Guide to Clip Analysis Exam

On Tuesday, January 29, you will take a short clip analysis exam.  The following handout is a guide to the exam format and the terms you’ll need to know in order to successfully complete the exam.

Exam Format
The exam will follow a short essay format.  Please bring a blue book.  The exam will proceed as follows:
 

• I will screen three short clips from class films.  The clips will represent scenes that we have either viewed or discussed in class.
• After I screen each clip twice, you will have ten minutes to identify the clip and write a one- to two-paragraph analysis of that clip in your blue book.  Do not summarize the clip; rather, focus on how specific formal elements advance themes, shape viewers’ interpretations, or forward the narrative. You will need to concentrate on one or two formal elements of the clip; don't try to discuss them all.  Successful exams will demonstrate depth of analysis, with detailed discussions of how particular techniques function.
• Each clip response is worth ten points, with one point for correct identification and 9 for analysis.

Terms
Although you do not have to define terms in your exam, your discussion of each clip should draw on concepts of formal film analysis presented in Bordwell and Thompson’s Film Art.  You’ll need to have a working knowledge of the following concepts:

Form: patterns of repetition and difference within a film
Narrative:  plot vs. story, cause and effect as method of narrative development, exposition
Mise-en-scene: setting, costume, make-up, lighting (direction, quality, source), performance (figure movement and behavior)

Sample Clip Analysis

Although the following example does not focus on one of our class films, it does provide a model of how one can analyze a clip in terms both visual and narrative terms.  The writer discusses the chase scene from D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.  Throughout the analysis, the writer connects particular technical elements with an overall effect:  to draw a parallel between a Black male and an animal.
 

There are a number of different elements of this clip that associate Gus (the black man) with a beast.  Mise-en-scene wise, the manner in which Gus creeps hunched over as he first pursues the young girl associates him with a crawling animal.  Secondly, the use of the iris effect which encloses both Gus and the squirrel and the manner in which the editing cuts back and forth between the two furthers the association between Gus and a beast.  The manner in which the squirrel paws and ravenously devours the nut in its hand is a thematic match for what Gus would like to do to the young white girl.  Another fantastic shot, that of Gus emerging from the darkness beneath a tangled tree, suggests Gus’s evil desire.  He is emerging from darkness—his desires are dark.  The tangled tree limbs hover over Gus’s head as if a projection of the twisted thoughts he harbors.  The shedding of elements of Gus’s costume, piece by piece, also helps to convey the “de-civilization” of the black man.  His desire is so ugly it won’t even fit in white man’s clothing.