INTRODUCTION TO FILM ANALYSIS
Class: Tuesday 11.45-13.15 room 2.07
Office hours: Thursday 13-15 room 4.15
Assessment: class participation (more than two absences will lower your grade); 3 x 500 word-long analytical pieces
You cannot use your phones in the class unless stated otherwise
Week 1 Introduction, screening Rosemary’s Baby (1969)
Week 2 screening Rosemary’s Baby (1969)
Homework: Homework: read Ch. 2 on mise-en-scene from Understanding Movies 9th Edition
Week 3 no class
Week 4 Mise-en-scene; analysis of Rosemary’s Baby
Assignment 1: write a 500 word-long analytical note using mise-en-scene
Homework: read 1) fragment on Auteur theory film studies introductionand 2) collaborative theory by William Goldman
Week 5 Auteur theory; Polański’s Rosemary’s Baby; Collaborative theory: Rosemary’s Baby
Assignment 2: write a 500 word-long analytical note using either collaborative/auteur theory
Week 6 Genre; Rosemary’s Baby
Homework: watch a documentary about making Rosemary’s Baby
Week 7 Genre; Rosemary’s Baby, Star studies
Homework: read a fragment provided on stars Star Studies
Week 8 Star system
The World’s Highest-paid actors 2017
Homework: 1) watch Vertigo (1958); 2) read Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure
Week 9 Hollywood; male gaze, to-be-looked-at-ness; ideology; historical context
Homework: 1) Ideology – definition; 2) Zizek’s text pp. 320-325; 3) re-watch Vertigo (1958); 4) re-read Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure
Week 10 Hollywood; male gaze, to-be-looked-at-ness; ideology; Zizek;
watch: 1) Zizek on ideology; Zizek on ideology 2;
Assignment 3: write a 500 word-long analytical note using star studies theory, genre or/and discuss ideology (you have two weeks for that – deadline Tuesday Week 11)
Week 11 LECTURE ON WITCHCRAFT
Homework: 1) Introduction from Henry Jenkins’s Convergence Culture convergence-culture; 2) read Introduction from Andrew Keen’s Cult of the Amateur andrew_keen_the_cult_of_the_amateur_how_todaysbookfi-org; 3) read Tryon’s Chapter “Hollywood Remixed” from Reinventing Cinema
Week 12 Zizek’s Hollywood examples; paratexts analysis; DVDs, posters –Rosemary’s Baby; participatory culture; audience created paratexts – Rosemary’s Baby; Adaptation theory: remade, mashed-up, parodied, updated, E-FILMS
Homework: 1) read “Cult Cinema: a critical symposium”, 2)”What’s cult got to do with it”; 3) “Cult film or cinephilia” in Cineaste, Winter 2008, Vol. 34 Issue 1 (in electronic library UŁ)
Week 13 Cult film: Rosemary’s Baby
Homework: 1) watch Aranofsky’s Mother! (2017); 2) read Carroll’s “The Future of Allusion” here
Week 14 Cinematic allusion discussion, RB vs Mother!
- Who is the writer of the film? Has the screenplay been adapted from another work? (adaptation)
- Who is the director? (auteur studies)
- Who produced it? (independent or Hollywood, ideology)
- Who’s the target audience?
- What do promotional materials say about the film?
- Is the film part of any larger movement?
- When was the film made? (historical/political/cultural perspective)
- What genre/s is it? (iconography)
- How important is casting? (star studies)
- Formal qualities: mise-en-scene, soundtrack, colour, narrative, narration, lighting key (look for patterns, repetitions, recurring motifs, linear story, chronological order, open-ended, ambiguity, omniscient narration vs restricted narration)
- Which scenes are crucial for your analysis and support your argument? Exposition? Climax?
