Film Studies 1022 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Thesis Statement, Topic Sentence
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11 Oct 2016
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How To Write a Film Sequence Analysis
Tuesday October 11th, 2016
●Title:
○Title of your essay must be specific and hint at what your paper is about; it must contain the film’s title
○Bad Example: Sequence Analysis #1
○Bad Example: Understanding through the Eyes of the Camera
○Bad Example: How Different is Reality from Fantasy
○Good Example: The Fantasy of Reality: Camera Movement and Editing in a Sequence from Pan’s
Labyrinth
●Introduction
○Introduce Topic
■Opening Sentence
●The director’s name
●The title of the film and year of production
●Introduce your main theme for the essay
●Bad Example: Technical aspects of films are often overlooked and go unnoticed.
●Bad Example: Guillermo Del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth
(2006) is set in Spain five
years after the Spanish Civil War
●Good Example: Although fairy tales are generally products of unrestrained imagination,
in Guillermo Del Toro’s modern fairy tale, Pan’s Labyrinth
(2006), the underlying
themes are used to comment on the larger society.
○Anticipate Argument
■After the opening sentence, start to work your way towards your thesis statement by being more
specific about where your paper is headed; do not recap the whole story
○Present Thesis
■Your thesis statement is a single sentence which must appear at the end of the introductory
paragraph and must have two components:
●Main claim clearly states (where you are going)
●Supporting arguments broadly outlined (how you are going to get there)
■Bad Example: Pan’s Labyrinth
is a powerful film because lighting and editing in this sequence are
very effective.
■Bad Example: Pan’s Labyrinth
is a good film about war because it is extremely scary and
unsettling as exemplified by this sequence.
■Okay-ish Example: Through the use of camera movement and editing, Del Toro effectively
emphasizes the blend between the world of fantasy and the world of reality.
■Good Example: I argue that the use of “fluid” camera movement that easily crosses boundaries
between fantasy and reality, and seamless editing that makes those crossings even smother, Del
Toro signals to the viewer early on that Ofelia will routinely blend fantasy and reality in order to
deal with trauma of war.
●Body
○A short essay like this one is made up of 4-5 paragraphs which develop and explain your thesis statement
○Each paragraph is a single unit of thought but bound by the larger framework of your essay
○Structure:
■Topic sentence, main point