Director Presentation Assignment

Drawing upon notions of auteurism that we discussed in class, create a 3 minute multi-media project that explores the stylistic tendencies and recurring thematic motifs of a specific director NOT focused on in our class.

The director I choose is An Lee, the director of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Your task is to write a 4-page essay about him.
Director Presentation Assignment Details
Demonstrate how your chosen Director’s films reveal his/her personal voice.
Be sure to include the following:
The Director’s background history. Where he/she comes from, films directed, notable awards, and importance in film history.
Identify at least three concrete stylistic traits of the director, with visual evidence supporting your claim. These should be distinct characteristics – traits that make him/her different from other directors.
Discuss at least two recurring themes in the director’s work.
Draw upon specific examples from at least two different films in the director’s oeuvre
You need to find least 5 reliable sources by yourself and cite them in MLA style.
I also uploaded a MLA_Requirement.pdf and you must refer to it and write 100% correct in-text citations and “Works Cited” Page. Failure to use correct citations will fail me in the essay since my professor was extremely picky. After receiving your paper, I will check every in-text citation and make sure they are from the right page, NOT fake citation. If you do not use correct citations, I may request a full refund. I don’t hope this to happen so please be responsible.
Students can present on any director they wish.
The presentation needs to combine both visual material (images or video) and written/spoken material. Students can draw upon any manner of resources in creating their multimedia presentation. These include:
Still images of the director
Frame grabs from his/her films
Key excerpts from interviews with the director
Short sequences from films
Storyboards or production stills
Using your computer camera to create a “video lecture”
Tips and Suggestions
It is good to keep the project description broad and open so that you have creative freedom, but don’t rush through this.  You should put the same amount of time into this project that you would put into a comprehensive final paper – I’ll be grading of evidence of effort as much as anything else.
Decide early on which platform you want to use and play around with it. You don’t want to be troubleshooting at the last minute. Programs like Prezi and iMovie are easily learned and used, but any technical process will inevitably run into problems.
Pay attention to aesthetics and formatting. This is a presentation: it should look nice.
Use large image files to ensure image quality. If you do a Google image search, you can use “Search Tools” and “Size” to make sure you get large picture files (suggestion is larger than 800×600)
On Apple computers you can take a Screen Shot “picture” of your whatever is on your screen by hitting shift-command-3. This is an easy way to get still frames from movies.
You can bring still images or screen shots into Photoshop to add analytic information to the image – perhaps you want to add text, or draw an arrow to direct the viewer’s attention, etc.
Only use video clips if you are willing to put in the work to use them properly. If you are going to connect to Youtube videos, you’ll likely find you don’t want to use the entire video. The easiest way to get Youtube videos with the precise clips that you want to use is to rip the Youtube video trim it in iMovie or another program, then re-upload to your own Youtube account.
A discussion post is available in this module, where students can post questions they have about the assignment or the creative process, as well as resources they’ve discovered, etc. Hopefully it will be a useful creative repository.
Here is a very good example of a video essay, but it much longer than the 3 minute limit we have in this class.  Notice, the professional quality of image, sound, as well as the content (what we learn from the video essay).
This example was written, compiled and edited by student Soraya Sélène
at the UCLA School of Theater Film & Television
as a final project for critical studies course
FTV 219: Film & Society