How To Write Film Studies Essays Helpful Tips And Principles

1. WHO TO WRITE FILM STUDIES ESSAYS:
HELPFUL TIPS AND PRINCIPLES
General principles and tips to
help make your writing of essays
in film studies easier and better.

2. BALANCE THEORY AND FILM TEXT WELL

3. Properly identify the primary text
and the secondary texts. This will
enable you to explore, critique and
analyse the theory.

4. For example, for an essay for the
question or topic “What is Cinema?”
The primary text is film theory and the
secondary texts are the film or films.

5. Another example is in the essay “Visual
Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” by
Laura Mulvey.
First, she develops her account of
psychoanalysis and film theory.
Then, she tests it against brief
examples (von Sternberg).
And then, tests it against an
account of aspects of a key film.

6. BALANCING THEORY AND FILM TEXT:

7. ❖ Avoid or limit to minimum
giving an account of the film's
plot.
❖ Rather, concentrate on framing,
editing, actor position and actor
performance.
❖ Each time you cite an aspect of
the film, relate it to the
theoretical account that you
have constructed in the first part
of the essay.

8. STRUCTURING AND ARGUING:

9. AVOID CREATING A PARA-TACTIC STRUCTURE.

10. ❖ It is like merely creating a list
wherein you break down the
elements of a theory and test each
against the film. Doing this is not
developing an argument. You can
notice that you are going towards
this structure if you start to write
wordings of the like as “another
aspect of genre theory.”

11. STRUCTURING AND ARGUING:STRUCTURING AND ARGUING:
INSTEAD, CREATE A SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE.INSTEAD, CREATE A SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE.

12. CREATING A SYNTACTIC STRUCTURE :

13. ARGUMENT AND INTRODUCTION

14. See to it that your introduction
states your argument clearly. If it
does not, just continue writing until
you finish the current draft and you
will have an overall picture of
what argument you are
really writing about.

15. CHECKING YOUR STRUCTURE

16. ❖ Writing or rewriting a diffe-
rent version of your introduction
after you have written the
discussion body (even including the
conclusion) will enable you to
evaluate whether you have
created a cumulative
syntactic structure.

17. To guide you such evaluation,
you can try to answer the question
“Does one idea lead into the next?”

18. CHECKING YOUR CONCLUSION

19. Coming up with a conclusion is
not merely making a summary.
And with the first, a syntactic
structure is very helpful.

20. A summary restates the points or
arguments you have made.

21. A conclusion re-incorporates and
brings together all the threads of the
essay. It reflects on how the initial
ideas has been refined, challenged or
expanded.

22. FOR MORE HELP, GO TO
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