Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Turn one of the statements below into a thesis for your exam essay, then create a one-page rough outline to bring into your exam and submit it to Monsieur the Lobb.

When we rise up to challenge God as a creator, we become Monsters.

Definition of a monster is tied to INVERSION and PERVERSION of the Natural Order - i.e. you are here, and someone else is there and that’s the way it’s supposed to be

rejection by society = monster 

Power creates monsters. 

Ambition and lust for power creates monsters

Need creates monsters

Monstrousness is here in us all the time - our drives inside that we allow to push out into the world.

Consider the below in making your essay preparations:

Thesis

There is a statement you will make that will have “sides” to it.  There will be something that you need to prove - it is an argument - a statement that may or may not be true until it is proven so. 

In the thesis below, there is another side - i.e. that we become Monsters by birth, or by mental disorder, or by manipulation or what have you

If you take this one, you need to SHOW HOW the rising up to challenge God results in some behaviour or decision-making that could be defined as monstrous

When we rise up to challenge God as a creator, we become Monsters.

Body

Frankenstein

What are elements of the story that reveal Victor (or another character) challenging God? 

Can I pick a couple? Can I describe them briefly? 

Can I then illustrate them with a simple quotation that shows I didn’t make this up. 

WHAT HAPPENS AS A RESULT OF THE ABOVE THAT SHOWS YOUR THESIS IS TRUE

Macbeth 

Consider the explanation as the bulk of your body paragraphs

What is explanation? 

Showing connections

Mr. Lobb is a terrible teacher. 

He pushed Laine’s desk! And he was mean!

How does the pushing of Laine’s desk demonstrate that he is a bad teacher? What is the link between desk-pushing and bad teaching? 

You need to show how ONE THING = ANOTHER THING through finding the reasoning and exploring it

Conclusion

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

The Last Weekish

1. If you owe me work, you will be getting no more feedback, unless it is a KEY assignment and you tell me why you need that feedback. 
2. Prepare your exam questions - why don’t YOU do it? If Mr. Lobb is making our exam, it will be so hard and mean on purpose that we will cry and vomit simultaneously. It actually happened. Worth 20-30% on its own. 
3. The FrankenAss is a valuable ass because it falls on the end of the semester. 
4. You need to make absolutely certain that your best essay on Macbeth is in before Friday. (20%)
5. The media assignments (2) are short, but they are good to boost your mark. 

Isolation movie - documentary movie

The Big Four - plot, setting, character, theme

An engagement piece - some kind of assignment, activity, game, something that would have been handed out to students if you were teaching this to them - then you answer it

Symbolic or meaningful “text to world” connections

Movie Review - 

Watch and analyse with an eye towards those elements we discussed:

character arc

story structure

camera work

lighting

sound and music

editing

plot

setting

character 

theme

meaning and message - re: the outsider

Documentary review

Watch and consider how the filmmaker manipulates you

Discuss your opinion 

Discuss the issue in general

Give your overall on the topic AND the way the filmmaker presented it

traveling

How do you make an Exam? 

There are many parts that could chosen for an average ENG exam, but we want to focus on the best parts: the questions that do not require memory or rote learning. 

Why and How are better than Who, What, Where and When. 

Why do teachers use those lower order questions - basic memory? 

Teachers are finding out if you actually read the material and SMACKING you if you didn’t. 

ie Macbeth spotting test

What would be a higher order *thinking* way to ask a question that requires one think about the lines of a play and then respond with intelligence? 

Line - character, why and context

All this higher order thinking is more “mark intensive” - in that each question will generate more marks and require more thinking and more writing

Some teachers generate multiple choice with very similar answers that require a real test of the thinking, but are essentially still memory

In this class we won’t use matching, multiple choice, single word answer, definition-only or simple recall questions. 

You should be able to use a textbook if you want one. 

Or, you should be able to bring some preparation *of some sort*

I’m not testing memory, I’m testing your ability to think and produce the reasoning for that thinking. 

The application of the material is more important. 

There are steps in writing about the book:

Reading

Incorporating into your head

Talking about the material from the book

Writing about the book in class

Doing some work on that book. 

Applying that information properly on the exam, under test conditions. 

The Exam Model

Short Mark Grabbers that Build Confidence

(3 marks each, pretty easy, little bit of recall and some application of thinking) 

15 - 20 marks at the most

Classic Example - definition plus example, or character explanation

I always accept point form with these (and many teachers do not)

The Basic Exam Question (5 mark questions) (25 marks)

These are standard, and they are a mix of application, communication and memory. 

What many do not know is that these questions can have a pattern for guaranteed marks. 

The Pattern - you may not use all five in a row, you might use a COMBO

Intro

Definition

Example

Explain 

Evaluate

The question will give you a hint as to how to combine the above five elements. 

A Little More Creative or Analytical 

Often, you will be asked to respond to a piece of writing. 

In this section, there will be the obvious answering of questions that come from the reading - COMPREHENSION, but there might also be something you have to do that is a writing assignment in brief 

*descriptive paragraph* *poetry response* *interpretation of some element of art or poetry* or in some cases, even more creative - write a poem, a piece of short story, etc

In Lobb’s class, this is a perfect opportunity to get students to analyse and poem and respond with something creative of their own. Especially thematically 

Plath - Bukowski - Ginsberg - Gary Snyder - Ferlinghetti

The responses for this section would be a real mix - 2-3 markers up to 7-8 markers. 

Usually at the end is the “big” response wherein students will “do something” 

If you are bold and saucy, you could easily read a short story in this space. 

The Essay is the biggest, baddest molly folly on the exam

Half of the exam marks will likely be the essay. However, Lobb do things different.

Rough outline will be marked - you sit down, do a skeleton of your essay for 10 marks. 

Sp and Gr will get a separate mark - Style - 10 marks

Content/Application of Knowledge of the Material - 10-15 marks

Communication/Essay Structure - 10 - 15 marks 

What will this essay be? 

A comparison of some sort - Frank and Mac - it will be assigned in advance and you can do whatever prep you like, but you may bring into the exam ONLY a piece of rough outline on one page that is specifically for your essay 

Documentary - 

What are you doing for this assignment? 

Short piece - 1 page is good 350 - 500 words

You will think about the editorial point of view and how it influences your own 

Documentaries are about manipulation of the viewer to effect a specific opinion shift

How does the filmmaker(s) manipulate you in the viewing? 

What is your response? Why?

What is the issue and how does this issue get presented?/ 

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Production

Sound and Music 

sound - enhanced sound is common in movies - realistic sound is, in fact, not helpful for the most part

this exaggeration somehow gives us a better sense of the physicality of the action

Foley is one example

Sound design - Ben Burtt - Star Wars

Music IS emotion in a movie - it’s particularly important in bad movies - CRUCIAL

Camera Work

Shots

good shots are shots we notice because the POV is interesting, surprising, scary, etc

Good shots stand out and have a “designed” look to them sometimes

There are rules to a shot - one rule - Rule of Thirds, however, breaking it can be good too

Focal Length

ELS - all context and environment - a vista - scenery - character is tiny in the landscape

LS - showing action - the characters are doing something in a place

Master - the most important shot it filmmaking - one shot of an entire scene done from a distance away to show the characters in the space, doing something in one continuous go - this is the TIMER for a scene and the trunk to which you would cut in the close ups and cutaways

MS - medium shot - often a two-shot - knees up - show body movements

CU - ribs up, shows faces and expressions - THIS IS WHERE THE ACTING HAPPENS

ECU - no context and environment - distorting

Angles

How does the camera aim at the subject? Straight on can be boring. Eye height can be boring. Variance here can make a shot MUCH more interesting and appealing. 

Consider 360 degrees and vertical angles as well. 

Lighting

if you notice it, it’s probably good. 

if you don’t, it’s probably good (unless you don’t notice it and it should be cool to help create mood and atmosphere)

Colour, amount of light, pools of darkness and brightness in variance

Mise-en-scene - the things in the frame - what is in the frame is designed and placed there for effect - props, set pieces, characters, etc - every shot is planned and set up.

Acting

• realism of the character
• charm and charisma
• the right look - H’wood stars are genetic freaks
• the part has to match the actor
• chemistry in pairings and groups

Editing - 

• the cutting of shots into scenes and sequences
• every time there’s a new shot, that’s a decision made by an editor
• cutting shots properly is when the actual movie is made
• every cut is a tiny slice of a moment that is selected as the best slice
• Michael Bay is hated for his crazy editing and pacing (Transformers) (or not)

Themes

- same as poetry, short stories and novels - there are underlying ideas that the filmmakers are thinking about

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Macbeth is not entirely guilty - he did it, but

Statement - your idea that will support your thesis

Show that Macbeth was suffering from some mental illness/psychological problem stemming from stress that impaired his ability to discern the consequences of his actions. 

Get some quotation - look at the situation where he vacillates back and forth

Go for the dagger soliloquy

How did that situation above reveal that his stress was impairing his faculties? How did he lose something? What does he do that shows he’s not fully functioning? 

How does someone suffering from X behave? What is LIKE that? Refer to a similar case where the defendant got off

Because of the STRESS, etc, Macbeth 

SYLLOGISM - one side equals another side

str - grammar and sentence structure

wording - word choice, sentence structure, clarity of grammar - i.e. inverted sentence

awk - language choice and the use of weird phrasing that’s more conversational

me - conversational “you” 

ref? - you need to support your generality here - i.e. a quotation or a source 

Proof? - same

frag - sentence fragment - no subject and predicate

ns - not a sentence

Frye Day, May 22. 2015

Writing

• all movies start with a writer, writing
• writers write screenplays (scripts) in basically TWO ways

1. assignment - sell your services to a company, a studio or a producer and you work on their idea, their IP (intellectual property) or their previously written script

1. “on spec” - this comes from the writer’s own ideas, the writer writes it first, without getting paid and tries to get people interested

The writer usually writes a treatment - story version in short. 

The writer gets a ton of notes from whomever

The writer goes to script and starts writing the movie the way it will look. 

How does he/she do that? 

He/she uses the Hero’s Quest

A Basic Screenplay Structure

First ten minutes

Pages 1 - 10

(one page of screenplay times out to one minute)

Setup - protagonist, the “pre-world”, the protag’s problem, the place and the core group around the protagonist

the idea of EVERY single protagonist from every movie is the same - each one has a terrible problem that prevents him/her from progressing and being a whole, happy person - most of the protagonists are outsiders who don’t fit in and don’t feel like they’re part of the society in which they are trapped

the pre-world and the problem are the same thing 

as we watch the lead character in his/her world, we start to accelerate to a BIG PROBLEM - this problem will occur in the first 20 minutes or so

Page 17 *or so* - after setting up the world, the char, the problem and the basica outlay of the story (one of the key things to establish is GENRE), there will be a shift that takes us into the “real movie” 

Genre is the code that you know that tells you what to expect and how the world works ie comedy, horror, romantic comedy, etc

The Problem is something that will force the hero to leave the pre-world and go out into the larger, more dangerous, darker, etc world - the hero’s quest - threshold

Best examples - Hogwarts, Mordor, Shield’s “world”

The problem drives the character - that OUTER QUEST has to be solved - 

Tied to this Outer quest is an INER QUEST that is the REAL point of the movie - the inner quest will be solved when the outer quest is solved because the outer quest will require a new version of the hero - a FIXED version

Pages 23 - 75 (or so) - ACT 2

This is the meat of the movie, the learning, the growing, the hunting, the figuring out, the most hilarious moments, the getting-used-to-it, etc

First half of this Act - an interesting, revealing, growing, changing, building as the hero works the new system in the new world - if it’s a murder mystery, there is good progress here

It leads to a MIDPOINT where things change

At the half way point, the hero is faced with a confrontation that stops the forward progress and lets the hero know that there is no going back - a terrible realization - uh oh, this is getting harder and darker and I may not be able to do this…

Second half of Act 2 (page 50 - 75) is a much darker, much more difficult, much more intense and sad series of events

It builds in intensity of darkness and trouble and negativity for the hero until about page 75, where we have THE LOW and that end of Act 2

THE LOW

this is that point in any movie where the hero has a terrible setback - the guy dumps the girl because he has another girlfriend, the hero’s best friend dies, the dad thinks his daughter is dead, the sidekick is captured, the buddy cop is killed, etc. 

The hero has to think that it’s all over - he/she can’t go on

The whole point of any movie is this sequence - this is where the hero has to get rid of the old self and accept the new self - the fixed self - the problem that the hero had in the very start has to be beaten internally by making the choice to change

The whole point is to question life and to decide to be the person you really are. 

This dark moment forces the hero to rise up and decide to move into the final confrontation - to go into ACT 3 

Page 78 - 100 - ACT 3

This is the rollercoaster of emotion and action and tension and release

There are chases and fight scenes and oneupmanship and huge stakes and things that cannot be undone and all that - modern movies have catastrophes in here - i.e. end of Man of Steel

Leads to the hero facing his/her worst fear and worst moment (usually epitomized by an evil character - aging Voldemort) and then they usually win. 

Once the hero wins, he/she has learned how to be him/herself and is triumphant and can now rejoin the world as a complete, fixed person

The outside comes in, often as the boss of the society - or as a fully functioning member of it

Fried A, May 22, 2015

Media Unit - Narrative and Documentary Film

The life of a film has a few different pieces. 

If we know about these pieces, then we can do a better job of analysis. 

Plus, you are WAY cooler and your friends will love you more. 

Writing

Development

Pre-Production

Production

Post-Production

Promotion & Marketing

Distribution

Your Face, Sitting There, Watching It - 

• negotiate a meaning by combining the movie with your own thinking
• the movie acts as a kind of code that you “pick up” and make sense thereof
• some of the language of that code you don’t even know you know
• understanding some of the elements of production can make you enjoy the movie more and make you more aware of your thinking/negotiation of meaning
• you get a burst of chemicals in your brain when you see or hear something that matches with something that you know or think or feel - you get a “good” feeling
• same for things that are cool or surprising or when you learn something

WRITING

• movies come from screenplays 
• sreenplays are rewritten and rewritten by multiple writers multiple times for PRODUCERS who are looking for specific things in the scripts
• some scripts are ASSIGNMENTS - written from properties that the producer or a STUDIO own e.g. the Disney I showed you
• what is the producer looking for? 

Movie Moments - often in trailers - big “set pieces” that are exciting and cool - might be comedy moment - the dress/food poisoning scene in Bridesmaids, etc - 

STAR VEHICLE - can you see a movie star being that main character? or a minor character with a cool moment or two? i.e. Bill Murray in Zombieland

How much will it cost to make? Is this a James Cameron/Marvel/Disney giant monster movie? 

Is it using some well-known IP? - (intellectual property) - notice all the superhero movies? Know why that’s the only kind of movie that’s getting made? BRAND RECOGNITION - YA novels, old 80s things, comic books, TV shows from prior decades, remakes, reboots, sequels, etc

Fresh take that feels new and cool and awesome and the same and old and typical

The producer is scared to develop a script because it’s expensive and it takes a LONG time. And there are no guarantees at the end that you’ll get a movie. 

MOST screenplays, even by big, powerful writers, are not made. 

A typical example of a Hollywood screenplay value is something like 55k and up, until it gets produced, where it can be worth another 350k or so. And it costs to develop the whole time. 

The pattern for a screenplay is pretty well known and is based on the Hero’s Quest. 

Note: 1 page = 1 minute

Page 1 - 10 - Setup - lead, setting, “original world” - normal reality for the lead

Page 10 - 17 (or so) - the problem is developed and it starts to pull the lead out of the normal world

Page 17 - 23 - the shift into the New Situation/ New World (ie just like passing the guardian into the underworld) - The start of Act 2

Act 2 is the most fun - building, changing, adjusting to the new situation and new world

Pages 27 - 75 (or so) 

The lead is learning, making progress on his/her quest. 

Funny thing - the Outer Quest (destroy the ring, rescue the daughter, save the house, catch the killer, whatever) is ALWAYS just a way for the Hero to solve the Inner Problem (doesn’t belong, is a bad dad, is wrestling with self-worth, must learn to love herself, etc) 

Mid Way through the movie - there is some great confrontation that shows the hero what he/she must do and man, it is harder than he/she thought and he/she has a tough time with it. 

The second half of Act 2 gets harder and worse and more problematical 

Pages 75-83 (or so) - The Low - Death enters the story for the hero

The hero is brought to the lowest, worst point, and feels like giving up. This is where the Inner Problem is too much for the hero to take. He/she has lost everything and has a huge realization.

HOWEVER!

This is when the Hero DIGS DEEP and finds something that makes him/her push forward. Sometimes it’s a person, sometimes an item, sometimes it’s just a moment of pulling him/herself up by the bootstraps 

NOW we are in Act III and this is an exciting, rollercoaster ride to the end - fights! confrontations! yelling! chasing! running! pace increasing! you have the hero facing his/her biggest problem AND the biggest enemy and usually winning - everything is building to this and everything has to close at the same time - all the energies at work come to this moment - 

Resolution is the solving of the hero’s problem, that he/she had from the start - the weird thing is, the movie appears to have been just a way to fix the hero - the bad character, the adventure, the turmoil, it was all just a lot of testing to push the hero into changing - this is called CHARACTER ARC

Get a diagram of screenplay structure