Today my group finally presented our analysis of a 12 minute sequence from The Wizard of Oz for Cinema Studies. My group and I worked really well together, although I think we did need a bit more time to really fine tune our presentation. The sequence we were given to analyse was Dorothy’s transition from Kansas to Oz in the twister, and the majority of the Munchkinland scene. Alexia told us that our analysis was extensive and detailed, which we can attribute to sectioning out the sequence to 3 minutes each member to make catching small details more manageable, but we needed to perhaps improve on expansiveness – that is, contextualising the scene within the rest of the movie, culture (both past and present) and other views. It was a bit disappointing to hear the expansiveness needed to be improved as we had actually planned to contextualise the sequence at least within the film, but forgot to write it and thus forgot to incorporate it into our presentation. I never even considered introducing other views, or cultural relevance within our discussion at all though. It’s a topic I’ll perhaps incorporate into presentations later down the track, or consider for my other projects, regardless of whether they are similar or not. I often don’t look at the big picture and focus on small pieces so it’s good to be reminded that this is also important.

I really enjoy analysing things as despite being visual and hands on in learning, I am also very analytical and enjoy writing on things that engage me, such as films or literature. That was why English, Literature and other humanities subjects were always my favourite and best subjects; the level on analysis in their main projects was my forte. I find it interesting to consider subtexts, undertones and symbolism and how film makers masterfully include these in such subtle ways, and watching something after such a close reading is never the same; it becomes a more heightened experience, which is difficult to describe.

It’s a relief to have completed the assignment now – it gives me more time to focus on both my showreel and PB4 / the required blog posts. Then I’m free for five weeks!  But for now, onto that showreel…