| Instructor: Philip Holden, Associate Professor, English Language and Literature,
NUS |
Week 13(1): Reading Filmic Texts--Red Sorghum
Read the following texts:
Chatman, "What Novels Can Do that Films Can't, (and Vice Versa)"
If you did not come to the showing of Zhang Yimou's Red Sorghum, ensure that you have watched it via IVLE.
Preparatory Questions
In this session, I'd like to return to a consideration of how we might read film as a narrative. Revisiting Turner's "Film Languages" would also be useful, especially if your project contains work on a visual narrative. Choose one of the following questions and post your response on the IVLE bulletin board.
1. Type out a paragraph of the Chatman essay which you find difficult to understand, problematic, or which you disagree with. Add a short commentary of your own in which you explore your reaction to this paragraph.
2. Isolate one small scene which appears in both the film and the novel. Re-examine the scene using IVLE, with the text of the novel in hand. Using Chatman to help you theorise, indicate how the different media (film versus novel) create different effects on the reader/spectator.
3. Choose one incident which Zhang left out of the movie which you think should have been filmed, and give a brief summary of how you would film it. In a second paragraph, indicate your reasons for choosing the episode and for filming it in your chosen way.
4. Analyse how a short passage of the film achieves an intended effect concentrating on one of the technical elements Turner refers to in his essay. For example, you might Re-read Turner's section on "The camera" (59-64) and describe any particular element(s) of shots or camera work (e.g. close up, long shot) which seem important to you and indicate the effect they produce.
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