film as a whole? There is much to explore about this facet of motion pictures. The potential compression and/or expansion of motion picture time and space lends to each of its creative elements a special stylistic significance. Objects and persons, and their particular placement in a film frame, beget an attitude and an existence that breathes life into every film. (You may depend on the fact that this includes the film you have selected for this assignment.) Furthermore: What is the film’s editing style, its visual arrangements, pace, and transitions? How would you signify the director’s style in the film you have selected; specifically, what feeling and emotions does he evoke in you and what filmic devices has he used to achieve them? How successful was he in doing so? Why do you say so?
Appendix E is designed to increase your grasp of film craft and to provide
you with a basic overview of film elements as they function in context of a
screenplay. It is suggested that you apply this information to the High
Noon sample script contained in Appendix B.
Read Chapters 8 and 9 of Giannetti. Motion pictures tell stories, but with a difference. Unlike novels, short stories, poetry, fairy tales, and other narrative formats, they combine Aristotle’s two types of fictional narrative: mimesis (showing) and diagesis (telling). For Humanities students steeped in narrative literature, accustomed to descriptive psychological, spiritual, and emotional introspection, the difference in the study of film scripts can be disconcerting.
Simply put, film scripts cannot be read like novels or any other form of narrative literature. Motion picture scripts depend on reader imagination, on a resourceful ability to fill blank spaces with gestures, music, light, movement, and the nearly limitless variety of cinematic magic with which you have become familiar by now.
This assignment, then, brings you closer to an understanding that films (and their writers and makers) create a very special kind of truth, a tapestry of a myriad universes and worlds of seemingly consummate reality inhabited by monsters of every shape and size, and one in which not everyone lives happily ever after, balanced, thankfully, by worlds in which the good guy always wins and true love always triumphs. Movies are surely the world in which we live, but also a stunning cosmos of space ships, imaginary universes, and grotesque creatures; in short, the realm of flat-out fantasy.
Chapter 9 of Giannetti, then, guides you through the thorny terrain of screenwriters and their screenplays, of written scripts and merely suggested mise en scene, of literary adaptations, of writers who double as directors and of directors who also function as writers.
As in all forms of human communication, motion pictures, too, involve the use of symbols to create meanings. They are explored in the reading version of the Hitchcock-directed film North By Northwest, explicated in your text.
To further your understanding of the connection between the screenplay and the completed motion picture, Appendix B contains a partial sample of High Noon, directed by Stanley Kramer from an Oscar-winning script by Carl Foreman. Under the heading “Place and Use of the Film Script,” Appendix D considers the complex relationship between a shooting script and the finished film, underscoring a variety of variables, most of them depending on the intentions and stylistic practices of the film’s director. You will undoubtedly find the material in Appendix D useful as you apply it to your study of a specific film.
You will notice that considerable stress has been placed on the function of the script in the construct of the completed motion picture. I believe that is as it should be. Films are the art form of our tribe, our modern cave paintings.
To study a film script and to see it actualized on the screen is only a beginning, a preliminary stage in acquiring a finer appreciation of the film and a greater refinement of taste and judgment. It is, therefore, fitting and proper to begin where the filmmaker begins, with the script, and to trace its journey to its final destination as motion picture on exhibition partly through evidence, partly through educated surmises.
The motion picture script is a blue print, a beginning of a highly complex process, more often than not marked from its inception by the creative intent of its writer in conflict with commercial interests responsible for its financing and distribution. From filmdom’s earliest days, this struggle between commerce and art has defined the screenplay’s aesthetic status in the film industry. For the Humanities student, there are profound historic and socio-economic implications, worthy of intense study, in this unique confrontation between a nascent, nationally admired art form and the commercial interests that guarantee its existence. Appendix C provides a generalized overview of the script in the process of filmmaking, while Appendix D enlarges the place and uses of a final shooting script, a sample of which has been included in Appendix B, the script of High Noon.
Task
As usual, you will select and scrutinize with great care one of the films in
Appendix F and write a thoughtful essay that reflects your understanding of
the discussion of scriptwriting in Giannetti and the Appendices. An enlightening
supplement to your text might be William Goldman’s highly entertaining
Adventures in Screen the Trade (New York: Warner Books, 1983) a personal
account by one of Hollywood’s most successful screenwriters.
Read Chapters 10 and 11 of Giannetti. This assignment cuts across a multiplicity of humanistic concerns that bear on film: political ideologies, regards about heredity vs. environment, explorations into sexual politics, those involving feminism and gay liberation and a litany of ideological subtext, all changes in media formulas that usually follow social changes of the magnitude experienced in the latter part of the 20th century and magnified in this, the early years of a new millennium.
Motion pictures that reflect such societal upheavals abound, both in theory and in practice. A sizable literature about film art has emerged to explore formalistic concerns such as Structuralism, Semiotics, Theories of Realism, Historiography, Non-linear, and Thematic Polarities, and the Auteur Theory, among many others. All have made an impact on contemporary cinema practices. For students of the Humanities a deeper involvement in the study of one, or more, of such theoretical developments should be of profound interest since each of them challenges casual misconceptions about the art and craft of film and also charges contemporary film movements with inherent characteristics that reflect a global association with people, events, places, and ideas.
For Humanities students, these chapters represent at once the most pertinent and the most abstruse approach to motion pictures. Films that retain their hold on the public’s imagination have “legs;” i.e., they make statements with lasting intellectual, moral, social or cultural importance. They influence our lives, hopefully (but certainly not always) for the better. The Assignment 5 films in Appendix F, selected for the purpose of exploring movies from a humanistic approach, range from the politically left of the Russian revolutionary opus October to the fascist right of the documentary Triumph of the Will. Sociologically, they probe into a dramatically changing role of women in contemporary society, Marlene Dietrich’s Blonde Venus “tart with a heart” at one end of the spectrum and Thelma and Louise flying into space with an altogether different message. The Humanist exploring the boundaries – and, perhaps more importantly, the significant difference and progressions – of filmic realism in such masterpieces as Grapes of Wrath and Boyz N the Hood, may well ask (and answer) questions as to how these films reflect basic universal beliefs, values, and myths; whether or not these values are outdated or still applicable at the present.
The role of the artist in contemporary society — for Humanists an abiding
source of critical commentary — finds its filmic place in digressions
into areas such as the Auteur Theory, prominent among film critics in the 1950’s
and of growing significance with the rise of an independent film industry and
the perceptible decline of the studio system. An auteur is a complete
filmmaker who conceives the idea for a story, writes the script or screenplay
and sees the film through each and every step until it goes into release. Your
list of films in Appendix F offers the opportunity to assess in depth the special
qualities that mark the work of film artists and their work, like Akiro Kurosawa’s
The Seven Samurai, Olivier’s monumental Henry V, and
the 1981 Oscar-nominated film Mephisto of Szabo Istavan. This cross-over
by auteurs into all functions of film art (a debate that has raged
for years) might lead students of the Humanities to an investigation of a wider
spectrum of collaborative arts; i.e., the impact of the conductor on
a composer’s score, or a director’s role in the interpretation of
a stage play. As Giannetti points out succinctly “there are literally
thousands of questions that could be asked concerning a movie’s theoretical
context. What you are looking for will determine most of your questions and
how to focus them.”
Of considerable help toward clarifying an elusive mosaic of film theory and
ideology are Andrew Dudley’s Concepts in Film Theory (New York;
Oxford University Press, 1984) and Noel Carroll’s Mystifying Movies: Fads
and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory (New York: Columbia University Press,
1988). Both volumes make thoroughly fascinating reading. Will they indeed clarify?
Perhaps, but they will surely illuminate the arcane universe of motion picture
theory, in the light of which a student of the Humanities might research the
manner in which such theories explore traditional human values, the fashions
of our age, the social patterns that inform us, and how the movies we watch
explore and/or solve the problems confronting the dynamics of society. An intense
stretch? Well, YES….but why not?
Task
At the end of Chapters 11 and 12 of your text you will find an incisive bibliography
of up-to-date literature dealing with explorations into the ideology and theory
of the modern film.
View one of the films recommended in Appendix F, then write an essay (reinforced by supplementary reading) that reflects the reasons why you chose to study this particular film, how well your choice stands up artistically, intellectually and philosophically, whether or not the film’s theme is judged by you to be universally applicable, or even relevant to your own experience, and why and how your film choice reflects the complex material covered in these chapters.
Task
Read Chapter 12 of Giannetti. It pulls together, in a bravura performance of
literary synthesis, previous information by citing the extraordinary Orson Welles
film, Citizen Kane. You will study this chapter with great care, then
choose a film from a list of significant motion pictures, appropriate for this
course, from Appendix F. This is your capstone assignment. It allows the longest
stretch of time in which to complete it. Quite obviously, your synthesis will
be considerably shorter than that in the text, as you are limited to no more
than 12 to 16 pages. However, at this point you have gained substantial insight
into film theories and practices and with Giannetti’s brilliant effort
as a guideline, you should be able to select your chosen film’s salient
features and synthesize them in your own, idiosyncratic style.
You have made a considerable effort to enlarge your vision regarding this complex, exciting and significant art form. You may wish to make a final evaluation of your expanded critical skills, to flex your buffed-up movie muscles by selecting another of your favorite films, perhaps one on society’s current hit list. If it is available on tape or DVD, see it more than once and then brainstorm, using Appendix G. It is intended to be a guide to meaningful film criticism and will challenge your intellectual, aesthetic, and scholarly faculties in a fitting coda to this course. Your response to this challenge will be considered in determining your final grade.
The completion of your last assignment should give you a profound sense of
satisfaction. In eras long past, the study of motion pictures was mainly the
province of film schools. That notion no longer applies. Moving images are the
dominant art form of our time and their study is available to anyone who cares
deeply about the directions and responses of contemporary civilization. They
reveal our deepest feelings about the world in which we live and frequently
reflect who we are and what we may become. An intelligent, educated response
to motion pictures demands an appreciation for, and knowledge of, the art and
craft of film. Hopefully (and expectantly) this course has fulfilled that mission.
Grades in this course are determined by the timely submission of carefully considered, creatively planned, and stylistically appropriate essays that reflect a thorough study of the text, any corollary reading, and the thoughtful application of all researched factors with respect to the motion picture chosen as the basis for each assignment.
Assignments 1 through 5 will carry a maximum value of 15 points each.
Assignment 6 will carry a maximum value of 25 points
A = 90-100 points
A- = 85-90 points
B+ = 80-85 points
B = 75-80 points
B- = 70-75 points
C+ = 65-70 points
C = 60-65 points
C- = 55-60 points
D = 50-55 points
Anything below that is an F
Late submissions are not acceptable, except under extraordinary circumstances,
supported by documented evidence. Incompletes are highly discouraged.