| Christo's Valley Curtain |
My summary on Christo's Valley Curtain definitely qualifies as one of my most interesting assignments. I have written many papers in my academic career, but I have never written one that solely focused on descriptively summarizing media, especially a film! So, I take the holistic rubric as my backbone for this honest reflection on my film summary project.
Rhetorical Knowledge
I must confess that after I watched Christo's Valley Curtain the first time, I could not conceive any idea to commence my writing. I usually have writer's block at the beginning of each assignment, but I believe the mind stirs it up in hopes of giving the writer a false impression about instantaneous analysis. In other words, I mean that the writer might think that the he or she will hyper analyze and suddenly the ideas write themselves on paper, but not everyone is a creative writing magician. So, the problem for me, as also with most other writers, lies in organization. I usually think of the act of writing as a pile of Legos that I must re-organize and piece together to construct something insightful. Christo's Valley Curtain is a thirty minute short documentary film; every minute may not be summarized. When writing my first draft, I faced this thirty minute giant by cutting him up into specific scenes, briskly summarizing the gist of each scene, and trying to create natural transitions from scene to scene. However, there lies an issue with such a methodology; it becomes a repetitive listing of events, such that transitions between similar scenes will create boring and recursive syntax. To fix my problem, I worked on my kairos, syntax, and flow. I watched the film again and weeded out all the unimportant scenes and details of the film in my writing, while I synthesized other key-note scenes. This methodology reduced any hectic and abrasive transitioning between scenes; thus, my writing gained natural syntax flow.
Critical and Creative Thinking
Well, let's be honest, we all are brutally biased sometimes, and we often don't account for potentially offensive, stereotypical judgement in our writing. At least in my case, once I realized that the main character in the film is a Frenchman, I felt an excruciating temptation to include a subtle, yet outlandish, impression in my writing about the French being snotty and lazy. These assumptions are logical fallacies; they qualify as generalizations and ad hominem arguments, which should never be included in a summary. These issues usually occur when the I, as the writer, am not "showing" what happened, but I am rather "telling" what happened by including qualifying statements instead of descriptive syntax. The creative notion on the technique of "showing" rather than "telling" also played a vital role in my writing. Personally, "telling" type of writing always tempts me to jump to conclusions and fire quick simple statements. However, "showing" type of writing challenges me as a writer to reflect and to paint a scene or a complex idea using creative description and vivid diction.
Genre Knowledge
Different types of writing require different uses of language, tone, and syntax. A simple example that defines this notion may be a comparison between my film summary and a research lab summary. When writing a research lab summary, the writer is persuaded to use a complex or compound syntax so that a didactic and explanatory tone may serve the purpose of presenting technical procedures and data. Other aspects of research lab writing include maintaining a monotonous passive voice and a robotic diction. By using passive voice, the reader must have the impression that a ghost preformed the experiment because no proper noun commits an action; research genre writing only implements passive voice that the reader may focus on the details and the information. On the other hand, writing a film summary requires a style of contained narrative and descriptive writing. To reiterate, the writer must "show" what happened rather then "tell' what happened. The writer develops the tone of a story teller, filled with vivid verbs and lively actions. An active voice helped me shape my film summary into a story-like summary rather than a debriefing. Films are motion pictures that attract the eyes to movement and action, so a film summary must mimic a film screen in directing words into life, action, and movement.
Mechanical Knowledge
I have concerns that my writing may be sometimes infected by a virus called complex sentence-itis. That means I overuse complex sentences to communicate too much information at one time. So, I have been revising my papers, especially my film summary, to fluctuate between the use of simple sentences and complex/compound sentences. Grammar wise, my issue may also include inserting too many participle phrases and extraneous clauses into my writing. This type of cluttered writing may exhaust my readers and dull my tone. Again, I think that film summary writing should be lively, and the use of varied types of punctuation, syntax, and diction must also add vibe to the writings mood and tone. For example, for the my film summary, I tried using words with varied length and compact but powerful sentences. This may only be achieved through constant revising and editing.
image source: http://www.polyvore.com/valley_curtain_1972_signiert_poster/thing?id=21324727
image source: http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=21324727
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