Extra Credit: Writing About Films

The first challenge there is to writing about films has to start with the familiarity of the film that you have. Film is so familiar and so prevalent in our lives that we are often lulled into passive viewing or into simple entertainment. Sometimes we can be so caught up in the film that we skip out on the camera work, composition, editing, lighting, and sound. The production can also have struggles that we miss including rewrites, the drama of the project financed, and the casting challenges. As you analyze and write about the film remember that you aren’t writing a review. Those reviews are generally subjective: they explore an individual’s response to a film and so do not require research or analysis.
One type of film paper is called formal analysis which requires that viewer breaks the film down into its component parts and discusses how those parts contribute to the whole. It can be looked at like taking apart a tractor in a field: you lay out the parts, try to understand the function and purpose of each part, and then put them all back together.
An important research tip is to not rely on the Internet. While the Internet can provide some interesting information about film, it generally doesn’t provide you with the thoughtful analysis that will be useful to you in your work. There are some great writing tips that were in the paper and they were to focus on your topic, write a good thesis sentence, settle on a structure, write clear and coherent paragraphs, and tend to matters of grammar and style.
Overall this paper was great because it was a refresher to what we have been reading except I was able to understand it a little better. I will use this information to help me with essay three because I was having trouble with the structure and sequencing of events. Also I need to focus on my thesis and incorporating it into my essay more since it was so powerful. Another good tip that will help me with the essay is not to summarize the film so much but analyze it in the topic I am choosing to write about. Again there are challenges to writing a paper about films but this article was great in helping us get around those areas.