Movie Critic For A Day

In this unit, we learned a lot about post production, cinematography, lighting, acting, and more. In my elective course, Ollywood we recently watched the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest directed by Milos Forman. This movie follows the life of a man named Randle Murphy who ends up in a mental institution. Through this experience he learns a lot about the people in the institution and himself. While watching this movie we had to take notes on the acting and the purpose of the film. We also had to pay attention to the lighting and framing choices and how they moved the story. For our Action Project in this unit, we had to act as the film critics Gene Sikel and Roger Ebert. After choosing a partner and movie, I analyzed the film Psycho (1960) and discussed the lighting, angles, acting, and more. Although this Action Project was difficult because of the editing and focus we had to give the movie, I had so much fun making this with my partner, Moriah. I felt like a real film critic and learned about what made a great review. This was a lot different than writing a review because I felt like I could be a little more flexible with what I pointed out and said. I especially enjoyed watching the movie and seeing my reactions change. 

Movie Review: Kill Bill

This term I am taking a course called Ollywood. In this class we study the art of film making. In our first unit we talked about the Pre-Production process which includes the screenplay, the storyboard, location, costume design, props, and more. We discussed screenplays and their different components. We also learned about storyboards and how they're made. Next, we talked about location scouts and how they find the best spots for shooting a movie. Lastly, we studied production design and how production designers make decisions on what props or costumes to use. One Field Experience that we went on was in Lower Wacker. In Lower Wacker we took pictures of different locations while we were assigned a specific movie genre. We had to create a storyboard based on the pictures we took. I created an action movie that had a chase scene. In Ollywood I also wrote a movie review. For this Action Project, we had to choose a movie and analyze the costumes, props, locations, dialogue, and more. I chose to do a movie review on Kill Bill because it's a sick movie. Although this was my first action project in Ollywood, it is so far my favorite. I got a chance to write about one of my favorite movies and be in Roger Elbert's shoes.

In conclusion, I'm glad I got the experience I did during this unit. I've never written a movie review before so it was very challenging at first. Overall, I had so much fun writing this paper because I watched the film several times during the drafting period. I hope I have the opportunity to write many more in the future.