Assignment:
Use what you have learned about film to do a scene analysis. The basic plan is similar to what you have done for blogs. But for the SA, you will focus on the Critical Scene (CS) and Turning Point (TP).
As discussed in class sessions, the film has structure--usually a three-act, four-act, or five-act design. Essentially, the narrative moves from opening to complications to climax. In moving from act to act, or one narrative block to another, filmmakers use a scene to lead up to and dramatize the transition.
Look for the CS leading up to the TP from Act One to Act two; that is, from the opening to the body of the plot. The scene you want to find is that scene that takes the protagonist to an action or decision, without which, the story would not be the same. Do not analyze the climactic TP. Your CS should appear in the first 25% to 33% of the film. Need Assignment Help?
You will divide your SA into:
Part 1: The description of the film, its genre, and cultural context.
Part 2: The rationale and discussion of the CS. Point out exactly how the filmmaker used the elements of cinema (cinematography, sound, mise-en-scene, editing, etc.) to make meaning in the film; specifically in the CS.
Part 3: A shot-by-shot analysis of the CS. Use a table or graphic display, a three- or four-column layout, or other means to show the shot-by-shot analysis in the best way. You need to show how the shots construct meaning as you have discussed in the previous parts of your SA. You may use screen grabs, clips, drawings, video clips, or other techniques.
More Info
Your task in presenting a multimedia analysis of a movie is to show specifically how a filmmaker does it. By "it" we mean how the filmmaker uses the elements of film to conduct an orchestra of light, sound, motion, and words.
Jennifer Van Sijll, in Cinematic Storytelling, (2005) poses the situation this complex art form imposes.
The Problem
A" script is a blueprint of a cinematic story. There are two requirements of a great script: One is to have a great story, the other is to render the story cinematically."
Both must be developed together; for an analysis of a film, both have to be treated to critical argument.
"Film isn't the same as the novel or the short story. It introduces technical elements that the screenwriter is expected to exploit." She writes, "In the early days of film, theorists like Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, and Vsevolod Pudovkin set out [in the 1920s and 30s] to understand the storytelling potential of the new medium."
Van Sijll's book is a study guide to mise en scene, the art and science of putting a story on the screen. The first element of film she looks at is the way a frame of the film is laid out in two dimensions; X and Y axes. Looking at the X and Y axes (horizontal/vertical, or 2-D) is like looking at a painting hanging on the wall in an art gallery. We study the way the filmmaker uses the space much like we do a painter.
The x and y can conflict with each other in the flat space. Van Sijll chooses one of Alfred Hitchcock's most influential movies, Strangers on a Train (1951) to illustrate the masterful use of space and time.
After cutting back and forth between the two sets of shoes walking in opposite, converging directions, Hitchcock shows the two strangers' feet under the table. It has been a sequence of collision and impending conflict. No words, no faces, just 2D framing and motion.
An example of a critical analysis in dimension of time is the "Adrenalin shot" scene in Pulp Fiction (1994).
Van Sijll's work on editing is coped.
In doing your job, don't forget to use the elements of film to detail how the filmmaker constructs meaning in ways beyond the word.