Film Studies planning & evaluation

Film Studies unit final submission planning.

For my final piece for this unit, I was unsure what theory to focus on, so decided to note down potential ideas of films I could analyse relating to each theory. I was advised that the male gaze theory was more visual so would be easier to analyse the mise en scene and other visual elements. However I decided that the films I thought were relevant to the Lacan theory were films that I felt I could write a lot more about as they are films I enjoy, including American Animals, which is one of my favourite movies.

After having chosen to focus on Lacan's theory, I chose 4 final films to focus on: American Animals, The Talented Mr Ripley, The Social Network, and The Bling Ring. However after rewatching the films I decided that The Social Network was less relevant to the theory so chose to use the other 3 to study. I took notes whilst watching the films to help give me ideas when it came to analysing them, shown in my mind maps below.

Evaluation

Originally, for the final submission for this unit I wanted to do a video essay, as I did a written essay for the Contextual Studies unit and felt that a video essay would be a more effective technique when visually analysing the films. However, when it came to editing my video, I realised that I didn’t know how to download the movies to put them in Premiere Pro. I had watched the movies on streaming sites such as Netflix and Prime Video, but these websites of course do not allow screen recording. American Animals is particular is quite an independent film, so there are not many clips available on YouTube, meaning I was stuck at this point with how to get the footage in order to make the video essay. Another issue was that I simply did not leave myself enough time for the work. I subsequently found out that you can convert the films into mp4 files if you have access to them on DVD, however it was too late for me to do this in time for the deadline. This meant I had to make the choice to change to a written essay, which I was reluctant to do, but it was unrealistic that I would be able to finish a video essay before the deadline. 

In terms of planning, I think I did well by taking lots of notes whilst watching the movies, which meant I had lots of ideas to pull from to tie my essay together. I also made note of the time stamps of specific scenes I felt were important that I wanted to refer back to. Whilst writing my essay I was trying to give context of the film, but also critically analyse it without just being descriptive. I feel that I kept this balance throughout quite well. I feel that I also applied the theory well, but perhaps could have brought in aspects from the other theories a little more, in order to give the essay more depth. To improve for my next unit, I think I need to improve my time management so that I don’t leave all my work too late. I need to make sure I fully understand the brief and ask for help where necessary, as when I don’t understand the work I tend to just leave it which adds to this problem. Although I have done the essay now, I still want to potentially have a go at turning into a video essay, as this is a new skill I wanted to try out.