We will have longer class sessions on two occasions for live collective feedback by your peers and instructors. Presenters will not be asked to ‘explain’ their work beyond the intentions addressed in their meta-commentaries. As in earlier courses, these are opportunities for your work to speak for itself and to be receptive to how others engage with it.
Tuesday 4 May 2021
09:00 – 17:00
CRIT 2 Rough cut screening (class split)
ROUGHCUT DUE – 23:59 Monday 3 May 2021
Monday & Tuesday 7-8 June 2021
09:00 – 17:00
CRIT 3 Fine cut screening (full-class)
FINECUT DUE – 23:59 Sunday 6 June 2021
ROUGHCUT (30m)
DEADLINE: Upload ROUGHCUT_name to Kaltura Media Gallery by 23:59 Monday 3 May 2021
For our second CRIT session of the spring, students should prepare a 30m compilation of edited scenes that provide a preliminary rough cut of the final film. We will not be using P2P for this assignment, so we ask that you load directly to the Kaltura Media Gallery. Name your file “ROUGHCUT_name”. And don’t forget to paste your metacommentary text into the comment section.
Metacommentary: All assignments must be accompanied by a brief written reflection (200-300 words max) that provides a ‘meta-commentary’ about the student’s intentions with the assignment’s selection.
For this CRIT meta-commentary (max. 300 words), please address the following points:
A) Write a concise description (2 sentences) on what your thesis is about. Write it for an audience that knows nothing about your project. This will force you to rethink your project based on the latest developments and consider how to encapsulate this in a summary statement.
B) Revisit the following four qualities: Ethnographic Context, Anthropological Analysis, Cinematic Quality, & Affective Engagement.
Then respond to these two points for each quality: 1) How does your rough cut addresses each of these qualities? 2) What doubts or questions do you have about your ability to address each of these qualities in your compilation?
Rather than writing expansively on each of these prompts, try to write concisely in a single sentence or bullet point your gut feelings about each of these points. This will give those providing feedback an idea of where you think you are succeeding and where you are struggling.
Ethnographic Context – In what ways does your compilation create a world for an audience to inhabit? What aspects of place and people are included? To what extent do the relations in the field, through rapport and reflexivity, establish you as a subject?
Anthropological Analysis – What sorts of themes, topics, and concepts motivates and informs your compilation? How does your use of audio-visual montage within scenes and across the entire sequence of scenes demonstrate the intentions of your research and your application of critical thinking?
Cinematic Quality – How effectively does the footage that you have included capture your subjects, location, and concepts in formally rigorous ways? What are the affordances and limitations of your camera handling, focus, exposure, white balance, etc. as well as your microphone levels, placement, richness, etc.? How effectively have you employed framing, angles, style, shots, etc. as well as montage, continuity, cutaways, etc.? What about your textual elements?
Affective Engagement – In what ways have you tried to arrest the viewer’s attention on the varying level of shots and scenes? How have you tried to sustain a viewer’s curiosity through the duration of your compilation? How have you tried to build a rich composite that provides context while also building a mosaic of issues, motivations, and tensions that develop overtime?
FINECUT (30m)
DEADLINE: Upload FINECUT_name to Kaltura Media Gallery by 23:59 Sunday 6 June 2021
After you have submitted a draft of your thesis text, we will hold a final CRIT session to view a fine cut of your thesis film. If you are working in other modalities, discuss with your supervisor how to share your work during this session. We will not be using P2P for this assignment, so we ask that you load directly to the Kaltura Media Gallery. Name your file “FINECUT_name”.
Following the rough cut screening, students should revisit their footage to find complimentary material that may have been initially dismissed or undervalued. Opening and closing scenes should also be integrated. Scenes should demonstrate an effort to address the various points of feedback previously obtained as well as macro-level feedback from the scene compilation. That said, this is the last opportunity to experiment with any new ideas before final submission. This fine cut should be as close as possible to the final vision of your film, all scenes and elements placed in the intended structure. It should have a title and any essential intertitles and subtitles. End credits as well as finishing details are not a priority at this stage. You should plan to address these in your ‘final cut’, i.e., your final complete thesis.
Abstract: Rather than a metacommentary, you will submit your Thesis Abstract (200 words max). As noted in the Additional Resources page, your abstract should address your thesis as a whole, so both your text and AV outputs. This will provide a more comprehensive understanding of your thesis project and what elements you may be addressing elsewhere. As an aid, here is an excerpt from Laura Ogden’s abstract: The resulting thesis comprises a written text and ethnographic film, which explore discourse and practice, respectively. The text juxtaposes the visions of education among two main groups of actors – school staff and reform-team members – and describes the result of their intersection across three main reform components: language policy, curriculum content, and pedagogy. The film describes how actors appropriate, enact, and resist reform policy in their work, including how the conditions of their respective working environments and the communication of the reform shape their perception of it.