Jaws/Creating a Viewing Guide

Creating your own viewing guide: CRAFTING QUESTIONS

• After you complete your note taking, you are ready to create a viewing guide. viewing guide questions point to and ask about specific scenes, characters, camerawork, music, editing, lighting, etc. These are not plot questions! Appropriate questions to ask are questions like "why did the director make this choice?" and "what effect does this choice have on the viewer?"
• For Jaws, let's do this together.

Your Final: Choose your own film to bring in, watch it, take notes, and then create your own viewing guide. Look and study the viewing guides I have created and given you the past quarter—they are a great model.

• Use charts, fill-ins, questions, scene breakdowns, etc.
• Ask questions that guide someone to break down scenes or the film
• Ask questions that refer to why a director made a certain choice or how it affects the audience
• Address a variety of film concepts-Focus on lighting, editing, camera angles, sound, camera movement, etc. USE YOUR FILM TERMS.

Fun/other stuff concerning Jaws:

• Great analysis of Jaws from Empire Magazine
• What if Jaws was a romance?
• Jaws re-enacted by bunnies...in 30 seconds

Jaws

For this film, we will be doing things a bit differently. At this point in the quarter, you should be more acquainted with looking at a film critically, and noticing certain things that a director does to affect the viewer. The aim of a viewing guide is to force the viewer to look critically and thoughtfully at what is on the screen.

The first part of your final is to create your own viewing guide. We will watch Jaws and use that film as a model of exactly how to create your own viewing guide--

First step: TAKE NOTES
What do you take notes on? Take notes on things you notice: mise en scene (composition), music, camera movement, editing, colors used, etc. I find it best to take notes by first noting what the scene is, then what it is I notice, and then finally (after viewing the film and re-watching the scenes) why I noticed it/what I think it means (what the director’s point is).

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

A fun take on the noir genre. What elements of noir are present?

Memento/Noir Assessment

A great example of a "neo-noir" that has all the essential elements of the genre. Confusing (to  say the least), but here is a handy timeline of the film.

Your assessment for our unit on film noir is to write two paragraphs on the noir elements in either LA Confidential or Memento, comparing either film with Double Indemnity. Look at the assignment.

Film Noir

Film Noir was born out of the post-war disillusionment of World War II, and involves hard-boiled detectives, femme fatales, and gritty, urban settings. Here are some notes.

In this unit, we will watch two films: Billy Wilder's classic Double Indemnity, and then Curtis Hanson's LA Confidential, which is a terrific example of how the genre has evolved for contemporary audiences.

We will compare the two films using this sheet. In the meantime, check out this article on defining the genre, as well as a montage of film noir images to get you into the mindset of the genre.