Journal #1: Shot Choice & Weird...but cool...music videos

Local Film Events

The Lynne Theatre in Cape May is hosting a Buster Keaton silent film viewing with live organ music! Culture! Right here in SJ!

Welcome Class of 2013!

Welcome to the Film Institute...We are so happy you are here! You are now a part of Oakcrest's most popular and longest running Small Learning Community. Here at the FI, we strive to bring you a solid, multi-disciplinary, college preparatory education through the examination and creation of film. We have tons to learn, so let's jump right in!

1. Citizen Kane: Highly and almost universally regarded as the most important and most critically acclaimed American film of all time, we will bookend our course with Orson Welles' opus. In other words, it will be the first and last film we watch. The first time we watch it, beginning later this week, we will say and do nothing. We will not preface it. We will not provide historical context. We will simply show it. Why? Because I am interested to see how much (or how little) you recognize it as great cinema now...and well, I bet you could figure out my motives.

2. How to Take Notes in Film. This is an art-form quite unlike anything its literary or acadmeic counterparts. Here is some advice from Bryn Mawr College that I find useful. Reading this and being prepared to discuss it some time this week is your first homework assignment, besides printing your syllabus and the survey.

Film is a Visual, Literary Art

Please remember that journals are due Tuesday...Enjoy Memorial Day Weekend.

What I have been saying class for years...except now from people who other people listen to

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/college-educated-workers-gaining-jobs-high-school-grads-losing-them/

Run Away

In fiction, a McGuffin is a plot device in the form of some pursued goal, desired object or other motivator that the protagonist is willing to do or sacrafice anything to pursue. Often, there is little or no narrative explanation as to why the object is desirable. In CITIZEN KANE, "rosebud" is a McGuffin. In PULP FICTION, the briefcase.