Today in class we continued what we did yesterday. We started today’s class by elaborating on the process of the third viewing. Mr. Rivers told us that the most effective way to analyze and evaluate film is to watch it three times. We have already watched the short film, Feast, twice and we started by talking about how we should watch it the third time. Before the third viewing, it is important determine what specific scenes you expect to find evidence that will help your argument. You should also determine a theme that you want to watch its progression throughout the film. During the actual film you should look for actual evidence that will help to expand and support your evaluation. After the watching the film you should refine your analysis by replacing neutral language with tonal flavor. Another thing is that you should clarify relationships between ideas by using more effective transitions. Also, you should maximize specificity and clarity in your evaluation. After this we looked at some professional reviews. We looked for things such as tone in New York Times reviews about Get Out and Adam Sandler where the former took a very appraising tone while the latter received far worse feedback. First we looked at the Get Out review we started by identifying the “parts of the object” that were present in the film. In my group we identified themes, settings and characters. As a class we identified the review address antagonist, plot and tone. We then evaluated the author’s language and its relation to these objects. For example “tantrums of entitlement”, has a very negative connotation and says a lot about the characters and plot. After this we looked at transitions and how they can enhance your writing by effectively relating multiple ideas. There is a document on the google classroom that has a list of many transition phrases.
In order to connect this to the world at large I decided to connect this to another New York Times article. This is an review of Interstellar, by A. O. Scott. There are many objects in this review one object is plot and directors. Scott talks about these two objects when he says “The Nolans cleverly conflate scientific denialism with technophobia, imagining a fatalistic society that has traded large ambition for small-scale problem solving and ultimate resignation.”This is one sentence so it is efficient however despite its size this sentence is able to convey the premise of the film, evaluates the plot with tonal flavor with words such as “cleverly”. This also gives a hint as to Scott’s opinion of the film.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/05/movies/interstellar-christopher-nolans-search-for-a-new-planet.html
Nice analysis of tonal flavor
ReplyDeleteGreat details about our classroom learning, but you may benefit from segmenting these distinctions even further with paragraphs (especially as we, as a class, move from idea to idea)