Reel American History - For Students

Make a list of important scenes in your film (you have your scene log as reminder).
Choose one that you think would be best to analyze for the purposes of our project.
What is the key scene in the film given the purpose of our project?
Some criteria for choice:

A scene that is significant for the way it deals with history (recreation of fact, invention of fiction, compression of events, indicative of agenda, etc.)
One that is significant for the director's technique, one that reviewers and critics focus on, one memorable to general viewers, and so forth

What to write about? Our focus is on the way history is represented in film. Your essay should surely and clearly relate to that main subject.
Some more specific questions to get you thinking:
- How does this scene relate to the overall theme or purpose of the film in regard to the depiction of history?
- What is the specific purpose/goal of this individual scene?
- What techniques/means do the director and actors use to accomplish that purpose?
- What kind of audience response does the director/writer want?
- How well does the scene work, both intrinsically and in the overall movement of the film?
- How does the scene relate to other scenes in your film and perhaps to scenes in other films?
- Why is this scene a good one to focus on for students of the relationship between film and history?
You may and should incorporate material from your sources, using proper MLA format, but your fresh, creative eye and mind on the material is really what you want to apply.
You are an "analyzer" here. Show how a text "works," moves, functions -- and why. Look "down" into a specific scene. Look "into" a specific piece of the film. What's going on there and why?
Again, remember, you are an "analyzer" not a "recorder" or "summarizer" or "paraphraser."
Consider your scene as a whole that has a beginning and an end, as a unit that can in a sense be lifted for discussion purposes from the entire film like one could study an organ of the body.
Consider that the scene has a specific purpose to carry out in the larger film, has a specific function in achieving the purpose of the film, like an organ would have in the functioning of the body: what is the purpose of the scene? what role does it play in the film as a whole?
Consider that the purpose or function of the scene may have as much to do with creating a feeling or an emotion in the audience as it does with communicating fact or meaning.
Assume that the scene is deliberately and consciously crafted to achieve that purpose, that function.
Assume that the film-makers had options about how to craft the scene and that they weighed choices in order to achieve the best result.
Consider "the shot." Where is the camera placed? Does it move? What does it show? How about lighting? sound?
Assume that conscious decisions were made to achieve the final product.
Now, do a "close reading" of your scene. To continue the body metaphor, "anatomize" the scene (or "autopsy" it)!
What is the inner dynamic you see? Show the inner workings. Show how the parts of the scene contribute to the whole. Show how fact is communicated, how feeling is aroused. What techniques do you see? What is the structure of the scene? How does the scene move from beginning to end?
Watch out for pitfalls in this assignment: Make sure you are focusing on technique and not just on meaning or plot. And avoid the common tendency just to simply begin at the beginning of the scene and write to the end (first this happens, then this, then this, the scene ends). It's best to state what you see as the purpose of the scene up front, then to organize the body of the essay in some way around what you see as the important techniques rather than simply following a mechanical chronology of the scene.
The essay should normally be approx 1000-1500 words.
The scene analysis can be incorporated into the later, longer paper if you desire.
Title your essay with a bit of flair (not just "My Scene Essay"). Be descriptive. Catch attention.
Make sure that you clearly identify the scene on which you focus (you might use or paraphrase the title you give it in the scene log), and give the time mark the first time you mention it, as well as other times when you need a "footnote" type reference.
For the scene analysis and issue essay we will want to think about what adjustments we need to make in both structure and form when we write essays for the web as opposed to writing on paper:

"Chunk": this will not apply so much to short papers like the scene analysis; but reading long texts on the web is enormously improved if you have a clear outline and are able to break your essay into subsections with titles; so, especially for the issue essay you will do, think of writing in "chunks"
Length of paragraphs; scrolling while reading is still awk for most of us; try not to go longer than about 250 words
Number paragraphs [place the number within brackets at the margin at the beginning of the paragraph -- indent after the bracketed number]: unless paragraphs are numbered or some other system is used, it is very hard to direct a reader to a specific spot in an online essay; thus, number your paragraphs so that you and others can cite parts of your work (like footnotes in a print text)