Essay:
You'll have a choice between two topics for your final essay of the year. Both options ask you to look at a wide range of movies that have spanned this course.
For all writers, be mindful of these things:
· Length: I have no specific word requirements, but these babies tend to be in the 3-6 page territory.
· Be specific. Support your ideas with plenty of examples.
· Be attentive to all the rules and mechanics of writing. Review the feedback from the prior essays in order to avoid past errors.
· Be sure to have the usual items found in an essay like this:
o MLA format
o 2-tiered title
o Solid introduction and concluding paragraphs with body paragraphs in between that are connected by transition sentences.
o Closely proofread
· Though this is a somewhat formal essay, there is still room for lots of your imagination and splashes of vivid, creative, bold writing.
· Feedback: This essay will be due on the last day of the semester. That leaves me just enough time to read them, assess a grade, tabulate your semester grade, and submit that grade to the college. For reasons of time, you won't be receiving an audio reaction from me for this essay.
Choose one of these two topics:
A. Look at the changes in your heart, your blood, your funny bone, your soul, your outlook on life as a result of the movies we've seen in class.
To answer this, touch upon a full range of movies throughout the course and then, if you choose, look closely at one particular movie that was powerful to you. In answering this, do not summarize the plots of movies; rather, describe what it is about your own life that caused you to meet this movie (or these movies) in a dramatic way. And how did the movie do it: its story, its movie-making techniques, its music, its art, its acting, etc.
There are a number of ways to organize this essay. One is to find four or five topics that divide up your range of experiences to the movies: humor, artistry and creativity, political beliefs, women's issues, attitudes toward America, tolerance, entertainment, war, cultures, respect for indigenous people-and especially, the personal issues of your own life that trembled when they met certain scenes in the movies. These are just ideas off the top of my head, so please explore your own topics that matter.
In writing this, make reference to many movies and make reference to specific parts of the movies.
This is as much about you as it is about the movies. So write about you, write about your beliefs and history and tenderness.
B. Connect a wide range of the movies from this course in a meaningful way.
This connection could be a theme (for example, man's connection to animals, or salvation, or fathers,...); it could be a type of character that reappears from era to era; it could be a cinematic technique, like sound, that you'd like to explore. It could be whatever you want, but the idea is to spot a pattern that pops up again and again.
Your task is to do much more than merely identify the presence of this connection. Rather, it's up to you to make lots of comments-lots of observations, lots of insights.
In writing this, make reference to many movies and make reference to specific parts of the movies.