Instruction and requirements are attached, please check. Reply to me with the pages needed and movie selection for screening auto-message, thank you!

(continued)

Jan. 28, 2020
Engl 367/467—Intro to Film • Spadoni

Assignment: Scene analysis essay
Length: 5 pages (stick to this guideline, and do not go onto a 7th page)
Due: March 19—hard copies at the start of class
Who: Undergrad and grad students

These four films are (or soon will be) on 3-hour library-only reserve in KSL:

Actress (Robert Greene, US, 2014)
The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, US, 1962)
Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, IL/FR/DE/US/FI/CH/BE/AU, 2008)
The Killing (Stanley Kubrick, US, 1956)

Part of this assignment is to watch all four films before March 3. I may give a quiz on or any day
after this date to make sure you’ve watched them all. The reason for this is that the films you find
the most exciting won’t necessarily be the safest picks or ones you would ever predict.

Pick a film. Select a sequence and write an analysis of it. By “sequence” I mean a series of
consecutive shots, not a shot here and there. It could be, for example, a scene, an excerpt of a scene,
or a sequence that straddles the end of one scene and the start of the next. Shoot for roughly two-
and-a-half to four minutes of film. Shorter is okay. Avoid picking too long a sequence or you’ll risk
including too much to analyze in a paper this short. What you select will depend on what interests
you and what you want to do with it.

Use terms and ideas we’ve learned in the course, but avoid turning your essay into a list of
identifications of this or that technique. Organizing everything will be your thesis and argument—
that is, what you want to say and how you want to say it.

Advice for coming up with a thesis and argument: Watch your film, taking notes all the way
through. Note the sequences you find interesting. Pick a sequence you’d like to write about. (It’s
fine if you don’t yet know why, but you just find the sequence fascinating, intense, disturbing,
funny, sad, etc.) Watch the sequence several times. Keep taking notes. Patterns in your thinking and
observations will start to emerge. That is, you’ll start to get an idea of what you want to say and
how you want to say it. Lightning can strike any time—now, or not until after you’ve started
outlining or even writing (common even for experienced writers). In an outline, rough out the order
you want to make your points in—where to talk about this or that element or moment, where to
make a claim or ask a question, what to lead in with, what to save for last. At some point, watch the
whole film again, or skip around and revisit scenes in light of what’s starting to cook in your notes.
Hint 1: If you’re having fun, it’s probably a good sign. Hint 2: If you start this assignment too close
to the due date, you probably won’t have any fun.

The first time you mention your sequence, indicate the precise start and end times on the DVD copy
in the library, not another version of the film. (Don’t watch your film on the Internet or, Lord save
us, a phone. Don’t use VLC to get times because they won’t be accurate.) For example, near the
start of the essay:

In the sequence in which Beatrice finds the passport [21:15-23:36], several…

Note the format of the code. If you’re using a viewing station in the Freedman Center, ask for a
remote so you can get start and end times and do other things like pause the image.

Don’t incorporate cue times into sentences like they’re words. Not — “The shot starting at 41:23
marks the end of…” — but — “The next shot [41:23] marks the end of…”

Keep the focus squarely on your sequence, but consider how the sequence fits into the larger film.
Good places to do this are in your introduction and conclusion.

More points:

• Don’t go on the Internet for hints and inspiration to help get you started. In a recent
semester, three students, who did not take any actual phrases or sentences from another
source, got into trouble for plagiarism. Let me restate: Avoid the Internet altogether. (See
the syllabus on the serious consequences of plagiarism.) Be advised that a careful and
thoughtful essay that’s wholly a student’s own tends to look totally different than one
that, however carefully and minimally, steals from another source.

• Don’t listen to DVD commentaries, which cause plagiarism issues with notorious ease. Do

no outside research for this essay. Don’t quote the bible, Shakespeare, or any other source—
including our textbook. Do not include footnotes or a bibliography.

• Assume your reader has seen the film and avoid filling up space with plot summary.

• Avoid statements of author intention and evaluation.

• Unstapled essays, and essays sent as email attachments, will be returned ungraded.

• Follow the Checklist for Essay Writers (handed out with this assignment and on Canvas

under “course information”) to avoid losing credit. Follow the instructions in the box at the
top of this Checklist to make a template file you can use for all written work in this class.
See “Common Problems in Student Essays” (handed out and on Canvas under “course
information”), which describes most of the problems I see in student essays.

• Especially review, on the Checklist, “How do I know I’ve revised enough?”

• For your essay to be marked on time, I need it at the start of class on the due date,

when I collect it.

• Keep the electronic copy of your essay. If I ask you to email it (not a PDF) to me and

you can’t, I’ll assume you have altered the formatting to meet the page minimum. Be
aware that if the file is different than the printout submitted, your grade will be
lowered more than if it had just been too short in the first place.

• I’m happy to meet with you to discuss your ideas and questions. Get in touch to schedule an

appointment well ahead of the due date.

Advice: Read this assignment and the Checklist and Common Problems documents. Mark them up.
Use the Checklist, page one, to take care of many formatting requirements up front. Then set these
documents aside and make the assignment your own. When you have a solid draft, use these
documents as checklists to help you fine tune and otherwise improve your work and to guide the
revision process.

Don’t keep your film out longer than the loan period. If this happens close to the due date, you’ll
be preventing other students from finishing their essays, and I will find out from the Library who
has the film and lower your essay grade one or more grades depending on how long it is kept
overdue.

Spadoni • revised Jan. 2020

—continued—

Checklist for Essay Writers

PART 1. FORMATTING

Follow these steps now to save yourself headaches later and avoid losing credit

Title a word processor file “film-template” or something. Follow the instructions in this Formatting section. For an
essay title, type “[essay title]”. For paragraph text, type a sentence and copy and paste it repeatedly until you have a
paragraph. Do the same to make another paragraph, and another, until you’re onto your second page. Do this to
make sure MS Word isn’t adding extra space between paragraphs (see below) and that you have no first page header
and the correct second page header (see below). When it’s time to write your essay, open this template file and save
it to a new name. Keep the template file for your next essay (and any future course you take with me).

Some formatting instructions below are to ensure students are meeting the same length requirement and that no
formatting deviations are disguising this fact. If I ask you to email me the word-processor copy of your essay and it
shows deviations, you will lose more credit than if you had just handed in a paper under the page minimum. If you
email me a file that is not identical to the essay you handed in, you will lose even more credit.

1. Format the top of your essay like this. To get the above-and-below spacing for your title as below, enter a hard return above and

below your title, then (in your double-spaced document) make these above-and-below lines single space.

Angelo Marconi

Engl 367—Intro to Film

Prof. Spadoni

May 24, 2020

[Center essay title; 12 pt font; no boldface, underlining, or brackets]

Essay text starts here. Make sure no more space precedes and

follows your essay title than you see above. ….

2. Last name and page number in the top-right corner of the second and subsequent pages (not the first page). Don’t hand write this

information on the tops of your pages.

Marconi 6

3. Black ink. Standard white paper. Single sided.
4. Times, Times Roman, or Times New Roman typeface (not Cambria), 12 point—including essay title. Don’t change typeface or

font size to increase page length.
5. Double space your work. Don’t alter line spacing to increase page length.
6. Standard margins (1 inch top and bottom, 1 or 1.25 inch left and right). Don’t adjust margins to increase page length.
7. One space (not two) between sentences.
8. No extra space between paragraphs. MS Word likes to insert extra space. Don’t leave figuring out how to tell it not to for the last

minute.
9. Italicize film titles—and at the first mention, follow title with the director and year in parentheses, like this: In an early scene in

Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), a character tries to… Italicize book titles; essay titles are not italicized and go in double quotes.
10. Staple pages, top-left corner. Unstapled essays will be returned ungraded.
11. You’ll lose points for terrible printout quality, because you shouldn’t be finishing your essay and printing it at the last second.

Checklist for Essay Writers • Spadoni • 2

PART 2. WRITING
Advice for this section: Read it through, marking it up, then set it aside and write your essay. (Don’t let this
document or anything else spoil the fun of writing your essay.) When you have a first draft (well ahead of the due date
or none of this works), use these instructions, and the formatting points above, as a checklist.

12. Your essay title should provide an idea or hint of your thesis. (See below on theses.) Avoid titles that signal not what your thesis is

but what the assignment is. (A bad title would be “Motifs in The Matrix”) If your essay focuses on one film, incorporate the film’s
title into your essay title. (A bad title for an essay on The Matrix would be “Keanu Kicks High”)

13. Assume your reader has seen the film. No need to fill up space summarizing the plot. Include only as much plot description as is
necessary to help the reader grasp and appreciate your analysis.

14. Have a thesis and state it early, typically the bottom of your first paragraph. A thesis statement articulates your essay’s main claim,
your unique point of view, your take on the topic on which you’re writing.

15. Avoid evaluation, especially in thesis statements. “Star Wars is a masterpiece” is not a good thesis statement (and such a sentence
should appear nowhere in your essay). Neither is “Motifs in Star Wars bind the film together in interesting ways,” since that claim
could be made about every film ever made. Avoid calling something “interesting” and instead articulate why it is so.

16. Avoid statements of author intention, like: “This shot shows that Jenkins wants viewers to suspect that…”; and “Varda moves the
camera closer until it frames…” Consider not what the author is doing but what the film is doing. Focus not on author intentions
but textual functions and effects.

17. Your essay should have an argument with a structure that flows from and supports your thesis. This isn’t easy. Even experienced
writers often don’t figure out what they’re doing until deep into their first draft—which is why it’s crucial to revise your work
(more on revising below). Sketching an outline of your argument and its parts before drafting is a good way to rough out an
effective essay design. (Essays that weren’t outlined first tend to read like it.) Remember that you can help keep your reader
oriented by clearly indicating transitions within your paper. I am happy to meet with you to discuss this.

18. Revise your work. A good way to spot problems is to read your essay aloud. If you stumble or get lost in a sentence, chances are
your reader will, too. Look for grammar and readability issues. Is the essay jargony? Is it saying things in a complicated way that
could be said in a clear and simple one? Is it redundant? Look for awkward passages, claims that need further explanation or
support, missed chances to make your argument richer, and other problems that characterize every first draft. Never hand in an
essay you haven’t read as a hard copy first. Editing and writing at a computer is fine for early drafts and last minute tweaks, but in
many ways you have not read your essay until you have read a hard copy. After a certain point, you simply won’t see problems
that are right in front of you if you’re working on a screen. (A fabulous short book that will help you become a better writer is
Williams and Bizup, Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace.)
How do I know I’ve revised enough? You’ll know when you read a printout and make zero red marks on it—but
here’s a guideline if you’re not used to bringing this kind of attention and care to your writing: Print, mark up, and input
changes a minimum of five times before handing the essay in. Note that sometimes fixing something involves not
fiddling with what you wrote but taking a pad of paper and writing a sentence or paragraph clean—a great thing to do,
and it almost certainly will make necessary more printing, marking, inputting, and so on. Print at least five times. If you
don’t do this, you still might get an A, but you’ll leave the joys of revision largely undiscovered, and you’ll never know
what you were capable of with this assignment.

19. Beware DVD commentaries and the Internet! Unless the assignment is to write a research paper (and even then you need to be

careful), avoid Googling around and reading what people have said about your film. Avoid DVD commentary tracks. It’s
incredibly easy to let phrases and ideas from these sources creep into your work—and that’s plagiarism. DVD commentaries in
particular can really kill the joy of discovering a film for yourself.
To repeat: Do not go on the Internet for hints and inspiration to help get you started. In a recent semester, I
gave Fs to three students who did this and who incorporated into their essays ideas (but no phrases) that were not
their own. Do not plagiarize. Avoid the Internet altogether. I am guessing you would not like to go before an Academic
Integrity Board and have to explain what happened.
Be aware that a careful and thoughtful essay that is wholly a student’s own tends to look totally different than one
that carries, however faintly, the stink of plagiarism.

20. Turn in an essay that has not been rewritten by your parents, friends or anyone else. Turn in your work. There are permissible

ways to get help with an essay. See the syllabus and/or talk to me.
21. When quoting a source, give a page number: Dunlop notes that “films are like dreams” (33). Note where the period, close quote,

and parentheses are in relation to each other. Use double, not single, quotation marks. When you quote, quote exactly.
22. When paraphrasing a source, give a page number. Example: Smith acknowledges that there are exceptions (286-87). If you’re

paraphrasing so closely that you’re using words and phrases the author uses, rephrase or quote instead.
23. If you refer to material not on the course reading list (and follow the assignment regarding whether this is permitted), include a

bibliography. For formatting guidelines, see the current Chicago Manual of Style.
24. Meet the minimum page length. A paper that makes it three quarters of the way down the seventh page is 6.75 pages long and not

long enough for an assignment that calls for a 7-8 page paper.
25. Spell check

Feel free to schedule a meeting with me to talk about your essay and these guidelines.