Humor & Entertainment 

A Short Guide to Writing about Film walks the reader through the process of converting the fun and pleasure of watching a movie into the satisfaction of articulating ideas about that movie. Drawing on the readers' love and knowledge of films ranging from movies that readers easily recognize to ones they may only have read or heard about, the book encourages and develops writing skills. 

Contents:
pt. 1: Writing about the movies
Why write about movies?
Your audience and the aims of film criticism: the movie review, the theoretical essay, the critical essay
Opinion and evaluation
Exercises
pt. 2: Beginning to think, preparing to watch, and starting to write
Subject matter and meaning
Silent dialogue: talking back to the movies
Taking notes
Visual memory and reflection
Exercises
pt. 3: Film terms and topics for film analysis and writing
Themes
Film and the other arts: narrative, characters, point of view
Mise-en-scène and realism: realism, elements of mise-en-scène
Composition and the image: the shot, the edited image
Sound
Sample essay
Exercises
pt. 4: Six approaches to writing about film
Film history
National cinemas
Genres
Auteurs
Kinds of formalism
Ideology
Sample essays
Exercises
pt. 5: Style and structure in writing
The right words: concrete language, denotation and connotation, tone, repetitions and clichés
Effective sentences: economy, varied sentence structures
Coherent paragraphs
Introductory paragraphs
Concluding paragraphs
Checklist for writing an effective essay
Exercises
pt. 6: Researching the movies
How to begin research
The materials of research: primary sources: video, scripts, secondary sources: books, indexes, journals, and electronic sources
Film research on the internet
Taking notes on secondary sources
Writing the paper
Sample essays
Exercises
pt. 7: Manuscript form
Manuscript copy
Last-minute corrections
Quotations
Acknowledging sources: common knowledge
Documenting sources: notes for documentation, works cited, notes supplying additional commentary
Common conventions of usage: names, titles, foreign words and quotation marks, sexist language, spelling
Last words