Assignments are to be submitted as hard copies – no electronically transmitted papers are accepted. Papers are due on the assigned date. The paper should have on it your name, the course number and the term in which you are taking the course. Late papers (any paper which arrives after the due date) will be given a grade with no comments and there will be no discussion about the paper. Papers which arrive later than the next class meeting will lose one letter grade for each week they are late.

THE ASSIGNMENTS

The purpose of the class is to get students tto (a) understand and do text analysis (b) understand how photographic (especially motion picture photographic techniques tell the story or help tell the story – that is to say how we see things in the film. Whatever writing done in this class should emphasize film techniques, not summarizing the plot. The should specifically discuss camera placement, kinds of camera movement, types of focus, and editing techniques. Other techniques such as dress codes and to some degree even lighting should be considered ancillary. In effect you should analysis should reflect the fact that you have seen a film – not a stage play and not just listened to a radio broadcast.

Goals

Since the primary goal of the course is to discover the techniques by which films send messages. Film is a photographic medium and as such students need to understand the visual language used by film makers to tell the story. There is no doubt that text (whether in the form of intertitles or sound dialog is important, the basic focus is on film (visual) techniques. These basically fall into two categories – those which have to do with the organization of the material in the frame (the equivalent of a painting or snapshot) and those which have to do with time – that is to say those techniques which occur because a film has a temporal dimension to it. These techniques include such things as camera movement (panning, dollies etc.), changes in focal lengths (zooming), and editing,

ASSIGNMENT I

Find a sequence in a film in which information is given to the audience ONLY visually. What kind of information is given, (data, metaphor etc.); how is it relayed to the audience; how does it relate (or how is it necessary) to the rest of film.

The best way to do this is to make two columns. In the first colum write something you know, and in the second write how you know it.

WHAT I KNOW	HOW I KNOW IT

Using the data in the columns write the paper.For more infomration Use the information from the class notes about The Third Man after we have seen it in class.

ASSIGNMENT II:

Take the first sequence or a climactic sequence in a film and tell: Camera Use