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As we all know, the independent study for IB film is a monstrously complex beast of a summative assessment task. For those of you who have read some of my earlier posts, in particular my reviews of the 2013 examiners’ report, the section devoted to the independent study made very strong recommendations that IB film teachers try to scaffold the learning of their students so that they don’t have to tackle understanding the ins and outs of this task while at the same time producing a research paper as rigourous in its demands as the extended essay. So this is where I begin with my students, usually in semester two, which is why I’m sharing this now. The first stage is for student to begin to understand how to format a twin columnar screenplay for the Independent study, and the degree of detail and quality of description that scores well. So here it is, mostly this is self explanatory and uses online source material for students to analyse. PLease feel free to use as is or to modify per your own requirements.
Documentary screenplays – reverse engineering task You have a choice of extracts to work with
- Jack Cardiff on Shooting BLACK NARCISSUS (Powell & Pressburger, 1947)
- Martin Scorsese talks movies
- 5 Gangster Film – Martin Scorsese – A Personal Journey Through American Movies (1995)
- Thelma Schoonmaker Interview on Editing, Scorsese &; The Red Shoes
What you’re required to do is to analyse the use of audio and visual material for the first five minutes from one of these extracts. Using the the documentary screenplay template I emailed you for this purpose you should describe the visual material in the left column, use as much detail a you can, and in the right column, match the descriptions of this to a description of the audio and transcript of any ‘to camera’ or VO speech (for dialogue just use the term sounds from extract). Remember in screenplays one page equals one minute of screen time. Using appropriate terminology, will help you be concise, if you don’t something or can’t remember a term you should look it up.
Click the link for a page containing an example of how I made a breakdown for the following extract, and an assessment rubric from the first minute or so of
This is what you are to do for one of the four film extracts above.
