History and the Hollywood Cinema Final Project – Second Notice

5/27/14

General (repeated from 4/17):

This project is meant to give you the opportunity to take what we have done this semester and apply it to a movie (or to movies) of your choice.

It will take two forms – a written part and a presentation part. Both will focus on ONE of the following possibilities:

1. Use ANY THREE of the movies that we have seen this semester to consider whether or not the “truth” of history can be presented even if the individual facts employed to do so are incorrect or inaccurate.

2. Analyze the good AND bad points of using movies as a means for presenting history. Use ANY THREE of the movies that we have seen this semester in your effort.

3. Apply the course concepts of accuracy, directorial intention, and viewer interpretation to an exploration of a single topic as it is presented by Hollywood. You may apply these concepts to different movies that we have seen this semester on that single topic OR you may apply all three to one movie that we have seen this semester.

As a general rule, you may – WITH PRIOR CONSULTATION WITH ME – substitute a movie of your choosing for any one of the movies that we have seen this semester.

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How to actually do this project now that it’s here:

This depends on which option you have chosen.

Option 1 requires you to do sufficient research to get a sense of what is “truly” important in the history of some person, place, or event depicted in a movie, and then see if that comes through even if the movie fudges with specific details (e.g. combines real people into a single composite character).

Option 2 might seem more opinion-based than the other options, but it still needs some digging for information (e.g. sales figures, comparison to other methods for dealing with the same history).

Option 3 involves three different types of research – research into what happened historically, research into what the director seemed to be thinking, and research into the reactions of the audiences in question.

In general, use the EBSCOHost databases (or others suggested by the Librarians) for this research.

What you will produce:

You will produce a PowerPoint (or Prezi) presentation AND its written-out commentary. The two parts ARE RELATED, and either part missing results in an incomplete Final Project.

Plan on a presentation of about 20 minutes.

Since both PowerPoint and Prezi are image-focused approaches, you will want to gather visuals. Consider pictures of the cast and crew, posters for the finished movie, shots of the filming, stills derived from news reports, and so on.

Short, relevant clips from the actual movie(s) could also prove helpful. As a rule of thumb, keep such clips to no more than a minute or two in length. In addition, do NOT have more than half of your presentation be such clips.

Schedule:

Library time is scheduled for this week and next. You have been advised that you might need to spend more time on this than can be provided for by class time alone.

Presentations will be scheduled NEXT WEEK for presentations to be done the week beginning 6/9.

PowerPoint/Prezi AND written-out commentary will be available to teacher at the beginning of the FIRST class meeting, the week of 6/9.