The Critical Essay

Critical Essay for EcoMedia
Due Monday, January 24th, in class.
Essay Proposal due Saturday, January 14th by 12noon, emailed to me.

4-5 pages, double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman font, 1” margins all around, no cover page.

This essay is a critical analysis of a single film with specific attention to how this film works as an EcoMedia text. Choose one film from our course syllabus or the list included below. Then write your essay by making an argument about the ecological theme or themes and arguments within the film. Consider both the sorts of information the film may be trying to communicate and how the film tries to communicate this information as well as the film’s methods of motivating the audience to do something. An excellent essay will place emphasis on careful and sustained analysis of particular moments in the film, attending to the dynamic of content and form. Your essay must treat at least one scene with discussion of formal issues like editing, shot composition, lighting, sound, focus, camera movement, etc. An excellent essay will also make its argument in part by situating the film in relation to other films, whether EcoMedia or not—you may focus on similarities and/or differences. As this is a short essay, I do not want you to perform research for it; this essay is to present your thoughts through your voice. As such, no bibliography is needed.

For your Essay Proposal, please email me by 12noon on Saturday to tell me which film you will write about and what you think your argument will be about. There is not a lot of time to write this essay, and that is why I’m requiring you to make this decision soon. Plus, I can give you some feedback on your thesis idea at the early stage of planning.

Remember that our course films are on reserve at Preus Library—you may go to the circulation desk and ask for a title and tell them our course number and my last name (Hageman).

In addition to the films on our syllabus, you may select another film for your essay from the following list. If you have another film in mind not listed here, please consult me to request approval.
Still Life
Food, Inc.
King Corn
Gasland
March of the Penguins
Soylent Green
Who Killed the Electric Car?
Erin Brockovich
Futurama: Into the Wild Green Yonder
Koyaanisqatsi

Blog Post for Jan. 11th: EcoSonnet

We've been taking in a lot of films and now it's time to shift modes of EcoMediation.

Step One: Sit somewhere outside, on campus or off, where you can observe the wind turbine as it spins. Sit there at least 15 minutes doing nothing but letting your sense tune into your surroundings near and far and in between. Enjoy yourself.

Step Two: Write a Shakespearean sonnet based on your experience. 14 lines. abab, cdcd, efef, gg rhyme scheme so that the poem is structurally segmented in to 3 sections of 4 lines connected to each other and a final couplet that gives an answer or a clever spin to what the previous 3 sections do and say. Your diction may be that of our own day. And do not over-worry using iambic pentameter. You must include some reference to the wind turbine somewhere within the poem.

Step Three: Post your sonnet on your blog before 10am tomorrow.

Blog Post for January 10th, The Cove

One of the most notable features of The Cove is its generic fusion: the movie blends thriller/horror with spy genre elements, all as an EcoDocumentary. This is particularly unusual since we have grown accustomed to seeing dolphins in wildlife films and/or children's movies. For this writing, please write about how the generic framework shaped your experience of watching the film--of taking in its information and of being moved (or not) to do something. 250-300 words, due by 10am on Tuesday.

Girls Gone Green

I was looking at the Climate Crisis website from the end credits of An Inconvenient Truth, and the featured object is this book called Girls Gone Green.
It's worth poking around on that site a bit to think about what further messages it sends attached to the film that directed us to it, and you might check out this book, which deserves critical scrutiny on its own.

Digital Media Group Project, Due January 25th

EcoMedia Group Project Exam: Due January 25th in class


This project is comprised of three parts: (1) the EcoMedia production, (2) the group presentation, and (3) the individual written reflections.


1. In your groups of four, you will create an EcoMedia project and post it online to share with the class and perhaps the entire Internet. You may choose to make a documentary or fictional project, and you might use animation, computer graphics/effects, live acting, or other modes of representation you want to use. As my colleague, Eric Holthaus, mentioned, this is an opportunity to do a project based on Luther sustainability and life, but you are under no obligation to do that type of project. This is your chance to stretch out your imaginations, creativity, and skills with making a film. Please note that you have access to check out flip cameras at Preus Library and people there may be able to assist you in some technical skills to work with your video as well.

The project should run from 4 to 8 minutes long.

Your group should make very intentional decisions about every aspect of the project. In particular, the project will be evaluated upon its use of 3 primary features: Narrative (Does it have a compelling story?), Visuals (What sorts of shots does it include and to what effects?), and Editing (Why and how does the project make the transitions it does from scene to scene and idea to idea?). We are working with a short time frame and I know you may not be professional filmmakers, so don’t worry about making a perfect project. The key is to have solid ideas behind what you try to execute in the project itself. In the group presentation and your reflection paper, you’ll have the chance to communicate these ideas.



2. Each group will give an approximately 15-minute presentation on the project. Each participant needs to contribute equally to this. You should present to us what you have done, how you did it, and especially why you made the choices you did. Please also tell us how these decisions of form, narration, genre, etc. situate your project in relation to the other EcoMedia texts we watched and worked with this J-Term.



3. Each participant will write a formal 2-page double-spaced reflection paper on the project. The focus should be the same as the presentation: what choices did you make and why. This is where you get to articulate individually your understanding of and contributions to the project.

Wall-E Blog Due January 6th

Sometime after your small group discussions today and before Friday is over, please post your Wall-E blog.

I'll give you a little blogging break over the weekend, but please come Monday morning ready to talk. We'll start on Monday with An Inconvenient Truth and the graphic novel, so as you read over the weekend, keep in mind how both of these ecomedia texts work (How does the book critique/criticize the arguments of Al Gore's movie? What are the various ways the movie tries to motivate us to act? What do you think of the list at the end of the movie? Also, since we looked at some music, pay attention to the lyrics of the song at the end of An Inconvenient Truth...).

Blog for January 5th: The Corporation

For Thursday you are reading the first 84 pages of The Corporation. In this blog post, please write a 250-word response to the reading. Specifically, I'd like you to write about two different things in this assignment. First, please respond to one claim the book makes about corporations that you found surprising. Second, choose one of the passages that relates explicitly to corporations and environmental concerns and write about how the book goes about presenting its argument, how effective this argument is, and what objections or counterexamples you can think of to argue back against the book.