Evaluation rubric.
Here's how I'll evaluate your final movie review:
- is the language clear and direct?
- is the review well-organized?
- is the review visually interesting?
- does the review do a good job of contextualizing the movie?
- have you effectively related the movie to the themes, motifs, ideas, and issues of post-apocalyptic narrative that we've discussed in class?
Composing the review:
Here are some tips on how to compose your movie review:
- start the final review with a fresh, snappy, scintillating, compelling lede - - nota bene: wait until after you've written the full review to write your lede! (10 - 20 words)
- use your second and third paragraphs to contextualize the movie. This should include: the title, release date, relevant background info for the movie; a very brief plot summary of the movie (no more than 200 words); note and comment on any important cinematic features of the movie - - acting, mise-en-scene, camera work, special effects, etc. (400 words total)
- use three or four paragraphs to relate your movie to themes, motifs, ideas, and issues in the post-apocalyptic narratives we've read/discussed in class. Use examples from both your movie and our texts to develop and illustrate your points. Use our class texts to deepen and enrich the analysis of your movie. These are critical paragraphs in your review because they will show me what you're learning from our texts and how useful (or not) these texts are in reading other narratives etc. None of these paragraphs should be over 250 words. (1000 words total)
- your review should be a collaborative effort. You can assign different parts of the review to different club members or groups of members to draft. However, you should all contribute to editing the final draft. To aid this collaborative process, you should set up a schedule - - who is to draft what by when? when will you start editing the draft? etc. Use the forums on our movie club site to draft and edit your review.
- use multimedia to make your review visually interesting. In WordPress (the platform we're using to publish your reviews), you can insert images, video clips, etc. (We'll review this in class.) Use this capability to both illustrate your review and to make it visually attractive.
- when you've finalized the draft of your review, copy and paste the review from the forum where you've been working on it to the "post" assigned to you on our site. (We'll review this in class.) Title the review with something that will make a reader want to click on your post.