week3

Leave a comment Posted on

everyone’s a critic: week 3 update

By Samuel Harris & Natalie Pitcher

Monday found us with our first in-class screening, Laura Gabbert’s City of Gold (2015), a profile of internationally renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold. Our task: to take notes in order to draft a review of the film, putting fingers to keyboards (or pen to paper) in the process of bulking (beginning) our portfolios. Getting into the swing of things, keeping the words flowing is where the success of the studio lies, and this exercise proved useful in giving us another avenue for our writing to go.

Following the screening we delved into a review from Gold himself, a reflection on his experience with a pop-up restaurant in Mexico. Switching from analysing his words onscreen to his words on paper helped further our understanding of his persona as a critic and in this close reading – a paragraph by paragraph comparison – we considered tone and point-of-view, with brief foray into the ethical considerations of food evoked in Gold’s writing.

 

A close reading of Edward Scissorhands reviews

Trying to write reflections, weekly updates, and as many reviews as possible for your folio be like

In Wednesday’s class, we analysed the styles and techniques used in reviews of Edward Scissorhands. We examined 5 quite different critics, including Paul Harris of 3RRR’s Film Buffs Forecast and Adrian Martin, former film review for The Age. The exercise was really useful in helping us prepare for an upcoming assessment–to profile an established critic–as well as making us aware of the different tools available to us as writers.

We considered four key elements in our analysis: word choice, sentence fluency, voice, and structure. In paying particular attention to these aspects we were able to form a pretty clear idea of the critic’s style by the end of each of each piece.

The main take-aways to keep in mind for our own writing:

  • Having authority is important–however, there’s a big difference between name-dropping and making references for the sake of showing-off, and letting your expertise speak for itself through discretion in your choice of (relevant) references.
  • Parenthetical statements and use of the em dash (–) can be a great way to inject a little personality, but be wary of overuse as they can also distract the reader and dilute the point you’re trying to make.
  • Stacking adjectives is a way to play with the rhythm of a sentence, but sometimes one word is better than three.
  • Always back up declarative statements with an example.
  • For the love of dogs, don’t just summarise the plot! Always provide new insights–if the reader wanted a synopsis they would have gone to IMDB.
Leave a comment Posted on

what’s due this week + what you need for week 3

Hi everyone —

Don’t forget that your response to Project Brief 1 is due today. All details can be found on the Assessments page here on the blog. You just need to upload your work (in .doc/.docx/.pdf format) to the “EAC.your.name” google drive that you set up and shared with me.

 

Looking ahead, here’s the plan for Week 3:

Monday 12:30 – 3:30: we will start thinking about critics and their personas. This should help you work towards your second assessment task and encourage you to begin reflecting on your own persona as an emerging critic. We will be watching a documentary about a particular critic and will be taking notes to write a review of the documentary. We will also take a closer look at some of this critic’s writing.

To prepare for class, you will need to:

  1. Think about some of the critics that you read (or have read in the past). What do you think defines their persona and their approach to criticism?
  2. Make sure you have your laptop or other writing materials with you to take notes for your review of the film.

 

Wednesday 8:30 – 10:30: we will be doing some close analysis of particular critics’ writing and thinking about what characterises their approach to criticism and their voice more broadly.

To prepare for class, you will need to:

  1. Read the collection of reviews of Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands (1990) that is in the Week 3 Readings folder on the shared studio drive. It contains short and long reviews of the film by five different critics, as well a short reflection from each writer on the act of criticism. Take some notes about the different approaches to the film and to criticism.
  2. If you have time, re-watch (or watch) Edward Scissorhands. You might like to take your own notes while doing this to compare to the reviews in the reading.

See you next week!