This is a creative assignment, geared to both get you to start interacting with your film and using some of the editing skills you will need to craft your final essay. It will consist of 2 parts:
1. The video project.
The Pecha-Kucha is a unique form of presentation that takes a strict approach to using PowerPoint: there are 20 slides, each slide stays on screen for 20 seconds and automatically advances; therefore, each presentation is exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds long.
Invented in Japan (Pecha Kucha means “chatter” in Japanese), the presentation form has become extremely popular for (strangely enough) the freedom that comes from creating meaning when given very strict parameters. As such, the Videographic Pecha-Kucha aims for similar goals: practice your editing skills, find new angles and approaches regarding your film and analysis, explore possibilities of interpretation, create meaning by juxtaposing images and sound, among others.
Steps for this assignment:
Choose 10 clips from your movies
Each clip should last around 6 seconds
Organize your 10 clips in iMovie or your chose editing program
Add a sound effect to accompany your 10-clip sequence (it could be a voice over of your voice analyzing something, dialogue fragments from another part of the film, music, a quote from your sources, etc.). The goal is to create a dialogue between sound and images.
These are professional examples of Pecha-Kucha:
1) Vampire Diaries / Imitation of Life
http://videographicessay.org/works/videographic-essay/vampire-diaries–imitation-of-life-pechakucha
By marrying images from The Vampire Diaries (The CW, 2009) with dialogue from Imitation of Life(Douglas Sirk, U.S.A., 1959), Warner draws historical connections between issues of racial representation found in the recent television program with those in Sirk’s classic melodrama.
2) The Big Sleep PechaKucha, Nat Deyo
http://videographicessay.org/works/videographic-essay/the-big-sleep-pechakucha-1
Nat Deyo’s PechaKucha arranges repeated instances of Bogart walking through a door in The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, U.S.A., 1946) juxtaposed against that film’s famous dialogue between Bogart and Bacall in which they discuss horses, the racetrack, and maybe something else.
2. Written commentary (organized in order of the movie clips).
Some of the written information you should include in this first draft is:
o What is your thesis?
o What are the main points you want to communicate?
o What do you want the viewer to notice?
o What emotions do you want to evoke in your viewer?
o What visual or cinematic evidence are you providing to support your thesis?
o Include the screenshots that will help your argument
o Think of the different disciplines and the lens through which we can interpret the images.
o Are you adding important bibliographical quotes or quotes from the film?
o Are there any scenes or shots you would like to juxtapose? Why?
o Any other significant ideas or information for your argument.