Week Two: Texts

Last week we talked about the Act of Reading with a focus on the nature of the reader. This week we will discuss texts, the nature of what we read. Next week we will look at authors and issues in authorship.

Writing Assignment for Week Two: 

During last week's class you were asked to respond to several questions designed to elicit some representation of how you construct your identity. You were asked to write a paragraph about your defining characteristics, and a paragraph about your lineage (defined as whatever you see as the continuing line of humans of which you are a part, with some humans preceding you and some coming after you but all along the line linked by a common attribute which is prominent in the construction of your personal sense of self).  You were asked to write a paragraph that discussed what you were standing on, that is the personalities, ideas, ideals or ideologies perhaps that constitutes the ground on which you stand as a person. And finally I asked you to consider and write about how these strong traits of your identity form your assumptions. What prejudices come with these traits that effect and filter what you perceive through your point of view? 

If you write all four of these paragraphs you will have a statement that begins to describe your position in the mediascape. That position does not need to be fixed, but some identity traits may be very powerful in shaping your experience of the world. Such traits as gender, class, ethnicity, religion and nationality can often be very strong in determining how we tell our own stories and how we read the stories of others. There may easily be other factors that are equally important to your identity and experience.

Homework:
You are asked to write an account, inspired by the approach that Gilbert Seldes takes to Chaplin and the genre of slapstick comedy, about an artist (author) or work that you find particularly interesting and important to you. You are especially encouraged to write about an art form or genre that many people might disparage or ignore or fail to see as important. Make your argument for why you think this work should be considered and appreciated for the qualities that you see in it. Make your references as specific as you can. Use description to describe the work and some of its contexts. Please post your account on your blog by next week's class. Try to read some of the accounts written by others in the class. You can follow the links to their blogs on the lists of blogs for this semester on the course blog. 

  

Week Thirteen: Remix Culture and Intellectual Property

This morning we will be visiting the current exhibit at he Selby Galleries, Evan Roth: Intellectual Property Donor. We will meet in our usual classroom and attend the gallery show for an hour. We will return to our classroom at 10:15 for an assessment of some of the reading skills we have worked on this semester.

The reading assignment for next week is to read Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage. The writing assignment is to compose your own page incorporating an insight or observation you have about the current mediascape to add to McLuhan's book. Post your page on your blog by next week's class, Nov. 25. We will review the pages in class and meet with David Houle the college's resident futurist.

Please bring your laptop to class today.

Week Eleven: Reverse Adaptation

Last week we looked at the adaptation of graphic novels into film. This week we are looking at this process in reverse.  Select a screenplay to read from the course resource page. Please select one for which, ideally, you have not seen the movie. Read the screenplay without watching the movie.






Writing Assignment: Select a significant scene from the screenplay you have chosen. Adapt this scene into a one to two page comic. Remember this is not a storyboard, please use any of the techniques unique to comics to try to energize your story. The completed work does not have to be produced in a finished form. The quality of the art is not important to this assignment, what is important is how you break down the story and shape into sequential art. The primary point is to focus on communicating what you think are the important threads that run through the scene in the screenplay. Please post your comic on your blog. 

After you make your comic you can watch the movie for your screenplay.

Looking ahead to the next assignment your will be asked to watch three movies from a list of directors on the syllabus. Discuss how the three films embody a point of view of the director as author, should you believe that such a point of view exists. Alternatively you can argue against the authorial point of view as a way to understand and read film.

Week Ten: Adapting the Graphic Novel

Reading Assignment: Please read the graphic novel Ghostworld by Daniel Clowes by next week's class. In class next week we will consider this graphic novel, the movie made from it, and the issues of adapting graphic novels into films. 

Project Assignment: Before next week's class please adapt one of the partial scenes from Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing into a small film (cell phone cameras preferred) or audio play. You can reset the play, add to the play, subtract from the original script all that you need to in order to get your vision of the script to work. The idea is to take a thread that runs through the text and emphasize that thread in your adaptation.

The scenes that I am recommending that you choose from in making your adaptation are the following, there is a separate PDF for each scene that focuses on just the selection from the script of the play that you need.

Much Ado The Song

Act II, Scene 2 Don John conspires with Borachio

Act II, Scene 3 Benedick talks about not falling in love

Act III Scene 1 Hero and Ursula entrap Beatrice

Act IV, last part of Scene 1, Beatrice "If I were a man" speech

Act IV scene 2, Constable Dogberry interrogates Borachio and Conrad



To help your thinking about this project, here is Hollywood Madam's Three Laws of Adaptation which discusses what she considers the three most important criteria when translating a book into a film.