John Stenzel
English 180, Fall 2005
Course home

Journal Exercise 5--Film Fun

Due Saturday Dec 10, noon; e-mailed to me, jastenzel@ucdavis.edu, with your house name in the subject line. You may also print it out and slide it under my office door, 379 Voorhies, by Friday at 5 PM. As usual, under no circumstances may you submit it to English Department staff downstairs.

I encourage you to do the "research" for this exercise as soon as possible, and get it done sooner rather than later. [The only exception would be those folks who choose to wait for the Narnia movie to be released. More on that to be announced in a future class.]

I want you to procure a film version of one of the works we read this fall--it can be anything from a Disney fairy tale to Jim Carrey's Lemony Snicket compilation--and watch it, keeping track of your reactions to the filmed version. In particular, you should do the following:

As with other writing, use the present tense to describe what happens in these films [for example, "Mary is not sallow-faced at the start, nor does she change much in the course of her stay at Misselthwaite"], and don't get too tangled up in minutiae of comparison between the written version and the filmed version--you can make some specific points that illustrate your generalization, and then take your analysis to the next level. No whining allowed, even if you hate what happened. Also: as I mentioned in class, if you have access to a child of appropriate age, consider watching the video with the child, and quizzing him / her about it as well.

Have some fun with this--but please read your journal entry through aloud before sending it. This doesn't have to be super-polished prose, but elsewhere in the "exercises" section of the website you'll find sentence guidelines and some editing demos that might help you improve the effectiveness of everything you write.