In 400+ words, assess (judge, evaluate) the model essays and model presentation I have provided you. You have essays by Tom Eitreim, Erik Hanson, Casey Strand, and by yours truly (me). Do these models help you? In what ways do they help you? What, specifically, will help you as you attempt to create your own projects? What strategies will you use from them? Though his essay is intelligent, I think Eitreim summarizes Spiderman far too much; doing so probably hurt his grade at SDSU, too, I think (unless his professor instructed him to summarize--I guess having to summarize does make one view extremely carefully and closely; I saw Tom Eitreim this weekend--he was following the assignment guidelines). The first weeks of this College Bound English unit have been modeling, which is my effort to show you what I expect regarding the length and depth of the critical thinking required for film deconstruction. Does seeing model essays help you? Did my model team presentation on Apocalypse Now, Platoon, & Full Metal Jacket help you? How? Why?
Will you use a Feminist, Marxist, or Freudian lens in your film analysis?
I just corresponded with Dr./Prof. Skip Willman (see his sweet guitarist picture here), one of many terrific professors at USD, and he told me you are doing precisely what he would like you to before entering his and Dr./Prof. John Dudley's composition/writing/English/literature/critical thinking courses. (After an undergraduate career at Augustana College, I earned my Master of Arts in Literature degree from USD last summer.)
(These are pictures from two films I cannot stop watching once I discover they're on television: The Shawshank Redemption & Gladiator.)
120 comments:
Sara Barnes
Pd. 6
I think that the models personally helped me very much. When we were starting our first paper, I had no idea how I was going to write it or what to put in it. When we got the handouts and models, I was relieved to know that I could go off of something that was used previously. Now that we have started our second paper, I feel more confident on what to do and how to start things off, but it is still very helpful to see models and things of that sort. I agree that Tom summarized his essay too much, and that kind of took away from the analyzing of the movie. When reading Mr. C’s essay I felt like he used a lot of good adjectives that made him sound really smart, and a great thesis statement. For me, the hardest part of writing my paper has been the beginning paragraph including the thesis statement. I thought that Casey’s paper was really good, but sort of short in some areas, like there could have been more in the third paragraph, maybe it is just me but I felt as if it let me hanging. As for the presentation, it was nice to have a model to see how things should go, and entertaining also! During the presentation, I thought that there were a lot of things crammed into it, making it feel sort on some things and long on others. Maybe a better wrap-up? But still very amusing and entertaining. When our classes watched No Country for Old Men, we analyzed it as a class, and did forum quizzes and such to help us get practice and understanding before we were sent out to do things similar on our own, and I think that this was very helpful, for me personally, to know HOW to analyze and what to look for. Not only are the models good for a reference on how to do things, but all of the handouts are helpful also. The terms, and the tips on how to analyze things are nice to have for when you are watching the movie or when writing the paper you can use the actual term and not just what sounds right. All of the tools we have received have help tons, and it helps that they are different colors to keep them straight. Models are good, keep them for sure!
Thanks, Sara. You are so right in a multitude of ways. You'll make an excellent college student--and a fabulous teacher, indeed. You're twice the student I was as a senior. Keep it up. (You're right: my "wrap-up" was awful--too rushed in trying to include one more absurd scene for you; my rehearsal was better, sadly.) Thanks again sincerely for the positive feedback. We'll get to two novel studies and truly get you ready for anything a professor will cast your way.
Perhaps your paper(s) will be model(s) for me next year, Sara?
I agree with Sara completely, when we first started the analyzing unit I had no idea where to start either. I was really worried that we would be just thrown in without real help like other English classes but with all the sheets it wasn’t near as overwhelming as I believed. When it comes to analyzing films, I think these handouts are extremely helpful. When its time to write the papers, looking back on these handouts will give you a good starting point, both positives and negatives. Like you said about Tom, I believe he did analyze it a little too much. It gave away a little too much plot, made watching the movie not quite as appetizing. Mr. C., when it came to your paper it did make me want to watch that movie. When you do your own paper or presentation it gives us students an idea of what you see an “A paper” looking like. I am pretty sure you wouldn’t just write a paper that didn’t fit your expectations. When it comes to picking words I also believe that is really hard, I feel like I use the same words over and over again (like I’ve probably done in this blog) and that I try and use the dictionary or thesaurus and the words I chose doesn’t make sense. I personally learn better when there are things too look at like examples. Examples help you see what they did right and what you did right, same with wrong. Without these examples I don’t think I would succeed near as well.
One thing about the papers I have really learned was not to ramble on and to cut to the point. Although in some cases rambling helps students relate their points, it gets to be more wordy then anything else. You handed me Alyssa’s paper from last year and for me that was the most helpful. The paper was over the ‘Breakfast Club’ which I have never seen but her paper analyzed it well that it made me curious to see it.
Although these papers are helpful, I don’t think they are as helpful as the other sheets you have given us like the anticipation guides. The guides you gives us, as well as the outlines, give us questions to ask ourselves, make us search inside us as well as the movies for the answers. Like we discussed in our forum quiz all of these handouts will and have helped us in some way.
I think these models help tremendously. I like to be able to follow an outline. I went through all of the models (especially the one you wrote) and wrote on the side what each paragraph was about and what points they made. That helped me to get started and see what I needed to focus on when I was deconstructing my movie. Also it’s great for helping with our group analysis because you can see what each person got out of a different type of movie. If you only gave us one handout we wouldn’t be able to compare equally. I am doing a romantic comedy for my individual analysis and we are doing heartfelt romances for our group analysis. By giving us different types of movie analysis’s we can choose which one to follow kind of as a guide to help with the order of the presentation and essays as well. Also the models show you what NOT to do. For example you tell us maybe Tom Eitreim summarized too much. Now I know not to do that. Now since I know what not to do, I need to figure out a way to make my paper make sense without summarizing too much. It shows us also how to cite quotes and how to write our citations in MLA formation. In my ad analysis I used the models to help with my works cited. Another thing that helps me using the models is my thesis statement. After I read the models I look at the thesis statement to think of where they came up with theirs or why they chose that. It’s nice to have a few thesis statements as examples because I think that is the hardest part of the whole paper to write. You have to be able to back it up. It wouldn’t make sense to have a thesis statement about the shot angles and then talk only about the meaning of the movie itself. By seeing models you see what other people did. Now you know what to do and make it even better and more improved than theirs.
I think your presentation model helped too. Our group didn’t really know how to tackle the presentation, but after you went we knew we had to have certain elements on our power point. And it also gave us ideas that we could do for our own. For example your quote idea gave us an example of involving the class. Now our group wants to think of something to involve the class and make out presentation more interesting and exciting. I think the reason examples help so much is because people need visuals. Sure, you can tell someone to do something but maybe they will interpret it differently than you thought. With examples you know what you need to do and how to accomplish it and with that you can do a better job and make it more exciting because you have example to go from.
Kaila--you take that ambition (the surgery you performed on my essay) to college. You will be a marvelous college student, indeed.
I can say with extreme confidence that the model essays you have presented us with have and will continue to help me and future College Bound students to writing better, more sophisticated papers. They help us by showing us what you expect in a paper. If the papers were good enough for you to keep and show future students, you obviously like them, so we should strive to be like them. With the exception of Eitreim’s paper, of course. Almost the entire paper is just a summary of Spiderman. One and a half, maybe two pages should be enough to summarize a film. Your presentation on Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket was extremely helpful. I’m sure some of the jitters were taken out by the last presentation, but me, like many other students, gets nervous when they have to stand up in front of people and present for almost an hour. Seeing your presentation also set standards and expectations for the students. We know now what a presentation should look like; a good balance between showing clips of movies, to talking about the directors’ histories, to analyzing scenes, and many things in between. I assumed you kept Eitreim’s paper to show us what a paper should not look like. When I went through it, I found many typo’s the sentences all looked the same in length and it just started to run on and on. Erik Hanson’s paper I thought had a great title to it. Tobacco: The Life Saver. It is ironic because when someone thinks of tobacco they think of things like chew, or cigarettes, and those all eventually harm you, not help you. This irony grips the reader and makes them want to read the paper to figure out what he is talking about. Right away he starts firing off questions, which, as a reader, you unconsciously answer when you read. This is another good example of how to grip a reader. He has good paragraph length; there aren’t any paragraphs that just run on for a couple pages, and there aren’t any that are only a few sentences long. He also does a nice job of adding in his quotes from his outside sources, and he breaks off and comes back to the story very easily when he talks about ideology and the film’s main message. I also saw a lot of good things in Casey Strand’s paper as well. Again, starting off with an ironic title that grips her audience, and then she goes into a short summary. She also talks about literary devices, character flaws, and background on some of the characters in the film.
Nice, Nick. I'll have to consider yours as a solid example for next year's students--you'll be immortalized and enshrined. Thanks for investing your time and talents.
I think that seeing model essays does help with writing my own essay because it shows what is looked for in this assignment. However, it is the same with a rubric too, like I said before with the rubric idea (when I was agreeing with Katelyn about how rubrics take ideas away) . I would think that possibly there are some people who would look at these example essays and make almost replicas or something but for a different movie. So...with the 'ideas' aspect to writing these essays...I don't think that these example essays are good I guess...because that could be taking ideas away again. However, with the basic 'outline' or 'format' for how the essay should look (date, name, period, etc at the beginning...then going on to paragraph form...etc) I guess the example essays help with that. I agree that the Spiderman essay that Eitreim did...doesn't exactly have originality to it. Like, just summarizing the story isn't really telling about the aspects to the movie that took so much work in creating the movie. If you wanted to know the story to that movie...you could just watch the movie itself.
With having these example essays...I think I will only really use the basic format to how the paper should look....because I like my own ideas with how I am writing the paper... If I were to write on just the lighting, camera angles, and such...then I would lose interest with even writing the paper at all. In my essay I will talk about meanings to events and happenings in the movie, and possible foreshadowings too.
The example team presentation of Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket sort of helped me. It showed me how the pausing and finding of movie scenes would go. The idea of reading quotes from the movie aloud is a good idea too. However, I hope that my group's presentation is different just for the adding of interest, because if it followed the same format as that then that would get boring after so many presentations of the same thing. I think for filling in the class with what the movie is about quick first though...I hope my group reads the backs to the movies or some kind of quick summary before each explanation of the movie. If this is done then the class will hopefully have more interest in what we are talking about.
Excellent points, Carly. Impressive, mature awareness. I find much insight and validity in your words.
I think that sample essays are quite helpful. They give students an outline that they can follow. Since you give us these essays we can know, with confidence, that if we have similar ideas to the examples we should get an A paper. By reading through the examples you gain knowledge of improper grammar, spelling, and ect, however you can also learn what idea’s are bad and what ideas are good. For my movie essay, I will not summarize the movie. I will pick out certain aspects to talk about. For example I will talk mostly about how men perceive women, which will lead into body image. I will also talk about how many people are afraid of falling in love, so instead they will fall in lust. My movie essay will reflect a lot of what I talked about in my Ad essay because they seem to relate to one another. I will also try to keep things entertaining and not to boring, because a more exciting paper will most likely get a better grade than a boring paper, in my opinion. I do not like doing the analyzing on my own, for movies, however. I feel that I can get more out of things when there are other people saying their opinions around me. Someone could see something that I totally missed or they could have a different point of view on something. I would say writing the paper is not my biggest obstacle. It is analyzing and finding the deeper meaning in things. Sometimes things will be really obvious, and I can get those, but there are other things that will go completely over my head. I will not see it until someone else points it out, then I will have the light bulb go off in my head. I hope after writing my paper I will become better at it. For our group presentation I wish we had more computer lab time. When we get into groups in the classroom it is pointless some days, my group does not get much done because we don’t know where to start. I know our group is not the only group that does it. Seeing your presentation helped my groups decide what we will be doing. Instead of doing three movies we will only focus on two movies, so we won’t run out of time. We will be throwing bits of a third movie into our presentation however, because it relates to the other two movies. Our group will be concentrating on the Notebook, and A Walk to Remember. The third movie we will possibly talk a little about will be Dear John. They all relate to each other in the fact that love is like a battle field, and they are all books written by Nicholas Sparks that where made into movies. Over all, all of the examples that you have provided has helped me and everyone else.
I find that the model essay that you have provided us can be very helpful in writing our paper. We can assume that your paper would be an A and can follow its basic guidelines to write our own paper. Also the other essays are helpful because they show how college students are writing their papers which is the point of this class to be prepared for college. They show us what things that they looked at and wrote about and can help give ideas on what we should be writing about. We can also see mistakes that they made and make sure we don’t do the same thing. Like with Eitrem’s paper I read it and thought he did to much summarizing and really wrote nothing about his analysis of the movie so I will be sure not to do that. I also thought your model team presentation was somewhat helpful. Seeing the way you do things helps us to do things our own way but using your examples as a guideline. It is very helpful for me to first see an example and try and do things after. I feel I do better and I think it is easier to do things by having and seeing examples. I liked your model essay that you gave us over the film We Own The Night. It is helpful because it shows us how you would do things. It also shows us what you analyze and how you do so that we can learn how to. Thanks to all the handouts you have given us and all the examples you have provided writing this essay should not be to difficult.
Samantha Hagen 3
I like that you give us many sample essays to work with. It gives us examples on how our papers should be, we can use it to get paragraph ideas if were stuck and we don’t have enough or it helps show what a good paper is. In Eitreim’s paper he didn’t even have it titled, or with the class or teacher or anything. I personally think it looks nicer that when it has Who wrote the paper, what class the paper is for, who is the teacher for that class and the date the paper is due. I also think it looks nice with a title page. So yes having samples helps show what we should do it also shows what we should not do. I like that you did a paper because it shows exactly what you looking for, because when other people our age do they do not really know either. And I can follow yours and hopefully have a great paper. I also will use reference to your work cited so I can better how I do mine since I know mine was bad in my last paper. I was so lost when we started writing are first paper then we got the sample essays and they helped out so much. I know they are probably A papers too, Mr. C’s Thesis statement helped me write mine, I really liked his so I based mine off of his in a way. Watching your presentation of Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket helped a lot in showing my group and myself how we are going to present our information, and our movies in the time we have. We are doing four movies and so we need to keep it moving very well in order to get done. Once thing is I do not feel as prepared for this presentation as I did for the ad analyze one. I think maybe because most of the stuff was on our own on lab time. I will be starting my paper this week and I will defiantly be using Strand’s, Eitrem’s, Hanson’s and Mr. C’s essays and guides to making a great paper and one I can use next year or another year up at college along with my ad analysis paper. All the handouts you have given us will also make writing the paper very easy, they are extremely helpful, when watching the film and when writing about it.
The example papers will me us out a lot because they show us what we could do for our own papers. They can give us a layout on how to write our own. They are very helpful in the way that we can see what each paper did right and what was done wrong. This helps us criticize our own paper and make corrections. I will use the example papers to compare to my own paper. I will look at the structures and how they started their papers. The hardest part of writing a paper for me is starting it. Each example started out differently which gives me more options on how I can start my own paper or how to keep it flowing. Also, I can see ways to keep the paper strong throughout the entire paper. I don’t want only the beginning to be strong and then fade as the paper continues. I want to use the examples as a way to direct my own paper. I think that each example paper has something that I can learn from to make my own paper more scholarly. The example presentation helps me too because it is a way for me to visualize what I could do for my paper and what my team can do while we are presenting. It gives us an overview on what to do, such as: going into the directors, the reviews, and what kind of clips would be best to show to the class because we only have a limited amount of time to show clips and present. It gave us a good example on what we need to do and how much information we need to give to the class to get them to understand the important parts of the movie. If we get stuck writing we can look at an example and it can help us get un-stuck. The papers can give us ideas and help us think of things that we would not have on our own.
The examples we have been given are extremely helpful. Everything we are given will help us in one way or another. They will help us write stronger and longer and better papers. The handouts/ examples give us guidelines and facts that will help us out. This paper is going to be hard to write, so we are lucky to get as much help as we are getting.
I think the model essays and model presentations help out a ton. They portray essentials that we need to write our own papers and give us examples for our own presentations. The models can also show us what not to present about or write about. By using the model essays, we can see that we must use multiple handouts to portray what we are trying to say in our paper. We can also see how we must think very scholarly and look very deep into our individual movies to get as much information and analysis out of them as possible. The sample papers also show us how we can not summarize our films because it takes away from the analysis and makes the paper boring and pointless. The sample presentation pretty much tells us what and what not to do when we present. We learn that we need to keep everything organised and stay within our time limit and that we can not ramble because it makes the presentation seem sloppy. Many strategies can be used to make our essays and presentations better and more interesting. Staying away from summarizing in our papers is a major strategy to keep my paper better. Also, the use of handouts will keep my paper on topic and make it more interesting. The strategies I will take from the sample presentation will be not to ramble and to keep the time under control. We only have fifty minutes so we need to stay within that time. Tom Eitreim's model essay helped me to think of things that I could do better in a sense. I don't think his summarizing did any good for his paper. I've seen Spiderman so I did not need to read a summary of it. I also realized from it though, that I need to use my handouts in a scholarly and more informative way. MC's presentation also helped a great deal. He rambled a bit but that's not out of the ordinary. He was cut on his time limit, which I don't think is a good thing. There were many things to talk about of course, but if he would have hit the main points, we would've understood all the same. I also enjoyed the handout because it told us a little of what was coming without ruining it. The quotes were also a nice touch to get the class involved and it kept them attentive.
I don't really know if I will use a Feminist, Marxist, or Freudian lens. I've never really understood what they mean. I sort of understand the feminist lens but I also believe everyone is entitled to their own opinions, even men making a mockery of women.
Jessi Lunstra pd.5
JOEY BRANNAN P.5
The model essays that you have show us and the presentation you have done for us has helped me a lot in how to do my paper and what I need to do to prepare for my paper and presentation. The example essays show me what's expected and how to get a feel for what needs to be in a good essay about deconstruction of the film "I am Legend" the one I have chosen to deconstruct for you. You are right in that Eitreim's essay is summarized too much and I know now to steer clear of that. I didn't quite understand before I read this what I needed to do until I was given two examples of each one of what a summary is like and one of what deconstruction is like. Now that I have been able to look at both I have a pretty good feel for how I need to write my paper and make it less of a summary and more of a deconstruction. Your example presentation showed me what we as a group need to do and how to get a start of what we need to do. It showed me how were supposed to deconstruct the movies we have chosen and now give away the whole movie but to make you want to watch more and feel enlightened and smarter and know more about the movies and what the movie is going to be like and if it intrigues your interest than you can watch more otherwise you don’t need to waste your time watching it to find out that you didn't like the movies. Like my paper I didn’t know before this class how to do any of this and these examples that you have been so kind to give us has helped me understand what to look for in the movies. I have begun to treat it like I am hunting how I study my prey before I begin my hunt I study my movies now and look for the prey within it. This class hasn’t been a total waste for me because it has helped me study my prey (movies, ads, books) and I now know how to attack it. Thanks to these examples you have given me I can study up on the movies and know what to look for and how to look for it within these movies and be able to deconstruct the movie thoroughly and make somebody either want to watch more or steer clear of the movie I have deconstructed.
JOEY BRANNAN P.5
B. Olson Period 5
The example essays are probably some of my most prize handouts because they are the guidance in writing our essays. By looking off of what they wrote and the structure they followed i can replicate the same structure into my writing. They also give us the feel and flow of how an essay maybe should be written in sense that it is neither choppy nor vague. What i like about these handouts most is that they are all different in structure so it gives you a variety in essay structures so that no ones essay is the exactly identical in structure. Strategies i like his the attention-grabbing sentences embedded in them. It seems their essays when reading the first few sentences will grab your attention and suck you in. They do not bore you but link you to the rest of their essay forcing you to read more. These essays are great and you can see why they are held on to and used for examples for future classmates in guiding hopefully to write our/their own paper. Your model essay is also very helpful then again a guide for us. “Monkey sees monkey does,” we can learn from watching how to present and how to talk about our movies, watching Mr. C with his presentation. I like how he used a unique technique of giving us quotes from his movies to read off in front of the class. He even used references to his presentation and I could tell he did a lot of research for too. If I was the teacher, to me, it was a definitely A student production. Models and examples seem to very helpful in life and especially at our age we need the guidance and eventually someday we will be on our own and this class helps us and guides us for and to college where we can take the things we learn from here and use our expressive thoughts in writing papers in college. I love writing these papers now. Then college shouldn’t be so stressful and we can feel more productive.
I do believe seeing sample essays help me because they give me ideas on what I could write about. Also when you give us essays that do not really fit our guidelines it shows me what not to do. I read Tom’s essays and knowing that you think that he summarized too much helped me to know not to summarize as much. If we had never gotten his essay and you telling us what you thought about it, I might have summarized that movie way too much in my paper. I really liked how Casey described how each character in her movie had a fatal flaw and then she described their fatal flaw. While I think Erik’s essay is ok I believe he repeats himself a lot. In my essay I will try and stay away from repeating myself, but seeing a sample where I think that has shown me what I do not want to do. Another thing that the sample essays have given me ideas on is the title for my paper. Seeing what other people have done makes it easier to think up a creative title because you won’t think yours is done. I think the sample presentation helped because I always do better when I can see what you expect before doing it. Your sample presentation gave our group ideas on what to say about different aspects of our movies such as camera angles or hidden symbols with the movies. In my paper on Dirty Dancing I plan to use a feminist lens to see why women enjoy this movie and how they are able to relate to it. I also plan to look at how the women in this movie are degraded by the men. I believe the two sample essays that will be most beneficial to me are yours and Casey Strands. Casey’s essay gave me ideas on what I could write each paper about. I believe your paper will be most beneficial to me in writing my introduction and my conclusion. One strategy I plan to use from the sample essays is discussing the characters and why they are the way they are. I will also discuss some of the hidden symbols and references that are placed in the movie. I also agree with Sara that the sample essays have given me ideas on where to start with my paper. Along with the samples I also believe that the handouts especially the red one are very beneficial in knowing where to start and where to go with you essay.
I found the handouts that we received very helpful. They helped me understand what an “A” paper looks like and helps me learn how to set up my paper so I can receive a better grade myself. I thought that Tom’s paper was good. Although he pretty much summarized the film throughout his whole paper, but I think it would be a great paper for someone who has never seen any of the spider-man movies because it would help the reader understand the story of the film without seeing the film. I thought that Mr. C’s paper was great because it helped me understand a wide variety of words, and where and how to use them when it comes to writing my paper, and had a great thesis statement that will help me when writing the thesis statement portion of my paper. The hardest part of writing my paper, or any paper, has been how to start my paper, the thesis statement, and the concluding paragraph of a paper. I also thought that the presentation was a great tool in telling me what exactly to look for when I am deconstructing a film, and this will help a lot more in finding the hidden messages, symbols, and themes in movies, and will in all help me in writing a great paper. And will help me write a paper without repeating myself a hundred times, over and over again. I think the presentation was helpful because it can be hard for the average movie goers to pick up key things that the director put in the film, such as symbols, and other important things that will help you pick up on what Is happening so that they can follow along better, but they do not take the time to slow down, and really look hard for these things which would really make the movie a lot better, and that is what the presentation helped me with, and if everyone did slow down and watch, and pick up on these things, people would enjoy a lot more movies, and be a lot smarter when it comes to watching films. And no matter how many times you see a movie, you will always be able to pick up on something new. This is why I think this unit is wonderful because it help me answer my own questions that I have during a film, and I wont have to get up when it is over and say “I don’t get it?”
I think that the models are helping me a lot! I am having a hard time to get my paper to flow, so when I looked at Erik’s paper it is helping me a lot! I like his because it is not just about the movie, it is about deeper things. I have used Erik’s paper the most because after reading his first page I felt like I wanted to see the movie which is exactly what I want when people read my paper! I think that if I did not have Erik’s paper it would be way harder to write my paper. The papers are perfect examples because they have their own twist on the papers. I want to have my own twist on my paper also. These papers made me think deeper and had me start asking questions. I think that if I did not have these papers I would have struggled even more then I have been. I would say the hardest struggle for me is putting my paragraphs into a decent flowing paper. I have enough paragraphs to make a paper but the problem I have been having is that if I put this paragraph here then it does not have a good point like I think it should, so then I try and put it I in a different spot and it’s the same struggle. I want people to want to see “the pursuit of happyness” when they read my paper, I also want them to read the rest of my paper not just the first couple paragraphs or first page. I feel like this movie has a good message for anyone. Before this unit I missed so much messages, I went to the movie “valentine’s day” and I saw so much more then I would have, I am starting to look at the background in the movies not just the actress/actors that the camera is focusing on. Almost everything that is in a movie is on purpose, I never believed it before and when we first started and watched “No country for old men” I was like oh that just happened like that it is not that big of a deal. But every movie has something that the director wants there or he wouldn’t have it there. I like seeing more movies like this because I feel like it has more of a meaning or a message.
I think having a model essay and a model presentation helps. It gives us what you’re expecting ours to look like. Also having model essays helps us realize where to start and what is needed in our essay. Telling us about Casey Strand helped me finally start my film deconstruction. You told us we should just sit down and watch our movie and write down what we see. You mentioned Casey had a whole notebook full of notes on her movie. This made me realize I needed to kick it in the butt and start deconstructing. I didn’t think doing this film deconstruction would take me about 4 hours just to watch it once and write down everything. Fully analyzing a film should take you along time. While reading Casey’s essay I got a little confused on the second page while she was summarizing what happens in the movie. I don’t know who the characters are and all their names just got blended together and I didn't know who was who. It was a good idea to have Casey’s as a model because Burn After Reading isn’t a film many people would choose to do. Because not many people would pick this movie no one would be able to copy and part of her essay like some may do if you chose a movie like Superbad or The Hangover. Erik Hanson had a very good essay. I have never even heard of this movie but after reading his essay I want to watch it. That is why I believe his essay was marvelous. Being able to convince someone to watch a movie through your words is very hard to do and he did it. Extra points for him. His movie, like Casey’s, isn’t one many people would pick to deconstruct. No one can copy any parts of his essay either. Eitreim has a good essay too. Even though he summarizes too much it helps us give us an idea what NOT to do. But then again it isn’t a good idea because not everyone listens during class and some might read his essay and think that is the right way to write your essay. Your essay is a good example for all because it gives us what we need in our essay and is a good model to help us know what you are looking for in our essay. You will know if anyone copies you because you wrote it yourself and it is very well organized and put. Your presentation helped me a lot! I didn’t understand what we were actually supposed to do at first. Watching your presentation made me realize what we’re supposed to do. Also it made me not procrastinate as much. You have to put time and effort into something if you want a good grade. Also it’s a good idea to deconstruct on films you like. That is why our team presentation means a lot to me. Since I was a dancer for most of my life I have a connection with these films and it touches my heart. Watching these films make me sad and they make me miss dance. Watching dancing films makes me want to be a dancer again. And I am considering being a dance in college now.
Megan Donovan pd 3
After reading Casey’s analysis of Burn After Reading, I have a very good idea of how I will not write my paper. I like how her introduction paragraph is brief, but I do not obtain a feel for what the movie is about; the theme is unclear. No setting detail, hint of what the theme may be, or direction in which her paper will go. She jumps directly into camera angles after just telling us the movie’s title. I do like her in depth analysis of each main character though, and their role in the film. Despite this, I feel like the paper is a summary of the movie. The analysis of the characters just verbally depicts what they go through in the film, and really has no central theme between them except the “flaws;” pointing nothing out. I also felt that no real use of a certain lens was present in this paper. I’ll be using a feminist lens to deconstruct my film, and will be sure to have a theme throughout to keep the reader interested. I do not want to bore them telling what happened during the movie, and I feel that this paper does far too much of that. However, I do like Casey’s vocabulary throughout other paper. She uses no dead words and only one cliché. Giving us examples of different essays shows us how to NOT write our papers. For example, you saying that Tom summarized too much tells me not to do that, which is something I really like. I also liked the mock presentation as a guide to my own. It showed me how I could use video clips in an organized way and gave me an idea of what we were to do. I will not be doing my presentation exactly as Mr. C did though because I desire to keep my class entertained, and cannot achieve this by doing a presentation every other group has; I want to mix it up a bit. I also think I will share a little more about the movie before showing clips so people are not lost, and can connect more while watching. I liked the idea of reading quotes from the movie aloud. If people have seen the film they will know exactly where we are talking about, and again they can connect with the movie further. We will also certainly be using a hand out along with our visual aide. I feel that the handout summed up everything you said. Often during a presentation I find myself hearing and not completely listening, and if a handout is offered I can reread what was said to me to understand it better.
I think the sample essays help tremendously. They help you set up your own outline to your paper. Without them I wouldn’t know where to start or what you were looking for. The essays also help you figure out how to make your paper flow together and not be so choppy. They show you how and where to put your quotes and also how to site your works citied. With the last ad analysis paper we wrote the sample essays really helped me with the works citied page. Being able to see how the MLA citations should look was very helpful. Without them I don’t think I would have citied my sources correctly. I agree that Tom Eitreim’s summary of his film is a little too much, but now I know not to do that and to look deeper into my film. I agree with Lauren that it is hard to choose words that make sense in a sentence without repeating yourself a bunch of times; I also try and use a dictionary or thesaurus to find words that will work best in my paper. I also learn better by looking at examples and seeing what other people wrote about, it helps me figure out what I should try and write about. I think my next task is to try and find a book source that I can use for my paper. I think your model presentation of the three war films was very helpful. It showed my team what we need to do in order to get an “A” on our presentations. I thought the quotes between scenes was a very good idea, it helped transition into the next film or scene. It made me think about what my group could do to have great transitions between scenes. Your presentation also helped my group figure out how to manage our time wisely, because we don’t want to run short on time. I also think the handouts help a lot too. I especially like the red handout with all the questions on it. It helps us think harder about our movies and get started on analyzing our films instead of just watching them for enjoyment. If we didn’t have questions to think about we would not know what you were looking for us to write about in our papers. What I don’t understand is why we have to analyze the camera angles in our films when the sample essays don’t really use any of that terminology in them. Overall, I think that the sample essays, handouts, and presentation that you gave are all very helpful. Without them I don’t think I could succeed near as well.
The model essays were not nearly as helpful as one would hope. The most help that any of these could give to a person is where to begin or what to talk about. Which are on some of the handouts given to us. I don't believe it was necessary for us to be given so many of the samples because none of them describe the movie of my choice, and they are all talking about something different. There is a wide area of topics that a person could talk about while deconstructing a film. The essays were few and so not as helpful. The only way for these to be helpful is to have sample essays on each of the movies that we will be writing about, so that we would be able to compare what they talked about and what we will be talking about. The presentation that was given to us by Mr. Christensen was helpful so that we knew what he wanted. This way we won't have to guess on what is required of us on this presentation and can do what is expected of us. I will use a Marxist lens to in my essay to understand the social standing of the protagonist and how/why he fights and also the democratic/empire political view of things. Why people should fight for their rights among other things.
I think the sample essays helped me out a lot. They were a good reference point on what we would be doing and they are very beneficial in guiding me along the right path. For the first essay on advertisements I used the samples as visual aids in helping me on what I should be doing. The same goes for this essay. If I ever run into trouble the essays are there to bail me out. The one i used the most was Mr. Christensen's on "We own the Night." It helped me see stuff more deeply in a feminist lens so that I can utilize that in my own essay. I saw how Eva Mendes was used for her body and how that was very derogatory to women. Also I found out about how much summary of the movie I should use which is not a lot. Mr. C.'s paper obviously was the best of the bunch because he is the teacher and therefore can create the "A" essay. In my paper I will be using both a Feminist lens and a Marxist lens. The Feminist lens I will use in the scenes of Society in the movie Gamer. Society is basically a place where the wealthy pay to use "actors" which are real people to live out there sexual fantasies. They miss use women for their pleasure which has a profound effect on a feminist lens. They treat them as if they were just items that have no feeling or life what so ever. Also I would be using a Marxist lens. The Marxist lens is because how the antagonist "Castle" is able use the protagonist "Kable" to do his dirty work for him and then lock him up for it because Castle had the money to get away with it. He was able to manipulate the system into doing what he wanted because he had the power. Also Kable had no chance of stopping what was happening and had no support on his side in the beginning because he just seemed like a guilty person. Also the rich people get to control Society players who were poor and needed money. The poor people sold their bodies and souls for money while the rich people got to take advantage of that. This is a major problem that could affect how our future turns out. The real issue is how do we prevent this from happening because it is a bleak future if it is allowed to happen.
I think that the sample essays and the mock presentation will be very useful in writing my paper and presenting. The essays give us examples on what to write about and how long our paper should be. The samples give us a basis to look off of if were stuck and need ideas on what aspects of our films to write about. They also give us examples of good introduction and conclusion paragraphs, thesis statements, works cited, and deconstruction topics to put in our body paragraph. The example presentation showed us how to use our time wisely while presenting and also made us realize that it would be difficult to analyze and tell about more than three movies in a fifty-minute period. Our group cut down on movies after viewing the sample presentation so we would have time to deeply deconstruct the films in our own presentation. Also I feel that the handout was particularly useful because it was a straightforward outline of the presentation and made it easier to understand and obtain all the analysis information and theories of the films. Our group is going to be making a handout very similar to the one in the mock presentation. In addition I personally feel that the handout made it easier to pay attention to the presentation because I could follow along and see what significant points were being made. The presentation also helped us to be prepared for the technological struggles we may experience during the presentation with all the clips needed to be shown and all the different remotes needed to be used. The presentation gave us different types of ideas to incorporate into our presentations such as the soundtrack lyrics analysis and the quote cards that were used. In my paper I will be using all three lenses to deconstruct Nancy Meyers’ film The Holiday. I will use the feminist lens to analyze how the women are treated in the film and how their roles compare to the roles of men in the film. I will use the Marxist lens to show how all the major characters in the film are high up the on the social class ladder. If they were not upper class citizens the events that occur in the film, such as swapping houses, would be almost impossible due to the money factor. I will also be using the Freudian lens to analyze specific scenes that involve sexuality and sexual tension between characters.
I believe that the model presentation of Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket was the most helpful for me by far. It gave all of us a good example of just how this monster presentation should be done. Before your presentation, I was wondering how in the world I would finish such a large task. After seeing the good flow that was in yours and the information you used, I began brainstorming ideas for my own presentation. Once I saw how you easily had fifty minutes, I was relieved since fifty minutes seems like a long time to talk about a couple of movies. Fifty minutes during the ad presentation was cake, so with a little work, the movie presentation wont be anything either. The paper written by Erik Hansen help me a lot also. I usually have difficultly writing long papers, so a five page paper about one movie will be a huge challenge for me. With these examples, including Hansen's, I have some good papers to look at to see just how five pages is done. It will also help me distribute my paper into sections and help keep the flow going instead of having a very choppy paper. After my ad paper wasn't exactly what I had in mind, I can also use that as what not to do for this paper and maybe, hopefully, do it right this time around. I'll also use the Marxist lense for my paper on Four Brothers. The movie shows how four foster kids can work together no matter what skin color they are. A marxist critic would say that these young men havnt followed the path of the normal systems of race. Brothers are supposed to be the same race, but in this movie they are bigger than the system of brotherhood. I could also use a marxist lense to show how the main characters act in Superbad to get alcohol. They feel that getting alcohol will get them accepted into the popular kid system. They have been beaten down mentally for being different and nerdy and all of those experiences force them to act differently to please the social system. Superbad also shows how high school is a popularity latter and it takes drastic measures to climb up it. It only takes a little slip to fall and loose everything you've worked for. Superbad could also be watched in a feminist lense to show how women are looked down on. The film says that girls can be taken advantage of with alcohol and drive feminists crazy.
I think these models will help me in writing my paper. I can look on how they set up their paper and the layout. I can use these examples to help me with my paper also by analyzing their writing and look to see how they were using their terminology and how they analyzed their camera angles and be able to look at angles differently in my movie that I am analyzing and writing about. I think the model essays will help some; everyone has different writing styles and strategies that they can base it and rely on the essays. Although it is a great example, something you can look back on if you get stuck at some point in your paper. I also think that having these examples doesn’t help at all because it will show people how they write and they will believe that in that way is how they are suppose to write, students will just give up and say “oh I can write like this so they will just slap something down for their paper”. The examples can be something to look forward to or something that can tear a student down. I think your model for the team presentation on Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket will defiantly help me and the group with our presentation. With the model that you did we will have an example of how the presentation is suppose to go. It is kind of an outline for us, knowing what we can say, how we can say it, why the camera angles and answer many questions. We will point out many things that regular movie goers will not see or pick up when they see the movie and what we point out they might have a different view on the movie or even how society makes the movie seem like and how they portray life should be like. We will also be able to have a correct presentation for our own; we will be able to point things out that most will not. In my film analysis I will use Freudian and Marxist lens. Most of all I will use the Feminist lens the most because I am a strong feminist and I see thing more in that nature. My movie that I analyze has a lot of things in there that I can look at in a feminist view.
I think that the model essays help me a lot in writing my paper because it gives me examples on how I should begin and write my paper. I like that we have Eitreim’s paper and the rest of the people’s papers because it shows me on how I should and shouldn’t write my paper. The only thing that annoys me is that if I’m not writing my paper the way they write it then it makes me think that my paper wont be ‘A worthy’ but it’s nice to have an example on how a A paper is written. I think Eitreim’s paper isn’t the best way to analyze a movie because like you said, he summarizes too much of the movie. Anyone can watch a movie and summarize it. It’s what’s hidden beneath that we have to write about; the things that people normally don’t see. Before I knew about analyzing I just watched movies to watch them. Now knowing how, I analyze it to get more out of the film. All films should be analyzed because the director takes time and effort into a movie so we should take time and effort into analyzing it. I like that we got a paper from you because it shows exactly what you are expecting from a paper and how you would write one. Also by getting examples from other students is nice because most likely we will write like them. I like how the papers are split into themes. Like how the examples summarize the movie in one paragraph and then explain the character’s career, life, and the different themes that have happened in the movie. In my paper, I’m going to do some of the things that they have done. I’m going to explain the color theme that they constantly use which are three colors and I’m going to talk about how they have two of everything before Jerry dies (in p.s. I love you). I’m also going to get into Jerry’s and holly’s career because it does relate to some things in the movie about their careers.
The team model presentation helped a lot because it gives my group and I an idea on how we should present our project. It gave me a few ideas on how I should help my team do well. I like how you used a few movies instead of a genre (which there is nothing wrong with that) but it gave us an idea that we should maybe focus on a couple movies rather then a genre. I think we will do well (:
To me the models have helped in the past and are still helping a lot. The models help me, because they offer someone else’s perspective on what is expected and what needs to be done for the paper or project, this is helpful because it can serve as a guideline on not only what to do, but more importantly on how to do it well. You can look at an example paper and deconstruct it; you can look at what they did well on, and what they might need improvement on. Then you can try to emulate what they did right and make sure you avoid some of the same mistakes that they might’ve made in their own paper, like how Tom Eitreim probably summarized his movie too much and didn’t focused on details as much as he should’ve. Also, these model papers have helped me when I get stuck on a paper, like when I don’t know what I should write next or what order I should write it in, I’m glad I can go back and read a well written example paper to help me get started thinking on how I should do my own paper. The example group presentation that was given also has really helped, because it gives us a great example on what is expected of us as a group and what we need to do to earn ourselves a good grade. The example also has helped by giving ideas that we could use or at least consider and think about, like now we know that it would be nearly impossible to try and fully analyze more than three films in the time that is given to us. Another thing that has helped me greatly is the group presentation that we did last semester over advertisements, these presentations really helped by giving me the experience of a 45 minute presentation that I don’t think I have ever given before, so not only I can look at your presentation I can look at my own and see what we did right and what we might have done wrong, and learn from those mistakes, because not only learning by example helps me, but learning by experience also can really help. The three main lenses: Feminist, Marxist, and Freudian are defiantly essential to be used in analyzing and deconstruction our papers, these three lenses provide us good methods to view our movies with, they give us a good basis of thought and a easy way to start thinking scholarly and critically about our chosen films.
I think that it is great that you can provide us with examples of magnificent essays to help us improve our own upon. Most of my previous English teachers have only given me advice along the way, nothing to go off of or any ideas of how it should look when finished. I, like most students need direction, we need an example to know what we are supposed to do, that is why having these sample essays available to us is tremendous. I like how Erik Hanson gets into the ideology of the film and of the film makers. Especially in Eagle Eye, there could be a lot to analyze down that path. As for summarizing the film, Hanson only gives about a one paragraph summary of the movie, while Eitreim uses about two and a half paragraphs, but I think that a happy medium would be enough to give the reader a background of the movie, yet not ruin it for him/her. Also, looking at the characters and those who play those characters would be another interesting strategy to use to analyze my film. Finally, looking at and comparing this film, Eagle Eye, to the corruption in today’s governments, not only in the United States, but in many other countries and comparing text to it as well, such as George Orwell’s 1984. By comparing these, I will be able to see what is really wrong with the system and what can be done by everyday Americans to fix this nation, or any nation. I really enjoy having a sample to look at. Not only does it give me direction, it gives me a baseline, something that I can look at and say to myself, “I can make something better than that.”
I think that your model team presentation was terrific. Again, it gives me and my team something to look back at and go off of. One of the biggest ways that it helped me was showing me how to set up the presentation. I did not really know how we were supposed to watch movie clips and talk about and analyze as a class these different films. After seeing you presentation, every aspect of how our presentation needs to go was crystal clear, now only if the rest of the group will cooperate and work as a team, like we should. I think it is great that you give us example of how projects and papers are supposed to be. That is one thing I will have to remember to do when I become a teacher, like I am hoping to be. Thank you, Mr. C!!
The model essays that you have provided do help me. These essays help because I can use them as an outline. By using the essays as outlines I know what to look for in my paper and how to shape my paper. An outline is very important it forms me into picking out the information I need and not using what is not needed. In Tom Eitreim’s Spiderman paper you pointed out that he summarizes too much. I can use this to know how much to summarize or how little to. This is important because it is very hard to figure out if you have summarized too much. This also helps because it makes me pick out the more information, or the background I need to share so one can understand what I am talking about. From your paper, I obtain more. Your paper helps me turn my paper from a student paper to a teacher paper. This helps me further my future essays and expands my brain. I also like these model essays because they help me show on how to include the movie reviews; to make the paper flow better. The strategies I will use from these essays are to keep the summary to the point and only include what need to be included. From these essays I now have a better way on what each of my paragraphs should be about. To start I will give the very brief background of the movie. Then I will go into the main characters. With the main characters I will show how their name is forced into who they are. I will also show how each main character plays into different roles such as camera work. Next I will go into the camera angles and frames affect the mood and the camera wants your eyes to see. After the camera angles, the soundtrack will come next. I will show how the soundtrack makes you feel what is interpreted on the screen; then the conclusion. The presentation of the three movies helped in various ways. This helped my group because then we found transitions like how you used the quotes. The quotes you used also helped because we found quotes that make the villains into the villains. Your presentation also helps the group by finding out how long to spend on each movie; and what to cover. With all of these models; it will help my paper and our group presentation.
Personally I think it helps to see what other kids have written about so you know how to get started. These models you provided us with will strongly help me and help me get a stronger grade. It gives us a layout for our own paper as well. What you need to put in your paper, how long it s should be and such. Those are A papers, if my paper looks anything like that I know ill have a good grade. If it doesn’t then I need to change things around and write more. I will use the example papers to help me write a proper and excellent thesis statement. It gives us our guidelines; Eitreim’s essay is a little over deconstructed. You want to have an intelligent essay but at the same time you want the reader to understand it and not have to look up all the words. There all different in structure so you can pick and choose which one you prefer most. No one will have the exact same essay structure, that’s what I like most about it. The strategies I will use are getting your attention. Every good essay has a good thesis statement and conclusion. You need to get the readers attention and not be an average boring essay, and make it fun. Also you want to put words in your essay that you don’t normally use. It makes your essay stronger and more educated. They are great essays and I can obviously see why you kept all them for us. I recommend keeping them because they helped me out a lot. Also when you went up in front of the class and did a model presentation of your films really helped. Now in our teams we know what we are expected to do. That’s the main reason no one ever likes to go first. We don’t want to have a presentation nothing compared to what was expected of us. Now we know how much information we will need to fill the 50 min of class. Its nice having blogs or handouts right in front of you so you don’t have to raise your hand and ask a question, you have all the information right in front of you. I always hated writing these papers. It helps writing something that you like doing but this class really helped me for college. Now when I have to write these papers in college I know what I am suppose to be doing and don’t need to stress out so much.
Shad Smith per 3
I think those models helped me a lot in getting started with my first paper. Because when I began my first paper over our ad's I didn’t know what I was doing and how to even gets my paper going. those papers are very good examples on what to do right and what not to do, by you going through one of those students papers with us it showed us even though this person is smart and well aware of what he/she is doing they even mess up sometimes too and that there is a lot that you can do to get an A paper. I've looked through some of those graduates and some of them repeat themselves to much by using the same words and i know i do the exact same thing; I just need to slow down and pick my words more wisely. Also in showing us there finished papers in class it kind of throws me off a bit like Cody H. was saying in class one day there paper set up may have a certain idea that is very intelligent but then when I look at how im going to set up my paper it is nothing like there’s so it kind of seems like im doing everything wrong and that I need to change how im think to get a good A paper like them but idk that could be just me and Cody think BS. Your model presentations were very helpful in showing us how we should set certain things up and how we should portray them. But in my opinion I think you went a little to fast and should of slowed down but over all you did very well and got the main just of the movies. I never really us the Feminist lens because I just don’t really think that way not to sound sexist I just saying I never yours that point of view. Maybe I should that might help out my get a stronger grade even. I always use the maxiest and Freudian lens in my papers and in real life I usually just say certain things then realize I was use either my Freudian lens or maxiest lens I don’t even realize myself doing it half the time im just so used to thinking that way I guess. But what you are doing to get us prepared for college is great your English class is the only one I have ever liked all through my years of school so thx.
I found the sample essays very helpful as a guide to follow for my paper. But, it would help if I had seen the movies that the essays were over so that I could relate to what the writer was thinking. The only movie I have seen out of all the sample essays was Tom Eitreim’s about Spiderman. But, his does summarize more than analyzed, as you stated Mr. C. His also has no works cited or title, so I wouldn’t use his as an example next year. Your essay is a prime example of an outstanding essay. Of course it is very good since you have been writing essays like these for years now. It helps to see how an “A” paper looks and we can see the layout of your paper. Also, your presentation over Vietnam films helped my group to realize that 50 minutes goes by faster than you think. The presentation also helped me to see how you deconstructed the movies, so I could follow the same guidelines. I liked how you involved the class with the quotes. Now our group wants to have something to keep the class involved too. In Casey Strand’s Burn After Reading essay, she has a good thesis, transitions and works cited. She looks at camera angles, irony, and why things are the way they are in the film. Her title is excellent with the analysis. It hints at hell on earth. It helps me to understand what type of things to put in my paper. Erik Hanson’s paper has a short introduction paragraph, but it us still very effective. He uses questions to start out with, which help us relate to how disgusting smoking is. Then, he goes into the ideology of good versus evil. He summarizes a little, but I don’t think that hurts if it’s not too much. Erik’s paragraphs and sentences are all different lengths, which is a very good thing to refer to. Some paragraphs are a page long. It helps me to realize how deep we need to analyze our movie to get enough information. I found all of these sample essays and the sample presentation very useful as a reference. It helps me to see what you and college professors are looking for in these papers. With our team presentations, we have a much better idea how to use our time and how to keep the class involved.
I agree with Sara also, when you told us to just start writing our paper, I had no clue on how to start it or what exactly to put in the paper, the handouts and examples of other past students papers have helped marvalous with those problems. With Eiterims paper which summarized Spiderman I could tell in which he summerized to much, and that helps me with knowing when to stop summerizing and which what is crazy and should be taken out of my paper, like another said he didnt have a works Cited or a title, which could be a great example to students next year on not what to forget in your paper, because even the title explains what the papers about, its like going to get a book at Barnes and Noble and have no titles and some only pick out books that "look" good on the title. Your model team presentation helped me out alot because after, I knew what you were expecting of us (my group) when we present our "Not another teen presentation" It also helped me with what to look for in the movies and not just the obvious information, and to look deeper in what the movies are about. In our presentation we will be using a Freudian lens because well all of our movies are about "sex" or have sexual references and are easy to pick out. Some may see our presentation as a Feminist lens also because of how they portray woman/girls in the movies. Without alot of your handouts I would be lost, and knowing alot of students in your classes would be to. They may seem pointless to some but really if you take the time to read them, understand them and deconstruct them; you get alot of information out of them and they teach you alot, in which the reason I knew how to write my analysis paper on "juno" which without learning about the different kind of lens' it would have been alot harder because you couldnt understand it from an other point of view, and then the paper would only be 1 sided, and who wants to read a one sided paper? all-in-all the examples of the papers helped me and helped others which every year examples should be given, to even help as an outline for some, who need organiztion in there papers.
Katie Carlson Pd-6
Madison Rozell
I'm so glad we have these hand outs. They are extremely useful in a lot of ways. I like to have multiple papers to work from because everyone thinks and learns in a different way. I'm more of a visual learner so being able to look at examples and to see how other people write their papers better prepares me for mine. I love the fact that we can use these as a crutch when we get stuck on ours. I feel like my confidence is a lot higher for this second paper than it was for the first paper. Analyzing movies have more depth and detail to them that it makes it easier and harder to write about at the same time. Movies can be very broad but to have the time and patience to break every scene down takes talent I think. It's definitely easier to write about a movie that you personally enjoy than a movie you are forced to watch. No offense, but No Country for Old Men didn't grab my attention like it did for other students. Even though it was extremely helpful to analyze it in class I felt like I wasn't getting certain things because I wasn't intrigued. Another thing, I really like the fact that you gave us a rubric sort of thing for an A quality paper. This gives us a target on what we have to aim for and what is expected of our paper. It will help us break things down a little more and it also creates an outline like the sample papers. While writing this paper you need to try to connect with the reader and not make them saying, “What is she talking about?” also I like the fact that Mr. C’s paper sounds extremely intelligent and understanding of his movie. As for the presentations, my group is going first and I feel like we have a lot of planning left to do. We have been working pretty hard but watching Mr. C’s presentation he looked a little rushed so my group had to cut back on some movies we wanted to talk about. It’s hard to believe that doing a presentation for 50 minutes isn’t very long. I thought it was awesome that we got to watch Mr. C present because it gave us a feel for what we need to do and how organized we need to be. I thought it was a good presentation but I felt that it will be a lot easier with more people which is reassuring. With more people we don’t have to do everything by ourselves then and when one person gets stuck there are four others to pick up the train of thought. I really like working with people that understand you and that you feel comfortable around also. I feel like it makes things go a lot smoother and more satisfying. Over all I love all of the hand outs we were given in class. Each one will be of tremendous help.
Yes, I do believe the example handouts help out a lot. When starting this paper i did not know how i was going to start it and talk about. After reading through a couple of the handouts and reading through them I began to think about how i would word some of my information and also some of the things i should look for in the movie i was watching. The sample essays provide us with ways to start are paper and to help us set it up. When starting a paper it is always nice to see example on how it supposed to be set up just to make sure you are doing what you need to get done. Also the spiderman essay was helpful cause it wasn't a great essay to read through it summarized the movie more than anything so it also helped to show what a bad essay looked at. It was an essay that you did not want ares to look like there was some good points in the paper but for what we need to do it is way to much summarized. Your presentation of hell and hallucinations also helped cause it showed the class a way to present are information and a way to break it up and show the class. It showed us to show a clip talk about the things that are in that movie the symbols and the meaning of things. You also showed us a way to get the class involved by reading quotes from the movie and talking about them and decipher them to see what they mean. They were all tools to help us make are projects great. The handout like the terms glossary will also help me make my essay sound more scholary cause i do know what I am talking about. All the handouts given to us will help us create a great essay and group project they showed us different camera angles and what the camera angle could mean and also showed us what some movies really mean. Seeing the models essays helped me very much cause they gave me an example to look at and to show me how to start my paper. By reading them it shows me what to use and some of the stuff i should stay away from like to much summarizing or getting off my topic. The works cited pages also help by showing us how to cite are sources cause we all dont do it.
Martinmaas_5
I think the models help me tremendously. They help me get a basic outline of how my paper should look like. Also, how my paper should sound like. Models are the best way any teacher can show a student because then the student knows what is expected of them and they will have a better idea of how to start the writing process of the paper. Personally, I never thought I could write my papers scholarly. These models really help me think about many important aspects of a film deconstruction essay. I can also see how the models are not a good idea. These models may also give one person ideas and this person may plagiarize the models given. I think your presentation of the three war films will help my group with our presentation. I now understand better of what you are looking for in the presentation and what we should be more focused on. We need to know the scenes very well before we present. The one thing I did not understand in your presentation was the directors and their names. I do not understand the importance of what the directors looked like. I am still trying to figure out what lens I am going to use in my paper. I know that in my group presentation we are going to use a feminist lens. The feminist lens will be used because we are trying to show people how women depend on the men so much in romances in films. I think it is nice to have more than one model also. The more the examples the more I know what to write and how to write it in my paper. When we first started talking about writing essays on movies I thought that it did not seem as much work as I thought it is. I thought we were just summarizing the film and talking about why we liked it. Now I know what I should not do as well as what I should do in writing my paper. I think that writing this paper will make me think about more important things in movies and think more scholarly and not I will be able to pick up all kinds of jokes and the way the camera angle and how the sound track will make you feel. By analyzing movies I can now understand how movies are portrayed in society.
Regarding the presentation, I think it was a major help. It helps with the time that we can spend on certain things like viewing the film. It shows how much you can go over the films since our group is doing 3 films just as you did. It shows what to look for in the films and how to help the rest of the class see the same thing that you did after three times or more watching the film. You can talk about the soundtrack and rewind as much as possible to get that thought conveyed to the class so that they can in turn reject it or accept it as there own thoughts. You were able to show us how to use the film angles and soundtrack and incorporate them into our presentation.The use of time in this presentation is extremely important, if you go to long then you don not have enough time to wrap up the presentation properly which is when you convey your thoughts and feelings about the movie back to the class and then they can argue further. If you go to short then you will not get full credit on the presentation. If you can balance your time properly that is the key to getting a good grade because you can think of more stuff to say while you’re up there that you maybe did not notice the prior times you viewed the film. For the handouts, they are more than helpful. It's a guideline along with the red handout full of questions of what to put into your paper. It shows how much summerization is needed or wanted by the coarse administrator. It helps by reading their papers and what they saw in their films what to look for in your own film and show the reader more than what they may have noticed since you are watching this film repeatedly and more analyticly every time you view it. You want your paper to be able to be argued so that you can present a point. Some think that it may not be so much persuasive but I think it is because that is how you make your paper argumentative. If you are strictly just presenting information on your film than it may not be as argumentative as you want it to be and you may not support your thesis as well as you wanted to or even could. The wrap up in your paper is as critical as your wrap up in the presentation. These two projects relate in many ways and the presentation is helping you view more carefully, argue points that others may disagree with, and present something that will get the class or teaching involved and perhaps thinking the same way you were when you viewed the film.
Regarding the presentation, I think it was a major help. It helps with the time that we can spend on certain things like viewing the film. It shows how much you can go over the films since our group is doing 3 films just as you did. It shows what to look for in the films and how to help the rest of the class see the same thing that you did after three times or more watching the film. You can talk about the soundtrack and rewind as much as possible to get that thought conveyed to the class so that they can in turn reject it or accept it as there own thoughts. You were able to show us how to use the film angles and soundtrack and incorporate them into our presentation.The use of time in this presentation is extremely important, if you go to long then you don not have enough time to wrap up the presentation properly which is when you convey your thoughts and feelings about the movie back to the class and then they can argue further. If you go to short then you will not get full credit on the presentation. If you can balance your time properly that is the key to getting a good grade because you can think of more stuff to say while you’re up there that you maybe did not notice the prior times you viewed the film. For the handouts, they are more than helpful. It's a guideline along with the red handout full of questions of what to put into your paper. It shows how much summerization is needed or wanted by the coarse administrator. It helps by reading their papers and what they saw in their films what to look for in your own film and show the reader more than what they may have noticed since you are watching this film repeatedly and more analyticly every time you view it. You want your paper to be able to be argued so that you can present a point. Some think that it may not be so much persuasive but I think it is because that is how you make your paper argumentative. If you are strictly just presenting information on your film than it may not be as argumentative as you want it to be and you may not support your thesis as well as you wanted to or even could. The wrap up in your paper is as critical as your wrap up in the presentation. These two projects relate in many ways and the presentation is helping you view more carefully, argue points that others may disagree with, and present something that will get the class or teaching involved and perhaps thinking the same way you were when you viewed the film.
Joe Egge P.5
I think that the multiple examples we have been given in class the last couple weeks, are quite helpful in the fact that it helps me to know what to talk about and how to write my own thoughts into words on paper. I am not the best thinker in the world and have troubles gathering my thoughts to write into a long deconstruction paper. The papers we were handed from past years show me how all my random thoughts can/should be processed and put into a massive analysis. To be as specific as possible, the most helpful thing might as well been the presentation by Mr. C. It basically showed us what we need to do. Exactly. To a tee. Obviously our class teacher wouldn't show us what NOT to do. The stategies that I picked up was not how to go about making the presentation, but what to do when presenting our movies and/or writing my paper. The way we are supposed to deconstruct the films is not supposed to be a summary of what you visually see in the movie, but what is NOT obvious. I will have to dig deep into my brain to pick out the reasons WHY Todd Philips made ______ like that. Seeing the model essays is always good. Just another example of what Mr. C wants and thinks is extraordinary. I do not believe that I will chose 1 specific lens to write my analysis. By the way Mr. C, thank you for having us do this unit in class, since it will definitely make our freshman year go alot more smoothly.
I think that all of the materials that you have given us have been a lot of help. It gives me more ideas now that I have seen a presentation. Just like when we did the advertisement presentation you showed us a sample one which then gave us things that we could use such as the handouts, and the way you presented it. Also your film presentation helped, except I feel like our group will not have enough time to show the clips that we want to show. Plus not including the movie we are making. There is just so much information that can be told about all of our films and hopefully we will have time to do it. Today when we did the adjectives, the plot movement, and the effect on the viewers that I think is going to help me the most when writing my paper. Also I really enjoyed the ABC charts that we have done before I know I used that piece of paper when I wrote about eHarmony. I want to involve the class with something so its not just a bunch of girls up in front lecturing the entire class period. I know I paid a lot more attention because you provided us with the quotes to read as a class and individuals. Our group will try and get the class involved so it is a fun experience for everyone. Also when you bring something different people remember it more then when it is the same thing one after another. I do agree that Tom goes to far and telling the entire movie plot but sometimes that is helpful if you or the reader has never seen the film. The sample essays I have been looking at and plan to keep using them to write an A paper. I think it was helpful to look and Tom’s essay and see yes it is a good paper but here is what can be better and so on and so on. I like knowing what to do and having a plan so with all of these things such as the hand outs, blog task, sample essays, and sample presentations. It makes what we are doing less of a headache and more enjoyable as well.
Jordan Meyers p.5
These example essays have helped me quite a bit. I now know how to structure my essay in order to be as good as the ones that I have read. Once I write my thesis statement I know that it should go at the end of the second paragraph. Mr. C’s presentation will help me to, with my group, deconstruct movies and then tell the class about what we deconstructed in our films. When Mr. C showed us just how to deconstruct films during his presentation helped me a lot also, because now I know that I need to look for different hidden symbols and meanings in films. I now know that you don’t just watch movies, but you study them. Our group was thinking about using the quote idea that Mr. C used in his presentation because in our films there are a lot of memorable quotes that will last with you. We also planned on using handouts in order to show what we thought about these movies to the entire class. We plan on talking about how, in our films, vigilantism is used through out the films. Our movies contain people that are bad in the movie, but in our eyes are good guys. We will talk about the factors that make these characters good bad guys. From killing drug dealers to bringing down a corrupt government by killing people, we are going to talk about the characters being vigilantes and going against the rules to do as they please, or feel needs to be done.
During the deconstruction of my own film, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, I will talk about the Marxist lens, feminist lens, and the Freudian lens. This movie uses a lot of things to do with Marxism and how the government will do anything to get the Alien Robots to leave Earth. It shows the use of wealth and power very well through out the entire movie. The feminist lens can be used in the deconstruction of this film because Megan Fox’s character is shown as a girl who loves cars and working on motorcycles, not your typical every day girl. She is shown to be one of the guys in the film. In the film analysis paper I will also talk about what Sigmund Freud would say about Shia La Beouf’s character and Shia’s roommate. He would probably talk a lot about sex. With the Marxist lens I could also talk about how the president runs and hides when the U.S. hears about the Alien Invasion.
It is no question that the models help a ton. The models of past students' essays show us the basic format of how we should create our essay. It also helps that you did one too, I have always liked when teachers do the assignment too to show the students that anyone can do it. I know that personally the essays will help me a lot. I say this because I know that if I were to just go at this essay with no example, I would probably end up summarizing too much. Looking at Casey Strand's and your essay help me pick out certain aspects of my film and to analyze them accordingly. You giving a model presentation also helped a lot too. Before you had given that presentation my group and I were going to analyze and try to show clips of five or six different movie, which I now know we could not have pulled that off in 50 minutes. You doing the presentaion also helped me to try and figure out what exactly we need to put in our presentation and what is worth putting in our presentation. You showed the most important part of your films and I feel that is going to help us figure out what the most important parts of our films are. As I was looking over the essays, I did notice as you mention that Eitreim does summarize a little to much, but that also it would be a fantastic essay if that is what the criteria is in college. The way these essays help me the most is they help me figure out where to start. If I have one major fault when it comes to reading or even math I alot of times do not even know how to start. With math it will be starting a problem, with english it will be starting a paper, I just never know how to start papers off strong. The models are super helpful to me because they all show me how to start a paper off strong. Going back to the presentaions, my group and I will definately be using the strategy of taking the time to talk about the films we are analyzing. We are planning on getting involved with the class and deeply talking about what we think the films are trying to say. We are also of course going to use clips and a handout as well to present our films. So all in all, all of the models were extrememly helpful. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that the models gave us all a good point from which to start and base our presentaions and essays off of.
Seeing these models DEFINITELY helped! Unfortunately I missed your model presentation on Vietnam films and really wish I could’ve been there to experience how the class presentation process is executed. (I do trust my group’s potential to present well though:] ) Fortunately I was able to gain a lot of knowledge from the model essays I received in class. I’ve found them to be extremely helpful in creating an guide for my film analysis essay. Before receiving the models, I really didn’t know where to begin. These model essays provide us with examples of well and not so well written papers that we can use to guide us through the deconstruction and "re-composition" process. I agree with Andrea's statement that it would be helpful to have seen the movies along with reading the sample essays to better relate to what the writer was thinking during their deconstruction process. Some of these model essays I've studied really helped me visualize how an “A” paper is put together. Some essays also gave me examples of what not to do. As you pointed out, though his essay was intelligent, Tom Eitreim over summarized his paper. After reading his essay over Spiderman I'm trying to create an intelligent paper but making sure I keep my summarizing to a minimum. Tom also forgot to include a title and works cited page in his essay. Not only do these help your paper look presentable, they can also hurt your grade if not included in the essay. We can learn from these mistakes.
The first element that caught my eye in Casey Strand's essay was the title. It's clever and hints at what the movie and her essay is about for those who have yet to see the film. I found the way she analyzed the camera angles helpful and will use them as a guide to explaining the ones within my film. Although I liked how thorough she was when analyzing the characters, I think she could have done a better job deconstructing the film. It feels like she was also getting carried away with summarizing.
My overall strategy is to use these model essays along with the many other hand outs you have given us to create a strong paper that’s hopefully worth an A. I feel like these materials plus the blog tasks have been a tremendous help along the way and will keep proving their usefulness throughout college.
Hilary Peterson Pd. 7
The model essays and movies helped out great. When you see a great paper like Eric hanson, Casey Strand, and yours, It makes you work harder to produce a great paper too. Watching Full Metal Jacket and Platoon helps you find what part in the movie you want to show for you presentation and also what parts are good for you paper that you should go into depth with. When your stuck on a piece and can't quiet figure it out you can go back and look at one of those papers or movies. After seeing you try to get three movies in fifty minutes. Our group decided to put only two on our presentation. This way we do not have to try and cram them together and get our views the idea. We can now take our time and explain in deep detail our movies. We had that extra time we would have spent on that third movie to do more on the two movies. We were able to get great results and find every little funny detail like the license plate. After Seth tries to get with Jules and get denied he falls and hits her eye. The first for letters and digits on the license play reads 99B1. That could the song 99 problems but a Bi**h ain't one. Or 99 problems and a Bi**h is one. What ever the view wants to thinks works. Another thing we found very interesting from watching the movie over and over was the music. Even gets stuck in the room with these drugged up guys. and has to sing "these eyes". A couple scenes later Fogell is in the car with the cops and on the radio in the back ground that same song "these eyes'' is playing. Just before Evan and Seth get in a fight and gets hit by the cop car.
I think you have to use either Feminist, Marxist, or Freudian lens in your paper. Everyone at some point in time has used these lens. In my mind Feminist more then the other two. By using these different lens it is going to help put different views into your readers mind. They are going to have to see what your trying to say and learn and think harder. By using the Feminist lens and being a guy your going to have to put your self into a women's mind and see and feel how they feel. You learn to be creative and actually use your mind.
i think those models helped me a lot in getting started with my paper mainly Because when I began my first paper over our ad's I didn’t know what I was doing and how to even get my paper going. those papers are ok examples on what to do right and what not to do, by you going through one of those students papers with us it showed us even though this person is smart and well aware of what he is doing they even mess up sometimes too and that there is a lot that you can do to get an A paper. In tom eitriems paper it showed us what not to do, just give you an overview of the movie itself but also what to do to please you in the paper and hopefully get an a. Also i ahve looked through some of those graduates papers and some of them repeat themselves by using the same words. Also i think that you providing us with these papers is a very good idea because it shows us how to get the a and what to do and what not to do. also some of these paragraphs that are long are a good visual of how in depth we need to get into the plot and overall meaning of the movie. and not only does the film have a sub-meaning it has a emotional meaning it tells you who to like what to like who to root for who to hate..ect.. I think that the best example you gave us is your own because that is the model paper we have to follow and all of these other papers you gavee us are good because they tell us words to use and other sources to get and all of the professors we can contact are great ways to get help.. but i dont get why you try to force us to use these lenses i dont get it.
i think those models helped me a lot in getting started with my paper mainly Because when I began my first paper over our ad's I didn’t know what I was doing and how to even get my paper going. those papers are ok examples on what to do right and what not to do, by you going through one of those students papers with us it showed us even though this person is smart and well aware of what he is doing they even mess up sometimes too and that there is a lot that you can do to get an A paper. In tom eitriems paper it showed us what not to do, just give you an overview of the movie itself but also what to do to please you in the paper and hopefully get an a. Also i ahve looked through some of those graduates papers and some of them repeat themselves by using the same words. Also i think that you providing us with these papers is a very good idea because it shows us how to get the a and what to do and what not to do. also some of these paragraphs that are long are a good visual of how in depth we need to get into the plot and overall meaning of the movie. and not only does the film have a sub-meaning it has a emotional meaning it tells you who to like what to like who to root for who to hate..ect.. I think that the best example you gave us is your own because that is the model paper we have to follow and all of these other papers you gavee us are good because they tell us words to use and other sources to get and all of the professors we can contact are great ways to get help.. but i dont get why you try to force us to use these lenses i dont get it.
I think that the examples we have received throughout this unit was a huge help for me. In the beginning of the unit, I was very confused on where to start or even how to start my analytical essay; with all the examples, I have begun to write my essay with much success. The example essays we have received are great sources for ideas and insights on what to use in our paper or what to manipulate to better fit our essay. I do agree with Mr. Christensen about not summarizing in our essay; this makes the paper not flow as well as it should. However, if it was necessary to summarize information about the point the author is trying to convey, then you should most definitely write that in the essay because it will help the reader understand what is happening in regards to the point being made. Also, the example presentation of the film deconstruction was a major help. This presentation was helpful because it allowed the class to better understand the procedure and what the final product should look like more than what handouts could do. The second reason why I liked the latter example is because studies have proven that humans learn better by examples and not direct directions because humans are conformist creatures; we rather do what everyone else is doing and not going against the status quo.
In my deconstructive essay of Pixar’s Toy Story I will use the Marxist lens as well as the Freudian lens. Prior to this class, I did not know what those lenses meant. After Mr. Christensen discussed the differences between the three lenses (the third being a Feministic) and discussing the lenses in greater detail help me understand how there are different motives on the director’s part based on the different lenses. I will use the Marxist lens to discuss how Andy’s life is so much better then Sid’s, who lives down the street from him. Also, I will use this lens in order to figure out why Andy is much more financially successful then Sid, even though Sid has two parents and Andy only has one. The second lens I will use in my paper is the Freudian lens. I will use this lens in order to “view” the motives behind Sid and why he abuses his toys and why he manipulates the toys’ innocence; with this manipulation, Sid changes the toys both physically and “mentally” to make a darker, more sinister appearance but this does not fully brainwash them. Sid’s abused toys, near the end of the movie, the toys show they were actually peaceful even though they look different then Buzz and Woody.
I think that the models that you provided us with were a great aid to our success in writing and presenting our deconstructive projects. You should definitely keep this unit along with the examples and the notes you gave out.
-Matt Thompson pd 6
Charlie Sellers_6
I think that the essays that you have provided to us and also your presentation on Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket will help me with my paper and also with the team presentation that we will be doing pretty soon. Tom Eitreim's paper, in my opinion, is really going to help me on my essay because his has to do with a superhero and so does mine. Out of his five pages, he at least put some good information in his paper besides just summarizing it. He makes a good point in his paper about how Spiderman will not be able to help everybody. In it, he says that the viewers of Spiderman might feel that if they are in trouble that help will automatically come. You are only lucky to get help in real life because usually the crime will be committed and there is nothing you can do about it. I think that that statement and others in Tom Eitreim's paper will help me out in writing my essay. Casey Strand's essay is also going to help me in writing my essay. I know that camera angles are important in a movie, and Casey's first paragraph has a great example on how to talk about different camera angles. Also in Casey's paper, she throws in a term that one of the characters use in the movie. I think that that and many other strategies that she uses will really help me out in writing my paper. In the movie that I will be writing my paper on, Tony Stark is the "good guy" almost throughout the movie except when the media finds out about his weapons beings sent to other, destructive countries. In Eric Hanson's essay he talks about the "good and bad guy" quite a bit. These different strategies that he talks about from switching to the "good guy" to the "bad guy" will be very helpful in writing my paper. Mr. C., your paper is really going to help me in writing my paper because you manage to talk about the characters a lot. You went into very nice details about them and why they are so important. I like all of the strategies that you use in your paper and I know that this will help me out a lot in writing my essay and also with our team presentation. Your presentation that you did on those three movies are going to help our group with our presentation because you gave perfect examples on what we should have in our presentation and also what we can add in it. In my paper, I will definitely use one or two of the three lenses.
The model essays that you handed out are very beneficial, especially because they are written by other students and not just random people. It gives us more confidence in what we can achieve because we know those students. The model essays are also helpful because they are not perfect and when we go through them and point out what could be better it helps guide us in the right direction when trying to think of topics. For example, you said that Eitreim’s paper on the movie Spiderman summarized the movie too much for what we were trying to accomplish. This shows us how much is too much information when trying to explain events in our movie. Another positive aspect of the model essays is looking at the titles. It is not always easy to think of something or know what all has to go before the title and the rest of the format of the papers so having that visual is really helpful for me. I also think that doing forum quizzes over the hand outs that were given to us are helpful because we do not always get around to looking over all of them right away, for some ever.
Also your example of a movie presentation over Apocalypse Now, Platoon, & Full Metal Jacket was helpful because it showed us what to look for and how to pick up on some of the smaller details. It also gave our groups ideas on when and how long to show movie scenes for our presentation and what to cover in the movies we chose.
Using the feminist lens will be part of my paper on the film The Holiday. I will use it when explaining Camren Diaz’s character Amanda and how she is the one with all the power in her relationship with her ex boyfriend; also how all that power is lost when she goes to England. I will also try to show the American culture stereo types that she portrays throughout the movie and how it compares to England’s culture and some of their stereo types.
The model essays and model presentation have helped me a lot and are very useful. The model essays are such a big help on how to get started on my paper. Of course people have chosen different movies and write and think differently than I do, but it definitely helps me get a start. When I read these example essays it gives me the motivation to get started on mine and do a better job than the example. Personally, I am a huge procrastinator and hate starting my paper. Although once I get past the beginning it is a breeze and I get it done in a reasonable amount of time with enough depth and scholarliness. These example essays also help me rapping things up at the end. I am awful at starting and ending a paper, I can not think of what to write in the beginning and I can not make an ending long enough to call it an ending. These essays give me and example of how other people made their essays long enough and thorough enough; in which helps me in the long run. They also help me in what to write about in each paragraph. Reading these essays helped me realize that I should write about stuff more scholarly like the camera angle and the director’s intentions. Eitreim did not do a very good job though because he just summarized the movie as part of his paragraphs, which is not part of the assignment. Yes you should summarize a bit so Mr. C knows what you are talking about since he might not have seen the movie, but I realized that doing what Eitreim did is just a procrastinated paper that he wanted to get done. Technically his paper is a good example essay for not doing what he did. Mr. Christensen's in depth fifty minute presentation on three movies in which include Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket was a tremendous help for my groups presentation about the advancement of special effects from the movies Godzilla (1956), Star Wars 5 the Empire Strikes Back, and Avatar. His presentation of course will be different than my groups because of the different movies and subject. It gave us a time limit of how long we should show a clip of a movie and how long we should deconstruct it to be able to fit in the rest of the movies we would have to deconstruct.
Danny Sellers
I believe that the model essays help me profoundly! I have never been the person to write a paper that would ever be used as a model. I am the person that has a hard time trying to pick what to write about in the first place, not only having a good quality paper. I never know how to write introduction and conclusion paragraphs without them sounding too much the same or too structured. Having these models show me marvelous ways of starting your paper, how much detail to go into, what points to write about, and how to wrap up the ending. These example papers show me specifically what a good paper would look like too. If you don't know what the teacher is expecting out of you then you don't know what to do. They also help you to pick out little mistakes that the specific person made; such as in Eitreim's paper with the summary being lengthy. By picking those out you help yourself write your paper better and even go back and edit your paper better by knowing what mistakes are easy to make. Another thing I like about having examples are looking at the titles. I have a hard time coming up with a clever title and getting it to relate to what I am writing about. The titles of these papers are perfect examples and help me figure out ideas for mine. Having Mr. C do a model team presentation helped me out an appreciable amount! I am a visual learner so by having an actual presentation to see helps we know what to include in mine. It also helps so you know how long your clips should be and what are key points to talk about. I also liked how he made the handouts and everything because that helps me have a real example of what a handout could look like. We will definitely be using a Feminist lens in our group presentation because we are talking about chick flicks and how they are all a lot the same, they have a formula to them. We are also going to talk about how they tell women how to live their life. They show you how a woman should act in order to have her fantasy guy and life. This isn't true though because women do not all have to be a man's slave and just stand there and be a beautiful prop to a man to be happy. Overall I think the handouts, sample essays, and your presentation are exceptional for helping me with my presentation and all of them to come in the future.
The essays that you gave us i think help a lot. The essays help me find out how to write the paper. They also help me find out what i should put in my paper. They also help me find out what i shouldn't do in my paper like go on for 2 pages about the movie itself. It also helps to have these to see what they used as references. I also find it helps me want to write the paper when i read the sample essays. I want to prove how smart i am. I want to tell you what i see and how i see it in the movie just like how they are doing in there essays. I found yours Mr.C very interesting and very helpful. I find it helps me think on the level you want us to. All of the essays do but i find yours making me think harder and scene we started looking at films i am getting more out of watching them. I look at things in a different way then i used to. I used to just watch the movie now i watch but notice things that add to my enjoyment of the movie. I think to my self why is that like that witch i major to film studies and now i find my self even doing it when i watch tv shows. I find now that i have done it i think i will be able to write a better paper and be ready for College level classes. This paper has made me think harder and changed how i look at movies for the better they bring more enjoyment for me now then they used to. So thanks for these papers.
The models were helpful because they were basically a diagram that show different ways that we can write our essays. They also for most of us served as an example for the theme of our movies. I had the idea for what movie I was going to do but seeing how the other people wrote their essays it gave me an idea of the layout I was going to use for the essay. Of course the essay about spiderman I think kind of steered away from the movie too much and it was not that relevant to talk about western movies because there was not really that much gun fighting in spiderman other than him having guns fired at him. It could have been compared to another superhero movie like batman or superman or any other movie like that. I think that iron man would have been more relevant because it has to do with character that flies around through the air. However the essay written by you was perfectly to the point and it gave a good analysis of the movie and of the characters. It was a perfect model and was I am sure very helpful to many of the students that read it and to me because it shows the proper way to describe the characters and it shows how potentially good the movie you analyzed was so people can watch it and see this stuff for themselves. They showed how enthusiastic the people were about the movies they chose by how much thought and intelligence they put into their analysis. Also the model presentation gave some ideas on what you can look for in certain genres of movies like you can look for things that are absolutely horrible that are done in war movies that you would not have noticed otherwise. The forum quizzes you have been doing in class have also been very helpful because along with being able to get your own opinion out there you get to hear other peoples opinions and gain more opinions the more you know. The models also give details that you can compare to your essay and be able to add more and more to it because of it. The terms you gave us were also very helpful because with the camera angles one you can look at that and be able to look for those kind of shots in the movie that you watched.
I am so thankful to Mr. C for doing his best to try and help us with this essay. I don't think that there is anything else that he could do to make it easier for us to write it besides actually doing it. He has given us hand-outs on exactly how to dominate this presentation project, example essays from former students and even some of his own examples. I really think that seeing another students essay is the most helpful because if gives us a chance to see exactly what we have to do for this assignment and it is done in a way that we as students can easily understand. The film analysis glossary and different shot types hand-outs are great to because it takes big confusing words that we might not know well and breaks it down so that we can understand. If you can understand something that is on a hand-out, then the hand-out is completely pointless to you. That is what I like about Mr. C, he gives us many different examples and hand-outs to help us grow knowledge wise and as individuals. The presentation that Mr. C gave for us is a big help because it shows us different ways of doing the presentation. If we all do the it in the exact same way, by the time we get to the fourth group we will all be bored and not pay attention that closely to the group that is presenting and that is just plain rude. How would you feel if somebody didn't pay any attention to you after you worked really hard on something and you want to share with them what you found out? I would be ticked off because if I listened to them when they gave their groups presentation I would expect them to give me the same courtesy that I showed them. The red hand-out that Mr.C gave to use is one of the biggest "helping hands" to me. It tells me exactly what he is looking for in my paper. I will use that as sort of a checklist, and as soon as I have something in my paper that is on that red hand-out I will cross it off. This is a sure fire way to make absolutely certain that I don't miss any important information. If I don't miss any information from my paper, I will almost guaranteed to have one of the best papers that Mr.C has ever seen.
Melissa Bendixen
Period 6
I enjoy having sample essays and your presentation to help us along. It gives us ideas of how to start and if we get stuck on a certain paragraph we have references to go to. Although it would probably help us more if every single one of us were able to meet with you but some people just don’t have the time. The samples give us good structure and a wonderful heads up for college. I’m glad to hear that Dr./Prof. Skip Willman wants us to be doing this before we get into college because I’m planning on going to USD and will hopefully be having him as my professor. It’s very thoughtful of you to go through the trouble to do all of these things for us when you have so many other things going on. Giving us direction and understanding makes you the great teacher that you are.
I really liked the mock presentation that you did for us. By doing so you’ve helped my group get started and understand more of what you’re looking for. The movies we are analyzing are ‘Not Another Teen Movie’, ‘American Pie’, and ‘Dazed and Confused’. Our main point is teen movies and how they affect us as teenagers. It’s been pretty easy since you’ve done all of those presentations and have gone through movies with us. I now analyze any movie I watch without even thinking about it. Me and Lyle went to ‘The Crazies’ last Friday and one of the very first scenes was the main character driving his pick-up truck (a “manly” man) with a quick close up of his hand on the wheel with his wedding ring. Me and Lyle looked at each other simultaneously and said “Ohhh he’s married!” After that I made sure that I mainly just watched the movie without analyzing so I could really enjoy it and get scared because I enjoy being scared – and analyzing scary movies closely tends to take away from it. But after the movie was over I thought over the movie a lot and found that I noticed a lot of things without even thinking about it. I was able to analyze subconsciously and bring it back out after the movie was over. Being able to do that now I would have to say was because of this class – because you’ve shown us how to do it and how it builds us up as a person. It makes us more scholarly and ready for college.
The first essay that caught my attention was the “Tobacco: The Lifesaver” written by Erik Hanson. I’m not exactly sure why this specific essay had caught my attention but never the less I began reading the entire thing. Smoking is an issue that everyone can relate with; which is a plus for Erik’s paper. His paper is extremely helpful to me because it is helping me decided what my paper should be focusing on. I should be focusing on something that any reader, in some way, can relate to it. For him it is smoking, for my paper it will be inner beauty versus outer beauty. His essay also summarizes. For some reason I got it through my head that I was to avoid summarizing at all and found it hard to start writing my paper. In Erik’s paper he gives a little bit of summarizing and then he gives you what his point of view. This kept me interested in continuing to read it. Although I had never seen this movie before I was kept up to date as I read. I think this is a great essay paper and I hope that mine will be like his and better. I know that I need to broaden my vocabulary and explore my thesaurus as I read his paper because he sounds intelligent when he adds the word ideology in. In Mr. Christensen’s essay he writes a lot about a specific character named Bobby Green. In my paper this helps me also, as I will be examining a lot about Mr. Ribaldi and how he is fighting to find his inner beauty instead of his outer. I realized reading both Mr. Christensen’s and Erik Hanson’s paper that I will be writing and analyzing Mr. Ribaldi and his inner beauty. Although I will throw other characters in Mr. Ribaldi will be my main focus.
Now, for the presentation, I believe that if we didn’t have the sample presentation by Mr. Christensen no one would really know how to approach their own presentation. My group is using Mr. Christensen’s presentation as a base that will hold our presentation together. Using it as a guide we are finding it easier to find ways to teach the class what we are finding in the Science Fiction movies we have picked out. One being “District 9” and the other being “War of the Worlds”, which are two completely different types of movies but we want to show the class why they are different. By doing this we are not completely copying off of Mr. Christensen’s ideas with finding something in common with all three movies. I find that this will be a intelligent way to look at both of these movies.
I think the sample papers are very helpful. They help me understand how to organize my paragraphs. They sort of give me an outline of the paper I should write. I am so glad I have them because without them I would be so lost. I rely on them to give me sample ideas on how to write mine. The sample papers help me so I can get my paper to flow easier. I am also glad we have more than one paper. If we only had one we would be only have one persons opinion. The samples gives us good examples of introduction and conclusion paragraphs and all the essays gives us good thesis statements. The papers also show us how to have a proper works cited. They show us examples of topics to deconstruct. They also show us how to properly cite our quotes into our essays. I agree when you said that Tom Eitreim’s paper is a lot of a summary of the movie. In my opinion he doesn’t seem to deconstruct as much as he did summarizing. His paper does not show us the proper works cited. The essay that I liked the best was Caseys. Even though I have never seen the movie, she still gives me a good example of how to write the paper. I agree with some people that it is hard to pick words that are not commonly used so I will have to use a thesaurus. Using the thesaurus will help me so I do not keep repeated the same word over and over. I have now found a book source and a couple of website sources, so now I will have to figure out how to place them into my paper. The sample papers do a good job of placing the sources. The handouts that you gave us are very helpful. The red handout with the questions is very helpful. They ask questions that the sample papers answers very well. I believe that the model presentation was very helpful. It showed me and my team a good example of a A presentation. I think that the handout that you made was helpful. My group and I have decided to make a handout as well. What you did with the quotes in between the movies was very clever. I would have never thought of something like that.
Emily Gardner 7
I love that you give us example essays. Sometimes I do not know exactly what teachers expect in an essay especially when there is not a specific outline that I have to follow. Seeing these examples profoundly help me figure out what I should write and what I should leave out. After reading Eitreim's Spiderman paper, I now know that I should not summerize so much in my paper but rather follow after Casey Strand and answer more of the why is this like that questions. I loved seeing all of the creative titles. Reading through the sample essays give me ideas about what to write about. I have found myself running out of ideas on what I should analyze in my movie and now reading these essays I now have more ideas of what I can look for in my movie to write a better essay. These great examples inspire me to write just as great of an essay. Sometimes I feel that the essays harm my writing in a way because I try to make my paper to much like the examples but over all I think the benefit of them outweighs the one negative part of them. Mr. C's presentation helped me immensely with my teams presentation. After he explained that we would be doing another group project I was worried because he has never required a class to do a movie project. But after seeing his presentation I know what he wants to see in our presentation. Even thought he was a little rushed at the end, I thought it was a great example. The handout was also exceptional and it gave me an idea of what our handout should look like. Mr. C's presentation should me how long the movie clips should be and what clips would best express the point of the presentation. I will be using a feminist lens in my team presentation as well as my essay. I can point out the fact that the main character in my movie is a strong female character, something that most thriller movies do not portray women as. In my group we will be looking at how there are certain stereotypes about women and their hair color. I think that all of the handouts and examples have been a great help. I will not only use these in English now but I plan to take a few to college. They will be great to have.
I thought the handouts were very helpful to have while starting my paper. I thought it was also very helpful to watch your presentation on apocalypse now, platoon and full metal jacket. seeing how you moved from movie to movie and your transitions into the movie scenes was very helpful in knowing how to set up our presentation. I thought looking at the essays of past students helped because they had just as much experience in writing papers as we did and we got to see how they set theirs up. looking at your paper was intimidating in the fact that you have written many more papers than we have and it kinda made mine look not as collegiate. But it was still very helpful to know how to make it more collegiate. i also thouht it was very helpful to see they movies tha were chosen by other student an ow they actually decnstructed them, whether the chooose to focus on characters analysis, lighting, camera angles, or how music helped or hurt their movies' scenes. i liked in erik hanson's paper how he told the story but he told it in a way that made you see exactly what he was seeing. and by doing this i understood the movie he as deconstructing without ever watching it. i liked how he showed the goods and evils being reversed and how they use a contriversial subject to explain it. by looking at this example of a battle between good and evil i will be more able to deconstruct the battle within my movie when my main characters have to battle good and evil. even though i felt itimidated reading it i liked the part in mr. c's paper where he compared Bobby Green to Robert Gruninsky, even though they are the same person. i thought it wasinteresting how he referenced other movies when he was talking about eva mendes's charcter in the movie. i thought giving out the handouts was a great idea because im pretty sure this would have been ten thousand times harder without help to know what to truely do. i aso thought by doing a presentation for the class we learned hw we should sho things and what types of things to show to help people grasp what we are trying to portray.
Tschetter_6
I am really happy that you gave us the samples to have. They are really good and give us what we need to succeed. The papers also take off some stress because without them I would have no idea how to start. I would be lost right after my name. The papers are very good outlines for what to look for in the movies that we are watching. Such as to not be to descriptive but to know that you got the part covered. To much information can ruin a paper, like Eitreim's. While I am writing my paper I will look for the major scenes with most of the actors in it so that I am talking about them all instead of just writing a whole paragraph on one actor. I also like that in all of the papers they give you ruffly a great grade to look forward to. They will be great college help. In a way, they are our passege to college.
I liked your presentation for your movies. It gives me a good sense of what to say for when we have our group project. It gave us a chance to here from a teacher that also used to be a student. It is very promissing that we will work harder as long as we know what to do and have a guide. What really helps me is that you hand out alot of things that are very useful when doing things. They give us a chance to help ourselves when we could be struggling and just fail. Though you also have to use your brain to watch and write your own paper the models give you a sense of accomplishment. They help you in a way that is getting smarter. The models are like a tutor because thay teach us. They are our own one on one when we need help in a way we can just look at them.
I believe almost everyone would agree with me that even though we are older it is still very nice and wanted that we get help. There are always going to be problems and we are going to need answers. The paper models you gave us are just the things we need to start off with.
The sample essays that you gave to us can definitely be useful if you take the time to read through them. Tom Eitreim, Erik Hanson, Casey Strand, and Mr. Christensen all made papers that are exemplary. If we try to make a paper like one of theirs, or better than one of theirs, we will have success and a good grade. These four essays help me because I can see how it should be done and base my film analysis essay off of those four. Reading through these four essays will help me to achieve flow and not make it seem like my ideas are all over the place. I think that is something that I may have problems with. Getting your ideas to flow and make sense is crucial. You also have to be able to grab the attention of the reader and keep it until the very end of your paper. You do not want the reader of your paper to get bored or become confused about what you are talking about. The four sample essays also give us an idea of what kind of outline we could use. We can take the outline of one of the sample essays and make it our own and switch it around. Then, the four sample essays give me an idea of what you expect our papers to be. We can strive to make an essay that is equal to or better than the sample essays that you gave us. I think that a long summary of the movie you are analyzing can be helpful to the reader. Like you said, having a long summary makes you view and analyze extremely closely and carefully. A long summary can help us to add length to our paper, and easier to finish. A summary is most likely considered an easier part of the essay, and starting with a summary in your paper can get you started and help you to just keep writing. Pretty soon five pages will be done. I like that these four sample essays show us what you expect regarding the length and depth of the critical thinking required for film deconstruction, as you said. Seeing model essays is definitely beneficial to me. Your model team presentation was helpful to me as well. It gave me an idea of what you are looking for in our group presentations. Also, you showed that you should not try to cram too much information and movie clips into the 50 minutes if you cannot fit it. Analyzing a few short film clips deeply is better than analyzing many film clips barely at all.
Kortney Fisher
pd. 3
I believe that seeing models of what exactly teachers or professors want is very beneficial. It helps because you do not have to sit back and wonder what you are doing is either correct or not. It answers questions in itself. Having a model to look back and relate to can help it so you can get a good grade and decide what to keep, what to throw out, and what you can possibly look into. I have a good idea of what I am going to be doing with my paper, but with models, it can help me so I can organize all my thoughts in a possible outline of the way I would like it to be presented. And I was not here for the film (group) model, but it shows exactly what you are looking to get out of us and to help us think critically on a schoraly level and to have us help our classmates with understanding out points of view. Also, with the paper portion, I might also have some current SDSU students help, since they have meet with college professors at State and since I am going to attend in the fall, I will get a good grasp at what they are looking for in your paper there. Like most of the students, I had no idea where to start or even what I was going to right about. But with the examples, you and previous students gave us a good idea on what to do and what not to do. Too much summarizing does really kill the paper, repetiveness can get boring just by reading the same thing over and over again, and having some portions short and not as clearly explained can also make a little bit of distraction. In my paper, I will deconstruct as much as possible without over summarizing, use the vocab terms and angle shots (if it pertains to my paragraph), and alot of discriptive adjectives. Every paper has its flaws and weaknesses, just like every paper has its rewards, using the examples can help you in any aspect in trying to decide if what you are possibly looking at doing will help or hurt the paper. Like most of my classmates have stated, these models have helped tremendously in preparing us for the tasks ahead of us, and for college. Now we know what you are looking for in a excellent paper, but also what most college profs are looking for as well. THANKS!!!!!
I believe that all of the sample essays were beneficial. Some are more beneficial than others. Tom Eitreim's paper on Spiderman was really helpful by showing us not to try to retell the story, but rather focus on the media's influence on people regardless of age and gender. It doesn't matter if you are five or sixty-five the media carries a heavy influence on you. Eitreim's paper also begins to point out eh stereotypical ending most Americans want for their movies. The good guy wins, and the bad guy loses. Tom also points out how movies are our escape from reality, and our own miserable, dull lives. Hanson also summarizes too much a lot like Tom in his paper. Erik however, does a better job of using descriptive words, and a colorful vocabulary to help persuade the reader. A lot like what I am trying in my paper for College Bound English. Hanson does a good job of using terms from the hand-outs and using them in his paper to be politically correct and accurate. Erik's job citing his sources is very accurate to what I would expect for a paper and what I hope to do with my paper for citing my sources.
Mr. C's paper is what I would expect most college professors to be written like. He doesn't focus too much on the background; just enough if it sprinkled in to let us know that he has a deep understanding of the director's message, interpretation of the film, and feeling throughout the film. Christensen's thoughts regarding us, the audience, making us feels like we are truly a part of the film. As if we are in bystander in the movie watching everything unfold in front of us. Mr. C's sample paper is what he expects from us, his students, and to give us thought about what our paper should be like. It is helpful to us, because he uses metaphors through his paper along with an articulate choice of words that leave us wondering about the director's subliminal messages to the viewers. Mr. C's also uses idea's about human behavior developed by Sigmund Freud to illustrate about the sublimal thoughts and imbedded thoughts we all have without even thinking about. Mr. C's uses key points in the plot to help highlight many of the convert messages that the writers and the director that are cleverly hidden throughout the film.
Ryan Hansen Pd.7
The models you provided us helped me immensely. When we first started this paper i thought it was impossible. But after seeing some models it calmed my emotions and boosted my confidence level enough so that i could attempt to make a strong effort. The models also make me want to work harder to create just as good as a paper or even better. The sample papers also help us decide what to do and what not to do. Like the handouts you gave us they give us ideas that we can put in our paper but they also provide a more in depth explanation because we get to see how it can be used in a paper to keep good flow. On the last paper I got bad writers block but I compensated by just reading the sample papers you gave us. Reading those papers calmed my mind, got me in the mood to write, and gave me more ideas to write about. They also are helpful as a reference guide on how things should be used in a paper like works cited, quotes, and punctuation. Your presentation also helped our group a lot. It’s a lot easier going into something having somewhat of an idea of what you are doing than going in blind. I’m sure that if you hadn’t presented in front of the class many groups would have been confused on what you were looking for and suffered in learning the true meaning of the project. Your project also helped us decide how we should manage our time. It seemed as if you ran short on time and wanted to show more than we actually saw. We are going to try and use less footage and elaborate more on our deconstruction that way the class has to think harder and learn more. The presentation also helped us decide which parts of the film we are going to choose. Knowing how you picked yours we are going to decide the parts that last longer in your head without giving away too much of the movie. We want the class to want to see the movies like you made us crave to see more of your films. I will use all three lenses in my film paper. If you look through these lenses you get to see really deep into the organs and guts of the film. It also makes the author seem like they actually know what they are talking about and makes the reader impressed.
I really like having the example essays, and feel that they are extremely helpful for both my personal essay and my group presentation. I like having examples for many reasons. First of all, the example essays greatly help me write my essay because they give me ideas on how to put my essay together. An example of this is when I was working on my ad analysis paper. When I was writing my ad analysis paper I had all the information, facts and points about my ad that I wanted to talk about in my paper but I had no idea how to put it together in a way that would make sense, sound good and keep a nice flow from point to point. While working on my ad essay, I would look back at the example essays that we received in class and see how other students put together their essays and use their essays to put mine together. I plan to do this again with my film analysis paper because I feel it worked really well and I also am very satisfied with my ad analysis paper. Another reason why I really like the example essays is because when I read through other students essays, I see things in their paper that I like, that I then go look for in my movie, to make my essay better. Without the example essays I feel that several students, including myself, would end up just summarizing their movies. Because we have the example essays, we see what else to add to our essays, other than just want the movie is about. I also like the example essays because I like to see things written down. Although we have been given many examples in class, verbally, on what we should include in our paper, and how we can include it and make the essay flow, I like to see it written out. I can’t always remember everything that is said in class, so the example essays and handouts are very helpful to me. I also like that we were given more than one example essay because we can then read through all of the examples and decide for ourselves which one is the best way to put our paper together, what we should or shouldn’t include, and how much summarizing of our movie we should put in our essay. An example of this is Tom Eitreim’s essay. Although the essay is very well written and has a pretty good flow to it, I also believe that he does tell a lot, maybe too much, of just the plot of the movie. For Tom, I would suggest that he should include some deconstruction points in the first part of his essay, when he is telling about the movie. The first paragraph is very good and he does a good job of leading the reader into his point of view of film deconstruction, but then goes into the plot of the movie. I think the essay would be more compelling if he were to add deconstruction points in between.
Megan Bly
Period 7
I think that having the sample essays have helped me out a ton. They show more of what to do and what not to do. Sometimes it’s hard to understand what a teacher wants without having some kind of example of the good and the bad. Especially in writing, it can be difficult to get started without some example papers helping you along the way. I can look at each of these papers and get ideas for my own paper. I also thought from the beginning that Tom Eitreim had gone a little overboard in the summary of Superman. And since you have said it too, I know now that I should try to not summarize as much as he did in his paper. I will have to figure out a better way to explain my movie without having to give out every detail in order for the reader to understand where I’m coming from. I really liked Casey Strand’s essay. Even though I have not seen Burn After Reading, I could understand what she was talking about without getting completely lost in her characters or scenes. She explained who the characters are and what their flaws are and how that affects them. After reading Eric Hanson’s paper, I felt like he repeated himself a lot and used the same type of verbs throughout his paper. It made it harder for me to get into his paper and really care about what he was saying because I just got bored.
I really liked that you showed us an example presentation before we started ours. I helped me know more of what you wanted us to talk about and show in our presentations. I really liked how you had students read quotes from the different movies to transition from one movie to the next. It was clever, and I hope that my group can figure out something like that to make our presentation go more smoothly. Seeing your presentation makes our group think about our time limit also. We want so show three different movies showing the way that blondes and brunettes are portrayed differently in movies. Blondes always being the bimbos that don’t really have a lot of street smarts, and how brunettes are shown as more manly in movies and given more respect. We have now decided that we may only do two movies, Legally Blonde and Miss Congeniality. I think that these movies show best the way that blondes and brunettes are stereotyped and that these characters can over come the stereotype.
The model essays help me a lot. The essays are helpful because they show us ways to write a good paper. It also helps give somewhat of an outline to follow. Knowing that Eitreim summarized too much in his paper will help me to concentrate on every detail when I watch my film. Each time I watch my film I will begin to notice more and more of the details. I did use the sample essays for help when writing my essay on an add. I believe I will use them again when writing my essay on a film. The papers are definitely a very good guide. Another good guide is the red sheet. It has a list of everything one should include in their paper. If one follows this is should be the guide to an A paper. The presentation is a helpful thing when planning our own. I believe it gives us an idea of how much video can be shown and information stated without being too rushed. The sample presentation not only gives the groups an idea of what material to use in their own, but also how to organize it and make it flow.
At the moment I am thinking I will use a feminist lens to write my film analysis. I feel being a girl the Feminist lens will be easier to write about. I can examine the language and symbols that are used and how that language and use of symbols are “gendered.” I will also watch how the characters, especially the female ones, are portrayed and ask us to consider how the portrayal of female characters “reinforces or undermines” sexual stereotypes. Also, I will consider the relationships between men and women and their relative roles in society throughout the entire film. The relationship between men and women in society is often unequal. Those unequal relationships may appear in a variety of ways in the production of the film and within the characters language. I will pay particular attention to the patterns of thought, behavior, values, and power in those relationships while analyzing my film. Questions I will keep in mind and ask myself: Who has the power? What are the societal norms are? Is there sexual envy? Or Is it power envy? Although I haven’t started writing my essay I have many notes over the film and believe with all the handouts and examples I'm ready.
Brittney myrlie
pd. 7
Wright_7
I am thankful for your comment about Tom Eitreim's paper, Mr. C. Without reading that comment, I would have made the mistake of summarizing my entire movie (instead of focusing on more important issues [camera angles, lighting, soundtrack, why does this happen, how does this happen, etc.]). After reading your essay, along with Casey Strand's and Erik Hanson's, I am more enlightened and inspired on how to write a proper paper. I am thankful that we conducted the writing workshop in class today, as every piece of advice/guidance helps me on my quest for the ideal essay. OF COURSE seeing model essays/presentations helps me. I would HOPE that they would help the class (they were brilliant, too, by the way). This will give THE SITUATION the tools necessary to 'dominate the film deconstruction presentation'.
By analyzing Disney movies, such as Tarzan and Finding Nemo, we will need to find/search for/uncover all of the many subliminal messages the Disney staff has incorporated into their movies. Also, this will help me focus EXACTLY what I need to focus on in my paper. Before Mr. C's quick analysis of Tom Eitreim's paper, my plans on SW III were to summarize the movie, along with a brief explanation/conclusion of SW I though SW VI.
Now I can focus more in-depth on the relationship shared between Anakin and Palpatine. I can give the reader a glimpse inside Anakin's feelings, and why he ultimately turned to the dark side. I can reveal to the viewer how the Jedi SHOULD have handled this situation, and that they obviously should have seen it coming. I can present the extreme irony throughout this movie, both situational and dramatic. I can display the Marxist, the Feminist, AND the Freudian Lens at any given time throughout our presentation and throughout my paper.
THE SITUATION will show how technology/change play a major role in our films (Marxist), how Dory/Nemo's mother are portrayed as stupid/weak (the mother dies right away - Feminist), how Jane and Kala (Tarzan's mother) appear smart/insightful/caring while Tarzan, Kerchak, Clayton, and the rest of the apes appear to be, well, ape-like and moronic (Feminist). And finally, we will examine how Tarzan will do ANYTHING for Jane's well-being, including the betrayal/disobedience of all of his friends/family. Tarzan can not live without her, it seems, and will do anything she asks, as long as he can remain with her (Freudian). Jane, in turn, leaves behind everything she knows about civilization, technology, and basically, life, to be with Tarzan. She "throws her old life away" to swing through the jungle with the one she loves (Freudian).
I like that you offer us the sample papers because it gives us something to base some ideas off of. In past English classes, sample papers were not given to us so nobody really knew what they were doing. The teachers would just say to brainstorm and think of something on your own. What are students supposed to take away from that? By having these sample papers, it gives people direction and ways to help organize their thoughts in ways they could not think of themselves. The papers show new ways of thinking and how to express ideas in the paper. In the last paper we had over advertisements, I used all of the samples to base it off from and it helped a lot. It helps with seeing how to cite sources and to express my ideas in ways that were similar to the ways they did. When I finished my paper, I felt confident that I did a good job. Without the sample papers, I do not think I would have done as well. Seeing in the blog task that Tom summarized his movie a little too much, I will keep that in mind so that I do not catch myself doing the same. I will remember to analyze the movie over summarizing it. I will focus on how the characters effect the viewers and how the music involved helps set the mood for the viewer and how the different camera angles all have a meaning. All of these things combined will help me with my paper. The sample papers also give me things that I might not have thought of while writing my paper. The papers help me set up a general idea of what I would want to do for writing my paper. The presentation over Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket will help our group with what we should do for our team presentation. There is no right or wrong way to present the movies to the class but having a sample for the presentation will give me ideas for what to do. Mr. C did not use a power point and still taught the class the different ways the movies affected him as a viewer and broke down memorable scenes from the movie that had meaning to them. By doing the same in our presentation, we will show the class why Adam Sandler makes the movies the way he does. Our group also plans to make a handout to explain the different things we see in the movies we are examining. Our group will probably be using a Marxist lens on how Adam Sandler acts childish in his movies and how that affects the things and the people around him.
Chris Kujawa
First of all i would like to say that all the handouts you give us help out a lot more than people give the credit for. I personally use these essays that you give us for a total breakdown of what i should wright about. A complete guidline helps a lot more than saying that your looking for this and that, these show almost exactly the type of work your looking for and how much detail we should go in. From the beginning to the end i used the essays you gave us to wright my paper for deconstructing the ads. With the 4 you gave us this time it gives us a little more look into how different people tackled this subject and what to do and what not to do in our own essays. With the movie District 9, i got to thinking toward the beginning "Where am i going to start", it made me almost want to pick a different movie but with more thinking and examples that you have givin us i have a lot better idea of where to go with it. From the camera angles to hidden meanings throughout the movie i think my paper will go more in depth with hidden meanings than most because of having to look a little deeper to find meaning. My film does a lot that other films havent, the interviews with people to tell us information on whats going on, the weird use of cameras, crazy action all over the place. I would like some help from you analyzing some of the weird angles in my movie when i can find some time to come in for the help, Why do they show like a servalence camera on Wikus when he starts losing his nails. That one part kind of puzzles me, is it showing it on that kind of camera because its giving us a hint that he will kind of be in custody.. or an aftermath of rememberence of him for the future after he "Disapears"? Different scenes like that i could really use your help with. Back to what this blog is really about, the essays that you gave us to read are more of extremely well put together guidline, especially yours because it shows us what an A paper should look like. Know how and what you want out of our essays is an excellent help in showing us what to look for in our movies.
I definately like that you give us sample essays. I never know exactly where to start with a paper, especially since I've never written one about a film, and these help out a lot. They're also good examples of how a paper should flow. I try to mirror my paper off the examples. It's also nice that you give us good examples, but tell us what they could've done better and what you didn't like about them, such as Tom Eitreim's summary of Spiderman. I also thought he went a little much into it, leaving no mystery to it. I think a good film deconstruction paper should not completely tell what's going on and make you want to see the film, but at the same time not be confusing. You should be able to understand what the person's talking about without them giving away everything that happens in the movie. The examples also help as a reference for how a works cited, quotes and punctuation should be. I found your essay to be particularly ennlightening. It was very well written and, since you're the teacher, I plan on making sure my paper is just as good or even better than your essay because I would hope that you would consider your own paper an A. It also outlined the plot and characters without giving everything about the movie away. It leaves you wondering exactly what happens that makes that character turn around and how he strayed from his family in the first place. I also thought your presentation sample was very helpful. I had absolutely no idea what to do with the presentation, but your example made it a little clearer and gave me an idea of what you want in our presentations. I thought your presentation was slightly crammed, which showed me that we shouldn't try to analyze a bunch of movies, but rather deeply analyze only a couple. It also showed how the presentation should not only be analytical and smart, but also be entertaining, so its not boring. I hope that my team presentation will be just as enlightening and entertaining as your presentation was. I think in my film analysis I will most likely use a Marxist lense the most, since my movie has a lot to do with poverty and social classes.
CJ Wachter
I love having the model essays so look off of. These essays will not only help us now but can help us once we get to college too. The sample papers give you ideas and help you format the way you would like your paper to be. They also will help you explain the main points you need to address in your paper. They also give you many ideas, like how to start, end, and what to write in your paper. Knowing these papers are A papers, it gives you ideas on what in looked for in our assignment. The handouts are a huge help to. The red one with all the questions on it is the best one i feel. There are so many questions you can answer, there should be no problems in writing your paper. The other handouts like the terms one, also help you in having the write scholarly word choice in your paper. Having a sample presentation also helped tons. We now know how to space everything out and what type of information to include in our presentation. It also showed us what not to include in our presentations. We know that three films may be a bit to much and should stick with two and really go deep in analyzing them. In my paper i think i will use the Feminist lens. My film is about four 12 year-old girls and their lives as grown ups as well as kids. This movie i feel will be a challege to pick out the treatment of women in it but wacthing it many times i know will really help. The hand outs will help me with taking notes during my movie. I may not have to watch the entire movie many times but they help me choose some special parts in the film that i really need to look deep into and find the hidden themes and messages. Everything we do, all the handouts we have gotten, and all the samples we have seen are a huge help in everything we do. I think we are very well prepared for our essays and our presentations, as well as knowing what to expect in college. Without any of these this class would be incredibly hard but with everything the class is helping us learn stress free.
Chelsea Mattson pd. 7
The example essays are extremely helpful to me. I used the first set of example ad papers a ton well constructing my ad analysis paper, and I’m sure that the film papers will be every bit as much help while analyzing my film, and writing my second paper. Not all teachers give out examples, but I feel they are helpful in so many ways. You can get a lot more out of reading an example and realizing everything a student broke drown and examined, then if you were to listen to a teacher fill you in on all the requirements. However I do feel both are necessary and beneficial for constructing papers such as these. I used Casey Stand’s paper for layout. I like the way her intro pointed out something significant in the film, also the analogy that was used. Furthermore, I liked how it then led out to explain irony, happenings, characters, and camera shots. Before reading over a few of the examples I had no clue where or how to start. I feel every example will be helpful, since they all give hints at analysis and construction. It is nice to have Mr. C’s essay since by reading it we can see where and what he analyzed in a film, and what exactly he expects from his students. Also the war movie presentation was very helpful since it gave you a layout of how to incorporate your film clips into your presentation successfully, and make sure you don’t have too many clips that will overpower your analytical speech and thoughts (the presentation handout was also useful at showing some examples of film key points). Reading all of the examples sharpens your knowledge and forces your brain to create some sort of similar replica of your movie. They are like one giant outline. I am extremely happy we are doing this so we will have papers to hand in that are college worthy. I’m also thrilled that this is the kind of things that are going on at USD, and colleges everywhere, not many of my other teachers base their class created on professor input. All in all I believe every paper, handout, demo presentation, and class film analysis of the movies mean girls, no country for old men, and office space were great at setting up a critical eye for films in students.
Cody San Miguel P.5
well when i first started my deconstruction paper for my movie i didnt have much problem doing the actual deconstruction of the movie. my main problem was the thesis statement and opening paragraph. reading the example essays helped me start my opening paragraph and figure out what to say in my thesis statement. In my movie i am using marxist, fruedian and feminist lens in my essay. the movie i am deconstructing (Watchmen), allows you to utilize all three of the lenses. The reason you can do this is because it adresses real world issues in the form of fantasy predicament. the heros symbolize our policemen, soldiers, and lawyers of our world. people in the movie symbolize the unwanted of our world. the unwanted are drug addicts, alchoholics, poor, homeless, and other people around the world that we refuse to help or think beyond helping. the marxist lens lets people see that only thr rich retain power, and the poor are dependant on those who have it. the feminest lens will tell us that there is only one female superhero for every five male superheros. also the woman in my movie is mostly a sex symbol...where she is an important character, she also has sex with like half the guy superhero's. with the freudian lens there are so many phallic symbols to count. also the handouts showed me how to summarize just enough and not too much. the example presentation helped with my groups presentations as well. For instance i now know what scenes to use for the presentation. in pulp fiction i will use the first scene in which jules winfeild eats a mans meal talks to him, degrades him, gives him a glimmer of hope, then shoots him full of bulletes showing how ruthless he is. the next scene will be the end scene where jules tries to become the shepard in his recited bible verse and spare a common thiefs life. in 187 samuel L. jackson is a teacher in the slums and is attacked by a student not once, but twice. we will show the first scene in which it shows mr garfield realizing a student has put a 187 call on him. 187 is the police code for murder. then we will show the climax scene in which mr garfield has been in conflict with a student for some time and is now teaching him a lesson through death. obviously we will cut it short to make the class want to see it. i recommend all three of our groups movies but i mostly recommend 187 to all becuase it is a very powerful film.
I believe that you have provided us with an exemplary amount of examples, models, and handouts. Some may feel overwhelmed and think it is too much; this is because they are not used to getting so much information or help at once. Yes, it is quite a bit but us Seniors in High school must learn to balance the jumble of papers. College is coming up for most of us and they will not be as kind as you. Reading a handout every other night instead of reading them all at once would help your mind build thoughts together...and in the end creating your paper. I have yet to find my book source and website source so I need to get my but moving on that. Models of papers have the potential of going 2 ways: 1) help for paper structure or 2) Copying the layout. Students must be very careful in not copying the layout of the examples, because then you are not creating a paper/project of your own or putting thoughts in a more unique sequence. Your Presentation was absolutely phenomenal! I especially enjoyed the reading of the quotes by the audience. It was a great way to involve the audience.
Moving my thought process back to the example papers.....I was gripped by Erik Hanson's “Tabacco: The Lifesaver” paper. This paper was amazing in the fact that it really made me want to go out and see the movie “Thank You For Smoking”. I liked the summary, but feel like in the end the paper was missing something. After the summary it seemed to focus solely on the ideology. Are we allowed to focus on a simple topic such as that? He did not seem to justify his thoughts with why the directors would be using certain camera angles or music for a specific scene. Having these example papers is wonderful for this exact problem. You are allowed to pick and choose what you enjoy and what you do not enjoy. My Gymnastics Coach Dennis says, “When you see someone else do something spectacular and great, it will look just a spectacular when you do it. So pinpoint something you think looks awesome, cool, whatever, and do it.”
I believe that starting with a summary of the movie not only on your paper but when begging the writing process would be best. Then along with the strategy of reading the example papers, I also plan to jot down possible theories and supporting quotes from the movie(Pretty much what we accomplished in class today). From there I will write an unknown chunk of my paper and I am guessing from there it will all fall into place. If my paper is hitting bumps, I just plan on coming to you (Mr. C) and toggling you brain for ideas. :)
I think all of the handouts you gave us are definitely helpful. The model essays are really convenient because they are exactly what we are doing. They are what is expected of us and they are good examples. Without these examples it would be extremely hard to write an essay because we would not know what is expected of us. Before we got all of the handouts, I had no idea how I would write a five page paper. Now I am more confident about writing it. I think the works cited is helpful so we know how to site our sources, especially how to site our movie. I think your essay is clever and helps me use different strategies towards my essay. I liked how you analyzed the lyrics of a song in the movie and wrote how they are related to what is going on in the movie. This is something I will listen for when watching my movie again. I will also find out all of the songs in my movie and see how they relate to each other. I agree, I think that Eitreim summarized Spiderman too much. He did do some analyzing, but I think more could have been done. In my essay I will try to analyze it more than he did. I really liked Casey’s essay and will use it to come up with ideas of my own. I liked how she found a recurring image in the beginning and end of her movie and how much she dug into it. Your model presentation also helped so our group knows how it works and what is expected of us. Your example handout was helpful so we know how to organize our thoughts. It helped us to decide what to put on there, such as the director and main characters. We also were able to come up with a plan for which scenes of which movies we would show and how much time to spend on them. In my film analysis I will definitely use a Feminist lens. There is a lot that has to do with this lens because it has a man versus woman conflict and the woman in the film is overpowered by the man. I will analyze why the man has the power and how the woman reacts to it. I will also analyze why Abby falls in love with Mike in the end, even though he is vile and rude to her.
Lyle Hall_6
I think those models helped me a lot in getting started with my paper mainly Because when I began my first paper over our ad's I didn’t know what I was doing and how to even get my paper going. Those papers are ok examples on what to do right and what not to do, by you going through one of those students papers with us it showed us even though this person is smart and well aware of what he is doing they even mess up sometimes too and that there is a lot that you can do to get an A paper. In tom eitriems paper it showed us what not to do, just give you an overview of the movie itself but also what to do to please you in the paper and hopefully get an a. Also I have looked through some of those graduates’ papers and some of them repeat themselves by using the same words. Also I think that you providing us with these papers are a very good idea because it shows us how to get the A and what to do and what not to do. Also some of these paragraphs that are long are a good visual of how in depth we need to get into the plot and overall meaning of the movie. I think that the best example you gave us is your own because that is the model paper we have to follow and all of these other papers you gave us are good because they tell us words to use and other sources to get and all of the professors we can contact are great ways to get help.I really liked the mock presentation that you did for us. By doing so you’ve helped my group get started and understand more of what you’re looking for. It’s been pretty easy since you’ve done all of those presentations and have gone through movies with us. I now analyze any movie I watch without even thinking about it. Me and Melissa went to ‘The Crazies’ last Friday and one of the very first scenes was the main character driving his car with a quick extreme close up view of his hand on the wheel with his wedding ring. Melissa and I looked at each other simultaneously and said “Ohhh he’s married!” After that I made sure that I mainly just watched the movie without analyzing so I could really enjoy it and get scared because I enjoy being scared – and analyzing scary movies closely tends to take away from it. But after the movie was over I thought over the movie a lot and found that I noticed a lot of things without even thinking about it. I was able to analyze subconsciously and bring it back out after the movie was over. Being able to do that now I would have to say was because of this class – because you’ve shown us how to do it and how it builds us up as a person. It makes us more scholarly and ready for college.
The sample essays were very help to me. It was very nice knowing how a good paper would looks like because at first I didn’t have an idea of how I was going to complete my paper or my presentation. I really like how you gave the presentation it gave me Ideas of how I can do it by myself and also how to write my paper. I like the quotes you gave us to read that was entertaining and people were playing attention to everything you were talking about. I enjoyed reading the models form the other student because they were the same age as me and I could know that kind of writing you are expecting to see on my paper. I want to do good in this paper because when I go to college ill be able to hand in the same essay at college. This is very thoughtful of you helping us get prepare for college. After this class I think ill be ready to think like a college student and I will be passing my classes and go far in life. Everything you have created to help us get prepared for this papers and to open our mind to college . From essays to blogs you have help us with our papers and also open our minds to something bigger than just writing a paper but to go beyond what you ask to get done. At first everything that we do doesn’t look helpful and annoying but when we get to writing part all the stuff we did help us a lot. Thank you for taking your time to help us. I believe that my knowledge has grown, I know so many things that I didn’t know last year. I think because now we are learning things that have knowledge and we can compare to real life experience and we go between the pages.
I like how the model essays show the pros and cons of other people’s writing. It allows me to proof-read my own work and pick out the flaws that the model has, thus, making my paper better as a whole. I also like the fact that it gives me some help when I get stuck on what to do. If the model analyzes how the actors react to one another, I can do something similar in order to make my writings more like the A paper Mr. C wrote rather than the not as good student papers written by college students. I plan to use all three lenses which will allow me to see everything possible from different perspectives and angles. I will make sure to notice with the feminist lens that the only woman in my movie is a possession and is materialistic, thus, fitting the stereotype of women. These models also help me realize many things that I would have never seen in my life. For instance, during Mr. C’s presentation, he thoroughly analyzed as much of the movies that he chose as he was allotted time for. If given an infinite amount of time, he would have most likely given us much more insight than any of us would have ever noticed. This would make us all think harder and help us with our papers/presentation. Our class-time projects really help us realize what we want to talk about and write about in our projects/papers. It also helped me realize that I like to ramble, which isn’t professional and I needed to work on, so my papers sound more sophisticated and articulate. Without all the class work and handouts, it would have taken me a lot longer to realize this; therefore, I will become a better writer because of it. Also, writing papers about movies help me look at every aspect of the movie, instead of just watching it. I also become a better film analyst after watching the same movie over and over, noticing as much as humanly possible.
At the beginning of this unit I was a little skeptical at first. I was not sure if I would be able to grasp the concept of analyzing as well as the previous examples shared with us in class. I somewhat expected this unit to be similar to previous English classes where the teacher would sort of just throw all the information at you at once with little or no help. However I quickly realized that this was not the case and that this unit could possibly be (and is) fun. I have always been a strong believer of learning things with examples for assistance; it has always helped me in the past. So when we began to analyze films, I felt it was (and will be) extremely helpful to receive the handouts given to us. These hand outs give great guidelines to us when it comes time to start our papers. They show us what is expected, and what is not expected out of our papers. Such as Tom’s paper, one point mentioned about his paper was the fact that he summarized too much. This is good knowledge to keep in mind for our own papers so we do not make similar mistakes. Not only where the models a great tool given to us, but the hand outs where equally as use full. The tips and terminology given in them on how to properly analyze movies are nice to have while watching your movie, or while writing your paper. And as I read through your paper, it made me want to watch the film to experience it myself. One of the main problems I have while writing papers is starting them out strong and correctly. Your paper gives me a great example and layout of a good strong start to an “A” paper. Then when you did your presentation on your movies, it was entertaining and an excellent tool for a couple reasons. One way it was a great tool is that it was a great example for us; it showed us one way of setting up our presentations to make it flow correctly and efficiently. Another way it was a great tool for us is that it gives us all an idea on what you think is an “A” presentation. It sort of shows us what certain things you expect to see in our own presentations. For example: When you used certain lenses during your presentations, this encouraged our group to find and analyze key points within our own presentation with the use of each lens (feminist, Marxist, Freudian). So all in all, I believe that all the tools given to us are extremely useful while analyzing movies and writing papers. I would strongly recommend keeping them in the future.
I personally think that the models that you gave us in class will help me out a lot. When we first started going over writing our paper I was so confused and didn’t know where to start or how to start. By looking at the peoples previous papers I know it will help me out on ideas and creativity. Also with these models I can follow them as a outline to write my paper. By looking at these I can write about my movie and the points other people made but by using my own movie and points. These essays can also help out our group presentations, they can show us what to present and what not to present in front of other students. By looking at Mr. C’s paper and Caseys paper it shows that we have to look deep into the movie and get as much information and analysis out of them as possible. With the presentation that Mr. C did was helpful in my eyes because it showed me that my group has to be very organized when we present and to have things ready and to also know how much time your dealing with, with all of our movies. It was also nice to know that my group shouldn’t do more than three movies because the less movies you have the more you can go in depth with them and analyze little things that didn’t grab my attention when I first watched it. Also with these handouts and previous film papers it helps me think and learn in many different ways, than jus one boring way, this gives us an open mind. By looking at all the handouts and papers it gives me a lot move confidence about writing my paper, than the first paper I wrote at the beginning of the year. I think that analyzing movies expands my mind more than reading a book. Watching and analyzing movies have more depth and detail in them, which makes it easier for people to realize what is happening in the movie. Where books not everyone gets it and with watching a movie you cant just set it down and come back. People usually put down the novel they are reading if they come to a boring spot. I noticed in Eitreims paper that he summarized it to much in detail, but still a good paper for the college classes. Honestly I think with all the handouts and papers from the past will help out everyone with their essays and presentations, also knowing that we can take this class when we get to college if we like it now. Without these papers we have gotten in class I would be completely lost and stressed out by writing my paper, but since we have examples it takes a stress load off my shoulder.
I personally think the sample essays helped me greatly, especially getting started. They were great guides to writing my paper. I probably would have helped if i would have seen the movies that the papers were about, so i could understand more of what the students were talking about. When were first assigned to write a paper analyzing a movie, I had NO idea how to start it. After reading Eitreim's paper, I now know what to not do - Summarize the movie. His paper is an overall good paper, but there is definitely more summarizing than analyzing. He also did not have a title nor a work cited. Reading through his paper helped me out a lot, and will for sure help students in the future. I also like how you did not just give us one example, but you gave us numerous. Reading through all of them shows how different people think. We also get a perspective from guys and girls. Reading through a guys paper then reading through a girls, shows us how different we think about things. I also enjoyed the paper you had written as an example. It shows us that anyone can do it. Not only these sample essays helped, but all of the handouts we received from you helped me tremendously. The hand out that helps me the most, is the Film Deconstruction Paper. With all of the questions on the handout, there's is no doubt in my mind that i won't have an incomplete paper. The chart we made in class today, was a great idea. That helped me so much with my adjectives, I will for sure be including a lot of that in my paper.
Also, your sample presentation was a great example. I liked how you had lyrics on the board, and handed out quotes from the movies to us students. This helps us a lot. I also agree with Amanda Hardick though. After watching you run out of time, makes me think that our group may not have enough time. There is so much that we can go over, with all six of us talking. After going over the movies all six of us analyzed, talking about the lyrics, going over movie clips from a few of the movies, then having our 10 minute extra credit movie, I'm not quite sure if we will make it before the bell rings.
Lindsay Dohrman
Swenson_7
Yes these models help me, especially because it gives me a visual and general idea of how to lay out my essay along with certain aspects I need to include. However, that isn’t it; with Eitreim’s paper I think it’s unique. He summarizes the movie a lot, maybe too much on the first page, it seems a little step by step which will make me stop and reread then reread again my paper as I’m writing it because personally I don’t like the flow of his deconstruction paper (definitely well thought out, I just don’t care for the flow though). How he mentions responsibility, justice, and reality escapes is great because it brings up other aspects for me to think about while writing my film analysis and deconstruction paper instead of just mentioning the same deconstruction techniques only in different scenes. With your paper, I think that it is on a much deeper level of thinking than the others, though they are great deconstructive, analytically thought out papers, they just don’t have the thoughts that yours does. Eitreim’s and Strand’s papers seem to summarize in one big chunk then piece the movie together with their observations and analysis’s they absorbed while viewing their films. With the paper you wrote it flowed smoother and I noticed things that will be greatly helpful to those who use them, such as, gripping our attention in the first few sentences, giving us enough information to know the “gist” of the film but also immediately making us think analytically about the film instead of reading the entire step by step summarizing of the film. It also makes me see that after you give a detailed analysis of a scene you immediately give a reason and or example on why you think it is the way it is. That shows me a well thought out paper along with an idea on how to construct what I chose to deconstruct in each paragraph while not only gripping the reader but also think and have it turn out as a well written analytical deconstructive paper. Unfortunately I was absent the day you gave the mock team deconstruction presentation so I know I missed out, though the ideas and handouts are very helpful. Also I am very glad I e-mailed the professor from Indiana University, she had many great ideas and helpful tips to look for in the films we are presenting as a group, for instance I don’t know if I honestly would have thought of seeing the myth of vampires as metaphors for outcasts and unwanted people in society throughout the ages.
Roeder_5
The model essays help extremely when doing a works cited. It is nice to have an example. They also help with paragraph structure. They show me how long a good paragraph length is. It also helps in showing us what to do and what not to do. It shows us how to anazlyze and not summerize. There is a big difference and Eitreim helps to show us how not to summerize in our own papers. Looking at the examples really helps with getting your paper started and helps you create a solid thesis statement. It sets up guidelines for us to follow and help us. It also shows us how the paper should appear such as double spaced and the title format. These papers along with the handouts give you a how-to guide on writing a good A paper. I think the presentation gave us a good idea on how to analyze movies without ruining them for the rest of the class. It was also very creative and gave me an idea on how to present myself. The presention also helped show us how not to end. It was a weak wrap up and it shows us to keep it strong throughout the presentation. I think the marxist and freudian lenses will assist me in writing about Combat Diary. I don't think the feminist lense will tie in too much. I think that doing a movie like Combat Diary helps because I see the movie in a different perspective than some others because I am enlisted and know how it feels to have the military. I can feel the emotions they have throughout the movie. The feelings of their hostility towards the enemy is felt through the screen. I also could feel the frustration with the civilians who need help but don't want help because it requires them to work harder. But seeing those few that were willing to work with the soldiers help makes you rememeber what this war is for.
I think that the sample essays are one of the most useful tools we are given in this project. They give me a guidline of how my paper should be set up and what it should include. It is personally difficult for me to include the information from other sources and know exactly how to tie it into the paper and the samples are something that I can go to for assistance in that specific area. The sample presentation was also very helpful in many ways. Even though our topic is very different from that of the portrayal of war, it was insightful in the aspect of how to break it down and present it in a timely fashion. The quotes that we read during the presentation helped to focus on what was being presented and keep the interest directed at what was being said. Just playing the clips and having a handout saved on time and kept more of a focus on the films rather than on the extravigance of a power point and that helped us to decide on how to present our films. With the presentation we plan to use more of a marxist lens. With my essay I will use both a marxist and a feminist lens focusing on power and womans roles in a mans industry. With the help of the samples I think it will be much easier to construct an A paper. It definitely helps to have what is expected of me laid out for me to see as I go into it.
I believe all the efforts to make extra handouts and presentations you have made Mr. C have helped me dearly. Relating back to the advertising unit, i had no idea what i was getting myself into, and no idea where to even start with for analyzing an add. Through your assistance and help with the handouts and numerous writing workshops, i learned how to effectively analyze an ad for what it really is, a marketing device, and understand how certain people and characteristics were being addressed in that ad. With that help i believe i wrote one of my best papers over the ad analyzation. With this paper i hope to dig deeper analytic skills, and expand the depth of my knowledge on films, and deconstructing them. I believe you have given me all the tools i need to be succesful in that. I love how you have given us so many hand outs, that explain all the terminology of films, and the different types of camera angles uses because that is such an important part of deconstruction. Another aspect that i really like is the fact that you got your hands on preceding seniors papers they have written in college. This helps us understand what a college paper should look like and the structure to which we want to model our own paper after. In our class forum quiz i did say that they could also be a repressor too, because if your ideas and format dont line up with theirs you get a little bit discouraged, but then i realized that there is never anything wrong with a little creative licensing, and that all papers are different. I really enjoyed listening to your sample presentations it gave me and my group members direction on where to take our presentation and because of that i believe our presentation will trump our last one, which we received an A on. You demonstrated how to break down movies of a certain genre and relate them back to eachother, and how there is a certain "railroad" that runs through movies with the same theme/style to them. In my paper i will use all three lenses, the first and probably most important one i will be using is the marxist lens, which deals with systems, my movie chuck and larry has an abundance of these and i hope to touch on them all. The feminist lense will help me out alot too because in the movie they are placing their faith and future into a female lawyer, and her sex appeals nearly destroys their friendship. And finally the freudian lense will help me because one of the main characters is a sex addict, and has a very selfish personality, until he reaches a self realization, which was aided by the fact that he had to wear someone elses shoes for awhile and saw how other people were treated. All of these aids you have given me and the knowledge of different types of psychological lenses gives me confidence that i will write a brilliant, and well thought of paper.
It seems that many classes use examples like math you always have example problems that you go through and in government we do the mock election. Both these are examples on how to do math and how the government runs. I don't ever remember getting an example essay in english 9, 10, and 11. We wrote essays in each of those classes but i do remember that i never really knew how to get started and what to look for. By you giving us these example essays it really gives us a glimpse of what you are looking for. I really do appreciate you taking the time find us the essays and making copies because i know they help us out and make our papers better. I have looked and read over your paper you wrote and i have found it very useful. I looked at what specific things in the movie you looked at i also looked at how you divded your paper up. I kinda get what needs to go into the paper but i really am confused about how it should be brought together if that makes sense. I loved the sample presentation you gave i found it interesting and enlightening i only wish we would have had more time. It was a great example to how u would like the presentation. My group will base our presentation off of yours but we will also make it unique by doing some different things. The example papers and example presentation both will guide me to make the best paper possible. They help me to give me and example but they also kinda give me the motivation to work hard on the paper. Most of the motivation to write the paper comes from wanting to show people im smart but the examples show me that other people did it and they had a good time doing it. I plan on using a marxist lens a lot i will look at how the characters relate to each other and society. The characters in Forest gump are very diferse i think. It will also take the feminist lens too. Jenny is important to the movie and so is forrest's mom. I will end up using most of the lens im my paper and hopefully that will add some depth and make the paper more intelligent. the example papers, presentation and diifferent use of lenses will make my paper and group project better. This unit has been very useful and i have enjoyed it.
I think that the sample papers and handouts are extremely helpful. The sample papers have really helped me in knowing what I need to include in my paper. After reading the sample papers, I thought Casey's was mostly a summary. She goes into depth about each character, but I do not think she did enough analyzing and deconstructing, she more just tells what part they have in the film. Although, she does a good job of including camera angles and relating it to society. She also did a good job of repeating her theme of the movie's characters all having a tragic flaw. I also think she jumped from subject to subject without transitions. I really like having your sample paper because it helps me to know what an A paper consists of. The red worksheets with the questions and How to deconstruct a movie has helped me tremedously because it gives me a place to start. It has helped me while taking notes when watching my movie because it tells me what questions I should be asking myself. I also really like the worksheets with the terms because they help me to know what words will help me in writing a better paper. I also liked the blue paper with the short analysis's of those eight movies because it has showed me how to anaylze movies and what an analysis is. I haven't quite decided what kind of lens I should use, but it will probably be a Feminist lens because it is the easiest for me to analyze with. I also liked your sample presentation because we now know what to include in our presentation. It showed me that we should probably only use two films instead of three so we can have more time to share our analysis of the soundtracks in the Hangover and Perfect Man. Before I had these example, I did not know where to start with my paper and my presentation. Now I know how to start, what needs to be in our paper and presentation, and how to get an A! This unit is obviously going to help us in college because I have heard from kids in college that these are the exact same projects they do in their english classes. I also trust that this unit is useful because professors have told you what we need to know and what to prepare for. This unit and handouts should definately be used with future college bound students.
When writting our first paper without all this help of handouts and models, I was unsure how to start my paper or how to write it to suit the format. Now that I am starting my second paper, I have realized how important these handouts really are. The yellow and blue sheets referred to in the previous blog were really beneficial with the different terms and angle shot types. This film analysis paper will go smoother now that I am more confident and knowledgeable. I agree with MC that Tom's paper was to descriptive and summarizing, but all in all it was a decently put together paper. MC's paper was very enlightening and made him sound intelligent with all the big words he used. Having model examples of what our papers should look like readily available whenever was nice because we always had something to refer back to. It is nice sometimes to have another persons work or model to critique and see how they went about starting or ending their paper. We got A LOT of handouts, but most of them are useful when it comes to writting your paper. Film deconstructing requires much deep critical scholarly thinking and if we were to write this paper at the beginning of the year it would not turn out half as good as it is going to now with the knowledge we have gained over the semester. In my movie, 'Baby Mama', I will be using a feminist lens to deconstruct and think analytically. Everyone thinks and learns in a different way, so the variety in the handouts is very helpful. I am a hands on visual learner so being able to look at examples and to see how other people write their papers better prepares me for writting mine. Analyzing movies have more depth and detail to them that it makes it easier and harder to write about at the same time. Some movies can be vague, but to think critically and be able to break down each scene as you watch closely takes not only time, but talent. It's definitely easier to write about a movie that you personally enjoy and have seen or that interests you than a movie you are forced to watch. Office Space is funny and I have seen it before, but there are better more intriguing movies that would have caught my attention more personally. No Country for Old Men I had not seen prior to class and it was a good movie to deconstruct and analyze as a class. The ending was very unique and showing the different styles in movies was helpful also. Thinking analytically about films is not always the way you want to watch movies, it can be for the better and for the worst. Movies can be ruined, or they can be broken down in depth to understand the movie and what the director is trying to make the viewer notice or take from the movie. The handouts help see that and help recognize those different symbols and meanings behind the directors layout of the film.
I thought the example papers were very helpful. Like San Miguel I always seem to have a problem with starting and ending my paper. But by looking at some of your previous students thesis statements I now know how to start my paper. The two movies I have been thinking about deconstructing are Shawshank Redemption and A River Runs Through it. Both movies are about power stuggles and wanted to live freely which results in using the Marxist lense. Also both movies have lots of love and drama which results in using the freudian lense. The papers taught me to find the theme within the theme and to get a broader prospective of what the movie is really about. The papers also helped me realize how to write a deconstruction paper and not be to subjective.
I thought your presentation helped our group realize how you wanted that done as well. We have 7 people in our group and we realized 3 movie clips may be hard to do but we will just have to talk faster then usual or cut down our clips. We are probably going to use a powerpoint like in our last group presentation so we don't have to use notecards. Also like in the last group presentation we will probably make handouts that describe what we are talking about in deconstucting our films. In our presentation just like you stated your opinion of what the best Vietnam War films were we will choose what we believe are the best Adam Sandler films. We believe Sandler's best three films are Waterboy, Happy Gilmore, and Billy Madison. We will talk in depth about how Sandler's character starts off all of his movies by being a burned out loser. By saying this we mean not that he is a pothead but never grew out of being a kid. He then by the end of his movies redeems himself and becomes a well liked person who always finds a hot girl. It hopefully will be easy to get up in front of people but I dont think many people enjoy it so we'll just hope for the best.
A PLUMMDOG MILLIONAIRE PRODUCTION
official rights are reserved to A.J. Plummer Pd. 3
The model essays are very helpful. I think the reason that they are helpful is because they show us what to do, and also what not to do. The model essay will help me greatly with my thesis statement, and also teaching us not to over summarize the movie we analyze, but to describe why and how it is the way it is and why we chose it. Without these handouts, we would not know what exactly to look for in our movies, or what we are can collect from our movie. The model essays also help me start my paper and how to put it in order that it will make better sense. The handout by Tom will help me know not to over summarize my film, because we have to remember that we are analyzing and not describing the movie. Obviously our readers have to know background information about the film to understand what we are trying to get across, but with the model essays we can know when enough is enough. The mock presentation and handout was extremely helpful. Your mistake will be our benefit. We know how long we have to show clips and how long each person should be able to talk. The handout and presentation also helped us by showing what we can do to make our presentations the best they can be and also help our viewers grasp the information that we are trying to tell them and hope that they can pertain that information and understand what exactly we saw in our movies and hope they can see it as well. With these models and mocks we know what you look for and what attracts you about what we do and what you like for us to look for. What you expect from us and are papers is evident with these examples, and obviously Erik and Casey did good work that you enjoyed, so we can use these and match up to what they put into their work and also put in the time and effort to make our papers as good as theirs. These handouts in general make me so much more confident in my writing and that I’m doing what you are looking for. This puts less stress on me and my group in our already stressful lives. After reading Casey and Erik’s papers I know exactly how I will write my paper. It will obviously be very different from both of theirs, but it will be good because of what they have done and the work they put into it, and my essay will be better because of our in class writing and critical thinking too.
Laura Hieb
Pd. 5
I think the sample essays help a lot. I used them quite a bit when writing my last essay. I use them as almost a guide of how to make my paragraphs connect and how I should set up the order of my paper. I think the samples are great examples. I like knowing what you are looking for when I write or do an assignment. If I do not know what you are looking for I am left guessing at how deep does he want us to go, or what is the proper way to set up this works cited. On the last essay we wrote the main thing I used was the sample works cited, also I looked at how they included quotes into their papers. I think that without these sample essays, my essay would have been a lower grade. I think your sample presentation was also very helpful because I was wondering what you were expecting from our presentation. When I listened to your presentation I could start to piece together how our group was going to go about presenting. This was an excellent visual and helped our group determine the best way to go about giving a quality presentation. I think your loss of time also was an eye opener because the group I am in was thinking about doing three movies, but when we saw you run out of time we decided to dig deeper into just two movies. With just two movies I think we can give a better presentation of a deeper look at Tarzan and Finding Nemo. I think even though the handouts can seem like a bit much at times I was looking at them all while I was typing and I could not find one that is not useful. I think the handouts are awesome and your presenting was helpful as well.
the sample essays will help me very much when i am writing my essay. when we first had the assignment of writing the essay about our movie i didnt think that it would be to hard, but after thinking about it i had no idea where to start or what exactly to annalyze in the movies or what to focus on the most. by reading and reviewing the sample essays i am able to see how the A papers are written and use them as a guideline to write my essay. by looking at those essays i can see where and how to start my essay and i will know what points in the movies to focus on the most. also by using the sample essays i will be able to see what may not be such a great example and will be able to tell myself to stay away from doing that when i am writing my essay, so then i can make my paper even better and maybe have my paper be an example in the future. by using these papers i will be able to throw out the negatives of these example and put all th positives into my paper to maybe have mine used as an example in the future and then have people use mine on not use the negatives and write there paper better than a paper has ever been written before. When i am using these sample essays to write my essay i am not only helping myself but i am helping future classmates of the next generation that are analyzing their movie. in my film analysis i will try to use all the lenses that i can, the more views of the movie the better, i will be able to analyse more in the movie, if i am able to analyse more in the movie i will be able to jot more notes. by jotting more notes i will be able to make a better detailed and longer essay, and by making a more detailed and longer essay i will get a better grade (hopefully) and be smarter because i did more than just the bare minimum, i went out and did all that i could to make the best film analysis essay that i could. your team presentation example also helped, it showed me and my group an example on how to present ours. we didnt really know how to attempt our presentation but now that we have a model we know what to do and what not to do.
The model essays i posses now since you gave them to me are all very well written and very intellectual. These models will help me very much to write my paper, give me an "outline" to sort of follow along with. If i'm stuck on a paragraph and don't know what to write next i can refer back to these essays and find out what to include, maybe while reading them and looking at them i can receive an idea of how to make my paper flow smoothly. Specifically the whole concept of the papers and how to write them should help me, also what we're doing in class will also help me to figure out what to write about. Some strategies i could use would be how to write my introduction and conclusion, those are not my best traits at writing a paper. Making a paper start out and end nicely is just not my best trait of my writing ability. After i get my paper to start nicely I can just rock it from there. I'm an excellent creative writer and I would've liked if we had a chapter in our class where we had a creative writing time period, I would ace that I believe. I believe summarizing a movie in a quick paragraph would help the reader understand where you are going with your essay and they would be able to follow along better, that's my opinion though. The first weeks of this unit on film deconstruction have been difficult but the more you get into the more your going to understand it better, i have noticed more things in commercials and movies now a days and it helps me better understand what I'm watching. Reading these model essays does benefit a person to a point, it helps them see what to do. Now it's their turn and what to write about and how to make it flow that's the difficult part. The model team presentation greatly benefits your students with showing them what to do and how to make it look great and earn that A everybody yearns for. At first when you tell students what they need to do, they are confused and bewildered and how they're going to accomplish this task and than when you step in and show them how its done, it relieves some pressure on their shoulders and lets them relax a little. Using the Feminist, Marxist, or Freudian lense in your films might just help you think of what to write about but just be careful and don't go and contradict your self or that could leave the reader confused and wondering what you were thinking while writing your paper, so be careful. Otherwise this unit will be very interesting to see how students put their projects together and present to the other students. I am much looking forward to it all.
Dan Nelson Period 6
I believe that the models that have been presented to the classes have helped me very much and in many different ways. They help me because they provide visual guides and they just provide great examples on how to write our papers or even on how to do our group presentations (talking about the model team presentation you did for us). But what else helped is that the examples we were given showed us what TO do and what NOT to do. An example of what I mean is like how Tom Eitreim may have summarized too much. That will help me in the future to remember not to summarize too much and to remember to always keep analyzing and not explain the movie. It makes me learn from the mistakes of others instead of having our own time wasted trying to figure a certain thing out. They also gave examples of what kinds of words would be good to use in our essays and what words would be better left out of them. Another example would be on how to create our thesis statements. By looking at what other people have already done, it may help on how we come up with our own thesis statements. So yes I do think that seeing model essays help me. They teach you many things to remember and many things to always be reminded on what to do. I know that now I will for sure be able to come up with a pretty good thesis statement because other essays give great examples on how to come up with them. But also back to the model team presentation that you did a great job demonstrating to the class. It helped me and my group to really get some ideas on what to do for our presentations. I really enjoyed how you got so into presenting and you caught and held the whole class’s attention for the whole class period! Now my group is going to have to find really “artistic” scenes from the movies we are doing to keep the classes attention as well. And finally, I believe I will try to incorporate all three (Feminist, Marxist, and Freudian) lenses into my essay. They are all great lenses to be using and they will also help me to analyze my movie (fight club) even better! But all in all I am very glad and appreciative that we got to enjoy and use the examples you provided to us to make our essays the best they can be, they helped very much!
Lexi Fontana Pd. 6
Personally, as a visual learner myself, I feel that your examples/models will only benefit my paper and other students as well. Having such materials, like these, help all students where to go if they get “stuck,” how to start their paper, and even mentions more renounced adjectives we find appealing. I feel that the sample essays from past students, and the one by you will benefit me the most, especially while writing my paper. Our paper is like a human body. We can build (write) a human (paper) with all of the handouts, essays, and mock presentation you’ve given us. The model essays are like the skeleton. It’s the main structure that will hold everything in place. Almost like how the thesis statement is in the first paragraph. Next, would have to be the muscles. The muscles are like the handouts we received about camera angles, film terms, and how to deconstruct a movie. These are the meaty portion of our paper. Without specific terms, such as style, sequence, and denouement the human (paper) would be skin and bones. We need the muscles (handouts) to be something the viewer can grab on to. When someone is very muscular we can sustain every muscle in their body, clenching on for more. The handouts give the paper shape, like our muscles do for our bodies. Lastly, the mock presentation and our writing workshops in class are our skin; the final coat. Finding unique adjectives and different effects on the viewer add more than a little something to the table. This is what makes are paper appealing or beautiful, like how soft skin is attractive on women. This is the final step in the writing process. The structure is set, along with the beefy center, and the skin to cover everything.
Some examples I will use in my paper as well is portraying the certain type of viewers the movie wants to attract; young, old, rich, poor, or even all of the above. In Tom Eitreim’s paper he discusses the interests of the viewers. Although, he only shows the American viewers, a movie is not just shown in one country; it can be shown all over the world. I feel he would have added to his paper if he stated how someone from Africa or China would have responded to his film. Having these examples doesn’t mean we have to follow them exactly. We can try to proceed further than they did, make higher standards for ourselves, rather than settle for success from a year or two ago. In my film I will be using not only a Feminist lens and a Marxist, but a Freudian as well. It will be a challenge for me, but I know it will make my paper better and more influential, than if my paper only had one view point.
Tessa Richmond_3
I believe that the model essays you provide for me helped with my paper in knowing how to start, transition and end my essay. They will be of great use when I start my paper/presentation as I am a procrastinator and I have been deciding what to write and all the help you can give me is great. Specifically, I know that I should probably not make my focus as narrow and that it would be of great benefit to me to use all of the lenses: Marxist, Feminist, and Freudian. That way I cover all points of view and would dissect the movie entirely. Your essay helps me to understand exactly what is expected in my essay. I agree with you on Eitreim's essay. I will know not to summarize my movie excessively. And your essay also guides me in length and depth of the critical thinking required in film deconstruction. The model essays also showed what information needed to be included and what can be discarded. Strand's essay helped me to realize the intellectual basis needed to be a true film analyst as well as yours, Mr. C! So far, I have my Marxist and Feminist lens thought out but I am unsure of how to utilize the Freudian lens as yet. Eitreim's essay allows me to realize that presentation of the essay form is necessary. Hanson's essay, refers far too much to the ideology of the movies and not the movies itself. It is great to have one aspect to look at and analyze but there could have been more wider views. Strand's essay also helps me to realize that redundancy is not always a good quality in film deconstruction. Mr. C.'s essay has reminded me to use film critics' views and opinions in my essay to further develop it. It also helps me to remember the setting, plot, and minute details that are a part of the overall picture. Mr. C.'s essay also reminds me to utilize vocabulary words as a more descriptive summary of a movie. Your essay also reminds me to use my observant interpretation of each character. The model presentation helped me because my teammates and I now know how important it is that our film clips are important factors in proving our point in the presentation. The model presentation also helped our team know how to transition between our movies and that we could discuss the director's of the movies as well as the movies themselves. Your model presentation also helped in deciding which movies we were going to show clips of.
Laryssa Osheim Pd.3
I think that the handouts from all the people are extremely helpful. It is very helpful to see what other people thought of. You can see words and phrases you may have not thought about, and you can be able to use those. Personally, I get stuck easily, with these handouts, I can get further than if i didn't have the handouts from you. I can also see subjects they use. For instance, if i forget a subject, and I'm running short on my paper, I can look back and see all the other subjects used, and I couldv'e not had some of the topics, but I can then use those in my paper. Yes, I agree that Eitreim's paper may be a little too descriptive for the message that is trying to get put across in our class. The other examples are marvelous, enlightening, and just descriptive enough. Big words are not a good trait of mine, but being able to see how the others use them, it makes me more confident with my paper. I also look mainly at the introduction paragraph and the closing paragraph. Those are the two paragraphs I struggle with. Being able to see how they start and what information they reveal in the first paragraph helps me make my essay easier to write. The same goes with the ending paragraph. I know exactly what to put in the closing paragraph without making it too much! I will also look at the organizational strategies used throughout the papers. I can see how to make my paper flow better, and seem more scholarly. As for the film analysis presentation on the Vietnam war films, it helped so much! At first, our group had no idea how to start our presentation, now we have a very good idea. I thought you would need more movies, and more analyzation to fit the whole class period with information. We now know that you don't need many films, or you don't even need to talk for extended periods of time, just talk for a little while then show a clip! Without all those handouts and examples I would've been lost, but I now know everything I need to to write a great essay and to present a scholarly presentation!
ASHLEY MORK P.6
The paper examples are really helpful because we get to see how other students did their paper and we have something to go off of and look to if we need help. If we have no idea what we are doing and dont know how to start our paper or what to end with we can always look at theirs for help. Also the order in which we put our paragraphs. There is obviously a reason Mr. C picked these specific papers. They are good examples as to what our papers should be like. They also show us what our papers shouldnt be like. These are good papers but im sure they arnt perfect so we can look to them as to what not to include in our paper and how not to order everything and change things up a bit to make our paper just that much better. We can look at Tom's paper and see how much he summerized Spiderman and make sure that we dont do so much because we know thats not what MC is looking for in our papers. He wants more of the why is ______ like that? more of the how? and why? MC's presentation also helped alot because he gave us an idea what our presentations should be like. We got a little taste of how long we have and how much stuff we can include. MC had alot in his presentation and had to talk really fast and couldnt really take the time i thought he needed to explain the movies better. He seemed really rushed which gave our group a good idea of how broad of a catagory to examine with the class and what all to include in our presentation. The handouts also help alot because they ask us questions that we can answer and it gives us something to start our paper with. Also the glossary of terms handout gives us a bunch of words that we can use to answer how and why the camera angle or clothing or soundtrack is like that. I think we should take advantage of all the handouts and MC's presentation because he puts so much time and effort into it and he is trying to help us out a bunch and we should appreciate how much he is helping us out. If we dont use the handouts he is basically wasting his time. The handouts are a huge help if you go through all of them and use them all and take the suggestions they basically tell you everything about what to include in your paper and how to write it.
I like watching you demonstrate, Mr. C., better than reading sample essays. The essays are great and everything, but to be honest, I'm not interested enough in what the people have to say. I hear the same stuff from kids in my grade every day. No disrespect to the sample writers, but I'd rather see and hear about what we're supposed to be looking for in class and in a more visual way. I think the sample presentation you gave was great even though it fizzled at the end. The point still got across to me very well. Now I know that the powerpoint I help make doesn't have to be filled with words and exactly what we're going to be telling the class. Movie clips and class discussion will be much more useful. Also, the three column character chart is a huge help. I am thinking of possibly writing my individual paper on how the characters of Pulp Fiction differentiate but still come together to form an excellent movie. Just like the chart shows, I need to know they're own personality traits, what they make of them, and how all of that contributes to the movie as a whole. Even though everyone has not seen this movie, I'm going to try to stray away from walking the reader through the entire movie. Some examples will have to be used such as certain scenes and quotes, but I'm not trying to write a book for the movie. I'll be using mostly the femenist lens and the Marxist lens for this paper. Mia Wallis will be perfect to look at through the femenist lens. I'll be able to look at her about of authority under Marcellus, but over Vincent. Also, I can look into why it is that the woman has to take the fun too far at night. The Marxist lens will be great for looking at Butch vs. Marcellus and his crew. I'll examine how Vincent treats him at the bar, and also how Marcellus basically insults him up front with the exchange. It will be interesting to see who is received as the protagonist or antagonist in this feud. Overall, using these lenses and seeing the different techniques for analyzing films, as well as seeing examples, will help a lot in the writing of my paper and group presentation.
I think all of the models are amazingly helpful. They give you an example of what exactly you need. You can write your paper and as long as it has the same attributes as the handouts you should be golden. They also really help you know what to look for in your film or films and how to use the lenses you have given us. Your presentation has really helped me and my group in how to set up our format and what we really need. You've shown us that we really don't need to have a lot of words written but just examples showing what we want shown and clips and previews. We really will kind of seem to be unrehearsed but it's actually just going to more come from memory and maybe note cards. You're example really made a point not to just read off of the smart board and to be prepared and scholarly. Also we should be dressed in more than just khakis and a polo to be "dressed for success". I really think that all of your handouts and your presentation, even though we ran out of time, have been the best kind of help we could receive. We don't have to guess what we need to do. We don't need to try and decipher the rubric and guess that way of what the essentials are. You show us what we need and what you expect. I feel totally confident that I and my group will be very successful with both out presentation and our papers. Another thing that your Presentation on Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, and Platoon taught me is not to be too ambitious and try to take on too many movies for too little time. I feel confident that my group will prove successful in our time and the analysis of the up most depth. We are taking three very intriguing, very shocking, very disturbing movies and digging deep into the symbols, the camera angles, and the characters' clothing, dialog, and body language. We want to try to be as Rob Ager as possible for this presentation so that we can try to show the class and yourself as much as possible and try to enlighten you all to the fullest extent. We want you all the leave the classroom discussing what you saw and being smarter individuals than when you walked in.
Austin Sumner
I, personally, liked the model essay Mr. C put on for us aswell as the papers. I think both pieces of work just summarize for us how to create something like that and shows us how much work we must put in to create something similar. First with the presentation, I like how Mr. C had it set up and the clips he showed had a lot of meaning behind them. He did end up rushing at the end but that just shows you how much information you can cover in that ammount of time, and I dont blame him a bit for doing so because I learned from it. He also pointed out parts to the film that fit his title as if it is his thesis for the presentation. I thought this was interesting and I am going to figure out parts in our films that will correspond to our title the same way. My group's topic is on the soundtrack in movies and how they are limiting but riviting. So I think this brilliant technique will work great for our presentation as well. The essays are really helpful to me because their are certain parts to a paper that I struggle with. First being the openning paragraph. But being able to look at these example i get an idea of how their first paragraphs are cleverly connected with their films. I also see how in Mr. C's the main characters are introduced as well as the setting and basically whats going on in the film. Then finally his thesis statement. I really like this one because of how there are so little amount of words but yet, at the same time, it gives him a little over 5 full pages. Its amazing how those words can turn out to be that long of a paper. Clever thesis= clever paper? I think so. I am thankful for these sample papers and presentations because they help us to think harder by giving us a "standard", forcing us to put more work/thought into our paper or presentation.
These model essays are really helpful to me. A big thing i take away from them is structure. I know the structure of an essay and paragraph stuff yah but these are helping me really get the "flow" of my writing down and how to systematically do a paper so it flows good and doesnt ever sound out of context or well hopefully not. Another thing is the people who write them all have their unique style they all have their "funk" for writing the way it flows and just how it sounds i enjoyed that aspect as well. Perspectives! these gave me another creative lens to look through which can only further your knowledge of a subject and enlighten you on many different levels, you know so your not all tunnel visiony. I love how these handouts show us the questions we need to ask ourselves about subjects i mean to be honest if you dont know what questions to ask you wont ever know what answers you need and these handouts are amazing for that i mean honestly. I have a plethora of handouts i have accumulated this year from class and i have been deffering to them about anything i am wondering about it really helps. It helps to slow things down and just give some kind of order to the chaos haha.
I personally love the models you have given us. They give you a goal to write to, surely if i could write a paper like that i could use it in college. These examples inspire us to do better than just an average paper because we know not only that it can be done, but how it can be done. I think one of the ways it will help me the most is how to organize my thoughts. You have spent a lot of time with us on how to think critically, but unless you can organize your thoughts efficiently on paper people will never see what you are trying to say, no matter how brilliant it is. I think the film presentation was equally or even more important. You gave a good balance between film time and discussion that my group will try to mimmick. You have given us all the steps and processes, we just need to insert our own ideas into the formula and crack out our own papers and presentations. As far as lenses go, I think it is crucial to look at Samuel l. Jackson through a marxist lense. Black characters are many times thought of being to poor to make a living right in movies, hence his gangster/hitman role in Pulp Fiction. Even though he is smart, tough, and religous, he is doing the bidding of a mob head for who knows how much money, because he has no choice. Also in the Hurt Locker. You were the one who pointed this out to me but i really like the idea and it has helped men extroidinarilly in my understanding of the movie, that Sgt. Sanbourne was "born for the sand". He is black so that fits the stereotype, he follows the rules because he wants a family, wants a boy to call his own, a wife that will care if he dies, and until he has these things he will not be ready to die, but because of his upbringing, he has no choice but to serve fighting along side the dieing soldiers in our military. I also extremely apreciate the fact that you go out and talk to professors to learn what we have to learn. This ads a relevance to this class that most classes lack. You truly care about preparing us for the next step and i respect and admire that. DONE WITH 2 MINUTES TO SPARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Since I have now taken the time to read all of the model essays, for the Film Deconstruction Unit, they have helped me greatly. While in the Advertisement Analysis Unit, during the first semester of school, I did not care enough about putting as much time and effort, as I easily could have, into my schoolwork; this also meant that I was not exercising the information from the model essays and handouts that I was given to help me write my advertisement analysis paper. Fortunately, something has gotten me more motivated to do my best on all of my assignments this semester (I believe I have been cured of my senioritis.). I have read and reread all of the film deconstruction model essays and handouts; they have been, and will continue to be, very beneficial in the construction of my paper, for which I will analyze the movie The Phantom of the Opera. The model essays will help me to use quotes in a manner that will flow better with the topic I am writing about. Sometimes it is difficult for me to see how and where to use a quote in the papers that I write, so it helps to be able to look at the model essays to see how the past students have utilized quotes from their sources. Another way these model essays help me is by outlining how I should and should not write my film analysis paper. Tragic flaw was the main topic of Casey Strand’s paper, yet she was still able to give a brief summary of what the film Burn After Reading is all about. I like how Casey was able to use her descriptions of the main characters in Burn After Reading to help with her short summary of the film. Most of Tom Eitreim’s paper was an in depth summary of the movie Spiderman. Both of these film deconstruction model essays helped me to see how much of a film summary is too much and how much of a summary is enough for following the guidelines for this assignment. Your team presentation model on Apocalypse Now, Platoon, and Full Metal Jacket helped me to see how our presentations should look. I had thought that we had to have a power point full of information about our movies, but you were able to tell us about the films without using a slideshow. I liked how you took a few quotes from some of the characters in each movie and used them in your presentation. It made the film more relatable when we could read the lines from the movie and see how the men felt at the time. I think you should have gotten a little more to the point though, because you reiterated some of the things you had already said, which took up some of your time and then you did not get to finish your presentation.
btw Vigants, I win lol 1 minute to spare
The papers written by your previous students are all great examples. Some help you learn what not to do like in Tom Eitreim paper. It seemed dry in some spots with a few noticeable spelling errors. Not saying I am perfect, just it is helpful to glance and compare and make sure my paper does not start taking away from the plot of the movie. I noticed to keep remembering to talk about the meaning not the story more often. The other papers like Hansen’s are great examples to use as a reference. Whenever I get writers block, I just try to figure out how their sentences flow together. It is also very helpful at the end of paragraphs; I check how they ended it structurally while also having strong meaning. It seems one thing I need to use more is a thesaurus or dictionary because I can never find the right word to describe an emotion or something scholarly. In order to get the length and depth, I will need to use all my resources available to me and these cleverly solid papers should set me up for an accomplished A.
I thought your presentation was great and showed a lot of the struggles our group will have to try and overcome. You were hurting for time at the end of your presentation and our group is using your template of how you did it. That being said we have seven people that need to talk and have to all be on the same page to have the control and fluency you had. It was a definite eye opener but was well needed or we would have had a disaster. Our presentation is all of the comedy of Adam Sandler and how he acts as an irresponsible child but with the wealth of a father or a strange unusual talent he finishes on top. (Marxist) In Billy Madison, he is a lazy unmotivated idiot and a hot “intelligent” teacher starts showing compassion and love for this moron. (Feminist) These are the point he have to make while trying to be smart and (probably most of all) entertaining. It is going to be an interesting challenge because this is a very specific topic that some people may not find to compelling.
by the way shannon I win. JUST IN TIME! haha
haha nice :)
I think getting these sample essays are a very good thing to use to aid in our essays because they give you ideas on what direction to go when you are stuck in one spot. Also these sample essays give us a basic format to use when writing a five page long essay. Specifically the samples are useful for me because I get stuck on how to start new paragraphs and how to end paragraphs. Also these essays let me know how to put my essay together to make it an A paper. In some of the papers they tell about camera angles, lighting, and music. I will use these aspects when writing my paper to help me chose what is the best way to go about writing about camera angles, lighting, and music. While reading Casey’s essay I got a little confused on the second page while she was summarizing what happens in the movie. I don’t know who the characters are and all their names just got blended together and I didn't know who was who. It was a good idea to have Casey’s as a model because Burn After Reading isn’t a film many people would choose to do. Because not many people would pick this movie no one would be able to copy and part of her essay like some may do if you chose a movie like Superbad or The Hangover. From reading others essays I will have more knowledge what each of my paragraphs should be about. To start I will give the very brief background of the movie. Then I will go into the main characters. With the main characters I will show how their name is forced into who they are. I will also show how each main character plays into different roles such as camera work. From camera angles I will go to lighting and to music. Having a model presentation is also very helpful for groups to know what is the proper things to include into the presentation and approximately how long we should spend on each subject we are talking about. Having the model presentation helped me to understand how much needs to go into the presentation. Having Mr. C doing a sample presentation also helped me to try and figure out what exactly we need to put in our presentation and what is worth putting in our presentation. You showed the most important part of your films and I feel that is going to help us figure out what the most important parts of our films are. I feel that having models are very good to have to provide us with very well written essays and a very well put together sample presentation.
Valerie Beck,p.7
i think these papers help us alot because we get to examine and see how we should write our own paper. they support there opinions with quotations and solid evidence. or maybe even if it isnt solid its there own personal opinion. its written good. each topic has at least 5 sentences. i personally like Erik Hansons paper because he starts with a personal question. When people think of cigarette smoking, what comes to mind? its a wonderful technique to draw your reader in. he also brings in facts in his paper. and different opinions. also he says in his paper the product kills 5.4 billion people per year and after that sentence her supports that with a website. like he thinks that if you dont believe him look it up. i think it really helps when mr.c demistrates how we are supposed to do a presentation. instead of just telling us. and when he deconstructs something it gives us an example of how to, and how much and far it can go. i think that Eitreim really does summarize spiderman to much. he doesnt really deconstruct it has much as he should. he pretty much just tells the story and if youve already seen it then its like watching it again and not really learning much. anyone can tell a story of a movie. its takes work to deconstruct a movie and tell people what they dont know or what theyve never noticed. but i really do think its helpful to have these helpful presentations and modeling essays. and i really appritiate all the help you have given us for this cuz ive learned alot with decontructing. before i even went into this class i didnt even know that you could decontruct a movie like this. i think its a really useful technique because you can look deeper into your favorite movies. and maybe you thought was the point of the movie really wasnt at all.
The model essays and model presentation have helped me out immensely. The papers help me because they give something to look at to help me write my essay. It also helps me look at what not to do in my essay. Like with Eitreim's almost full storyline on Spider Man, I have learned that i don't want to do that in my paper. When giving my description of the movie, all i want to do is give the reader the basic back ground and storyline of the movie. Not every detail like Eitriem sort of does in his paper. I just want the reader to be able to have a summary of the movie so that he/she is not completely confused while they read my essay. The essay that Mr. C wrote on We Own the Night has helped me alot too. It has helped me to analyze the characters and actors that played. Like why the director chose that actor to play that character. Lee Marvin portrays a lead figure expertly with his appearance and demeanor. The essays have also helped me in trying to find a book source. If these writers were able to get something out of the sources they used, i might be able to use them as well in my paper.
Your model essay has helped me as well. It has given my group and I with ideas on how to present our own presentations. We are going to model your presentation by talking about the directors and their backgrounds, and other films they have directed. Also, we are going to talk about the awards that the directors have won throughout the years. Your presentation also helped us to decide which scenes that we should show in our presentations. Like we don't want to just pick scenes that are entertaining to us, we want to pick scenes that can be analyzed and talked about thoroughly. The one thing i have a feeling we are going to have trouble on is filling the whole fifty minutes. Like i'm not quite sure what we can all talk about with War of the Worlds and District 9 but im sure we will find things we can analyze more in depth and can talk about more.
I'm not sure how i'm going to use one of the lenses in my paper. I'm hoping that the hand out you are putting together will be able to help me. I don't think i could use a Feminist lense in my movie or at least how to use it. I could maybe use the Freudian lense in my film and talk about the ids of the characters.
Shoemaker_5
(Late) Blog by Justin Gabbert
Well I kind forgot about this blog task but I’m still hoping for some credit. Anyways I thought the presentation was very informative. It wasn't bad for the time that was given. At times it was uninteresting and boring but at other times it was exciting. I think one of the mistakes you did Mr. Christensen is that you made the presentation to close to yourself. You kept mentioning how this scene or that scene made you always remember, but for some other students it didn't affect them as much. I personally lost some interest because the PowerPoint seemed so focused on how the movie affected you and not the viewer. I’m not saying that your life isn't interesting I’m just saying that the point was meant to be for the viewers. I did like the topic though of your presentation. Vietnam is a war that many few people know about probably because we lost. Your presentation helped to give me an outline for my group PowerPoint. I picked three movies but instead of picking my own scenes I decided to go with the scenes the director chose. The function of a trailer is to relate to the viewer and get them interested. With these trailers i will be able to have an easier time keeping the attention of the class. I enjoyed your presentation very much and was glad to be able to at least get a rough visual of a movie presentation. Thank you for your intelligence and sorry I was late for this blog task...you know we're busy people.
Hello. And Bye.
i like having handouts like eitrems and strands and yours because it shows us how to type it all. it gives us something to base ours on as in form and how to type and how to use sources. without these i would have no idea how to write a scholarly paper. these papers do have some spots where they stray from the meaning of either the movie or the paper and seeing these things in front of me help me know that i cant do that, i have to stay on topic of the movie and also focus on the character backgrounds and different set ups and angles in the movies that the camera men use. the handouts with all the terms and different shot types helps very much in this because it lets you know how the movie was made and why it was made, not just that it was made for pure enjoyment. Mr. C, your paper especially helps because you know exactly what to do for an A paper and if we follow the formula, or at least try, we can have a high graded paper too, and it helps to have that confidence in knowing we have everything we need at our disposal for a good paper. in the example papers we got, they let us know we should always keep these terms you gave us in mind. this paper should almost be a script with the most detail we've ever seen. it should make people know exactly what the movie is and how it looks when people read it, they should be able to picture it in their head. all the shot types, like over the shoulder, or close up, they really help to get you into the mood that the character is in or what the character see's and this is usually exactly what the director or creator of the movie wants. movies like spiderman or burn after reading, they are there to entertain people who cant look at them and analyze them, but for people who can and do analyze them, they are very intricate and have a lot of things in them like foreshadowing and flashbacks and all that stuff.
Post a Comment