First Day

I hope there was no confusion about the first assignment. I did not post it to the blog (I thought I had), but it was posted, along with every other upper school assignment, at the "Summer Assignments" link that was on the MPH home page.

For the first day of class, I'm going over those assignments (and possibly looking at some trailers to help you see how yours did or didn't really fit the form) and showing you part of two movies, Star Wars (A New Hope) and Hidden Fortress. Today you'll learn new terms to keep track of and, I hope, some things you hadn't considered when looking at film. Pretty much every day in this class should be like that.

For the next class, your assignments are:
One writing assignment on personal viewing history; you can see that on the link at right.
Reading: A handout about some of the earliest films [as per the note above, don't read the handout yet; do read the Ebert pieces] and, in the book Awake in the Dark, brief essays on Star Wars (p. 341) and on Ebert's lifetime of film viewing (p. 387).