WRITING for REAL:
Rhetorics of the Service-Learning Contact Zone

Contextual and Rhetorical Analysis of Film as Text

Films, Presenters, and Presentation Dates

For further reference, please see Carolyn's Extra-Special Power Point Presentation on Oral (and PowerPoint) Presentations Abrams, Nathan, Ian Bell, and Juan Udris. Studying Film. London: Arnold Press, 2001. I have placed this book on print reserve at Meyer Library for this class. Chapter 6: "Film as Text: The Language of Film" and the Glossary at the end of the book might be of particular use to you in planning your presentation.

The Assignment

Early in the quarter, you will be paired and asked to give a 10- to 12-minute oral analysis of one of the key "readings" scheduled for discussion in class -- in this case, one of the five films on our syllabus.

Plan to end your presentation by posing to the class two or three questions related to the film's historical, social, political, or cultural context; its subject matter or themes; its structure or style; or its relevance or impact on us as viewers. Your questions should comple us, your audience, to participate in a lively class discussion of the film.

These reading presentations will be videotaped, and in class on May 1, Doree Allen (doree.allen@stanford.edu), Director of the Speaking Center at the Center for Teaching and Learning, and Jennifer Hennings (inksalot@stanford.edu), the Oral Communications Consultant (OCC) assigned to our class, will join us for a friendly, collective, and constructive critique of our presentations. These reading presentations will not be graded; rather, they are intended to provide you with experience that will boost your skills, confidence, and performance in the Community Speaking Project. They will also serve as focal points of our discussions of these films in class.

The Technology

Although it is not required, you may find it useful to use a simple PowerPoint presentation format to help you organize and present your points and pose your questions to the class. If you use PowerPoint, you can

€ bring your presentation to class on a floppy disk or CD on the day of your presentation;

€ upload your presentation to your Leland space; or

€ email your presentation via attachment to yourself to open in the classroom.

If you choose not use PowerPoint, consider what other multimedia might help you organize and present your points: for example. overhead transparencies? the white board? handouts?

Collaboration

This is a collaborative presentation: partners should share equally in generating ideas, conducting any research that proves necessary, designing and constructing the presentation, and delivering it.

The Analysis

In the presentation, focus on a contextual and rhetorical analysis of the film that you are presenting. You might consider the questions boxed below.

However, in this brief presentation, you need not address all of these questions; in fact, you won't have time to. Rather, focus on what you believe are the most pertinent considerations, depending on your judgment, and link these considerations in your whole presentation. Your presentation, then, should have a thesis -- that is, you should be able to relate the specific points you make in your presentation in one fundamental conclusion.

Your presentation itself should be a kind of argument. I don't mean that it is an argument in any aggressive or defensive sense, but it is a persuasive analysis of the text, meant to convince your audience (those of us in the class, who have viewed the same film that you have) that your particular reading of, or angle on, the text is sensitive, logical, and insightful.

Questions to Consider for a Contextual and Rhetorical Analysis of a Film € Consider the context of the film. How crucial and in what ways are historical, social, political, or cultural contexts important to our understnading of the film? € What do you know about the people involved in making this film -- director? producer? cast? Is knowing the background or other projects of any of these people relevant to an understanding of the film? € Who do you think the film's primary audience is? How wide or narrow is this audience? € To what extent can you relate to the film? Does it seem real, distant, or far-fetched to you? To what extent does this matter? € What is the filmmaker's central point or argument? What is the filmmaker's purpose, related to audience? What impact does s/he wish to achieve? € Are audiences likely to view the film differently today that they were at the time of the film's release? Is the film currently relevant? If so -- or if not -- why, and in what respects? € Can you classify the genre of the film? In terms of subject matter or style, in what film category might you place it? What other films might you associate with it in genre? € Can you characterize the rhetoric of the film? In written text, rhetoric refers to how a text is structured and styled in order to make a certain argument or achieve a particular impact. In film, rhetoric amounts to much the same thing, although some of the language -- or tools -- of film are different from those of written texts. For example, in film, structure and style might be revealed in narrative continuity or discontinuity, in camera shots and angles, in themes of light and color, in sound track. How do these sorts of considerations of structure and style affect the film's impact on the viewer? € Consider especially the opening and closing scenes of the film. How do these scenes "fit"? Taken together, how do they emphasize, consolodate, or symbolize to the film's point? How do they help accomplish the filmmaker's purpose?