Shot by Shot Film Clip Analysis

I will ask you to choose a clip from The Ring (dir. Gore Verbinksi, 2002) , The Mothman Prophecies (dir. Mark, Pellington, 2002) , or FearDotCom (dir. William Malone, 2002) between approximately thirty and one hundred and twenty seconds to analyze. You want to chose a clip that you is long enough to form a significant unit and short enough to read closely.

A few notes: when first mentioning a film, give the director and year of releases in parentheses as above. Also, refer to characters by name with the correct spelling and the actor's name in parantheses--as in Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts)--when you first mention them. For this and other information, go to the internet movie database at www.imdb.com.

Email me your film clip analysis to [email protected]. Please put your name in your word document title as wel as in the sbuject heading of yur message. If possible, send your document as an attachment in microsoft word. I can also read wordperfect documents. If you don't know how to send an attachment, ask me and I'll show you how to do so. If your email program doesn't allow you to send attachments or the affached file is too large to send, you can copy your paper into an email or you can copy it onto a disc and turn in the file on the disc to me in class.

The exercise is in three parts. Please do all three parts separately (don't mix up descriptions of scenes with analysis), read the assignment carefully and closely. All three parts must be completed for you to receive credit. For examples of the final product, click here.

Part One.

Write your name on your paper. Choose a film clip from one of the films, name the film, and describe the clip briefly (a few sentences). Also, give the total length of the clip and the total number of shots. If possible use a DVD and give the time your clip begins and the time it ends. On your DVD player, you'll see that the chapter number, hour, minutes, and seconds. It looks like 0 0:00:00 at the beginning.

Part Two.

Give the following information ABOUT EACH SHOT.

1. Take a still of each shot and insert it into your text. (We will spend part of a class in which you will learn how to do this. See below.)

2. For each shot, do the following:

Describe in detail who and / or what is in the shot (don't just give the name of the shot--as in long shot, close up, etc).

Give the length of each shot in seconds, camera angle, lighting, focus (in? out? deep?), and state whether the camera moves (if so, in what direction or directions and how quickly) or remains stationary.

Describe special effects, if any.

Descibe film stock. Black and white ? color? Change from one to the other?

Describe Sound track? (silent, music, ambient noise, etc)

Part Three.

Give a critical analysis (close reading) of your film clip.

Note: All parts of the final project must be completed for you and turned in on time to receive credit. All parts of the course must be completed and turned in on time to pass the course.

We'll meet in the IMAGE lab (on the fourth floor of Rolfs hall in room 410) and you'll get a tutorial there on imovie and image capturing from DVDs. Read the imovie pages in advance at http://www.image.ufl.edu/help/imovie/. See also the Bryn Mawr webpages on Writing with Film.