Product Description

This best-selling text is a succinct guide to thinking critically and writing precisely about film.

 

Both an introduction to film study and a practical writing guide, this brief text introduces readers to major film theories as well as film terminology, enabling them to write more thoughtfully and critically. With numerous student and professional examples, this engaging and practical guide progresses from taking notes and writing first drafts to creating polished essays and comprehensive research projects. Moving from movie reviews to theoretical and critical essays, the text demonstrates how an analysis of a film can become more subtle and rigorous as part of a compositional process.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54671 in Books
• Published on: 2009-02-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 190 pages

From the Back Cover
A Short Guide to Writing about Film walks the reader through the process of converting the fun and pleasure of watching a movie into the satisfaction of articulating ideas about that movie. Drawing on the readers' love and knowledge of films ranging from movies that readers easily recognize to ones they may only have read or heard about, the book encourages and develops writing skills. With numerous examples along the way, it moves from note taking and first drafts to polished essays and research projects, demonstrating how an analysis of a film becomes more subtle and rigorous as part of a compositional process. For film enthusiasts interested in enhancing their writing skills.

About the Author
Timothy Corrigan is a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania.

---

Customer Reviews

excellent guide
This book is an invaluable guide to writing about film. If you've never taken a film class, you need a book like this to get you used to the vocabulary, style and format of film criticism and theory. Numerous examples and lucid prose make this book easy to use and to read.

Intelligence and accessibility
This a marvelous book, packed with information and much more accessible than far more expensive books. It's the perfect companion for almost any film course since it not only introduces students to the language and methods of film analysis (including how to take notes) but does so while guiding students through the work of writing a good essay (with great suggestions for doing research). The writing is clear and accurate (with none of the errors referred to by the Kenosha reviewer). I recommend it without hesitation to all students of film.

fine, blessedly concise guide
I'm writing to second mitry's opinion of the book and to add to mitry's comment about kenosha's complaint of textual errors. I have the second edition of the book, and Corrigan speaks of Captain Willard and refers to Marlowe as "the other Captain Willard" (p. 43). It's clear from the context that he is comparing the film character with Conrad's protagonist. I doubt Corrigan would have revised the 2nd edition text here to make an error in the 3rd edition. Don't get turned off by an erroneous review!