Movie Filmography and Discussion Assignments Revised 5/17/11

This assignment counts for 10% of your final grade. You will be assigned (in teams of 2) to prepare a Film Preview Sheet for the next film we will be watching in class. (I will give you a model of these for the first film we watch together.) At a minimum, these sheets should include
 

• Film production information (director, producer, studio, principal actors, date of release, IMDB links—the info you would need for a full MLA citation of the film and the DVD or VHS release)
• Names of major characters & the actors who play them
• Brief synopsis
• Summary of major critical responses to the film--look for reviews by respected publications or reviewers.
• Link to online script or film information site (if such exists--try IMDB or Drew's Script-o-Rama for possible links, and try Googling...)
• References to at least two scholarly discussions of the film outside what we are reading for class that you think would help people who might write about this film
• Preview questions for the film (three or four major questions you think people should keep in mind as they watch the film)
• Other useful information about the film
   

You must e-mail the preview to the class before class meets by 3:30 PM on the day assigned. (We will circulate these by e-mail because it will keep the links “live” and save people from retyping long URLs to retrieve material.)

Then, after we watch the film, each team will be responsible for leading a 20 minute discussion of the film and its connection to literature [i.e., the questions should not be along the lines of “Who is hotter, Angelina Jolie or Keira Knightley?”]. You should plan this discussion, starting with your thought questions from the filmography, and think of ways to get us involved in the discussion. If you wish, you may show clips from the movie to help stimulate the discussion, but there is a maximum of 10 minutes of clips—we are supposed to be talking, not re-watching the movie. This may take place on the day we see the movie or on the next class day, depending on the revised class schedule, so please be ready to go on the day your filmography is due!

The grade for the filmography will be 30% for the quality of the filmography (thoroughness, accuracy, usefulness of sources); 30% for the quality of thought questions; and 40% for the quality of the discussion you lead. So concentrate on careful, thoughtful, reflective work here--it shouldn't take long to execute the assignment, but don't just skim over it!