Your final project for this class will have both a written and a multimedia component. In general, you will be producing a 4-5 minute video, along with an audio narration track that is based on your researched written analysis.
You'll have three general options:
- Excerpt a 4-5 minute segment from Source Code, import it into iMovie or Final Cut for manipulation, lower the audio track, and add an analytical commentary that explores an important theme or idea that has cultural significance. Your commentary should include 3 appropriate external sources (you must discuss your sources with me), and it should draw on the vocabulary and methodologies of cultural studies. Your analysis should pay attention both to the content of the film and its formal features--camera work, mise en scene, and so on. (see the Yale Film Studies guide). Sample student work along these lines can be viewed here and here.
- Find and rip a high-quality video advertisement, and import it onto iMovie or Final Cut for manipulation. Have the ad play at least twice, once with fully audible audio. Then, lower the audio track and add an analytical commentary that explores its meanings from a cultural studies perspective, Your commentary should include 3 appropriate external sources (as above), and it should draw on the vocabulary and methodologies of cultural studies. Your analysis should pay attention both to the content of the film and its formal features (see the Yale Film Studies guide).
- Choose a theoretical topic from our reading and explore it through a contemporary example or a series of similar contemporary examples. You should gather still images and import them into iMovie or Final Cut, arranging them in such a way as to make clear your larger point--you might remember how the video Killing Us Softly took images from contemporary advertising to make an argument about how gender is represented. Then, add an analytical audio commentary that makes clear your larger point. Your commentary should include three appropriate external sources (as above), and it should draw on the vocabulary and methodologies of cultural studies. Your miniature documentary should be approximately 4-5 minutes in length. For formal purposes, you might use something like La JeteĢe as an example of the kinds of things you can do with still images. Ken Burns' documentaries are also good examples--find a sample here and another here.
When appropriate, especially for option 3, you may use sound effects and audio tracks from open source repositories like FreeSound and ccMixter. In each case, you must have an intro frame of 5-10 seconds in addition to a works cited/credits sequence of 10 seconds. Here is a page with more information on incorporating sources into a multimedia project (particularly in narrating your script).
To turn this in, you'll upload your work to YouTube (see me if you do not want your work on the web). You will also upload it to your portfolio, together with the writing self-assessment I've requested as well as the script for your project. Finally, please give me a hard copy of your revised script.