The Boney Blog of Nowhere.

Fine Arts 

Intro To Film

Professor Rick Moody

This class provided me with a vast amount of knowledge behind the workings of the film industry. From producing, to directing, to the release date of a film, and beyond. I very much like the pace at which the class glides through the semester. There was not a time where I felt behind in my learning, nor did I ever feel as though we were standing still. I would probably recommend that some other films are watched in class, but I can definitely understand why we watched them all. But I think that many people -- when they consider taking a film class -- would expect to watch better quality films instead of mainstream blockbusters. As I said, though, I saw the point in each film we watched as it was a great example of the subject we were on that week, i.e. sound, cinematography, design, etc. Plus, it's also quite possible that the type of film class I was expecting was more along the lines of Film and Culture. So, even though I went into the class expecting a somewhat different experience, I thoroughly enjoyed myself, I learned a lot, and I feel it was definitely a credit worth gaining toward one's college experience, general studies, and overall knowledge for life.

Concept and Synopsis 

This assignment was to teach us the difficulty in composing a short synopsis of something as complicated as a modern day film. On the first day of class, we thought up a list of three movies which we knew enough about in order to be able to complete such a task. I thought of a movie that I really enjoyed, but didn't have a conventional storyline. I wanted to challenge myself, so I wrote down Lars and the Real Girl and then wrote down the titles to two other movies just to fill out the list. When it came to the task, I learned a lot about editing my thoughts succinctly so as to not make them drag out to twice the size of the assignment itself. I also learned that, while I thought I was editing out unnecessary information, I really left quite a bit in the finished paper. Above all, this project seems to have been designed to help students appreciate the difficulty in keeping a film conventional enough in order to have audiences that actually want to see it, but still create a fresh and new way to portray the conventional story, itself.

I really enjoyed the assignment, actually. Although I didn't complete the task to the model (mine was far too long to be a quick synopsis), I still engaged my critical thinking and had a lot of fun trying to think of ways to describe unconventional  events in a way that could possibly be published in a newspaper or magazine.