Use this link to retrieve the excerpt from A Short Guide to Writing About Film. Use it to refresh your memory on key film terms and to read a few sample papers. 
Full Citation:
Corrigan, Timothy. A Short Guide to Writing About Film. New York: Longman, 1998. 34-77.
I found this extremely interesting. It makes me realize how much the world has changed generation to generation. These advertisements made smoking cigarettes out to be the love of a man’s life. They made the impression that smoking cigarettes was the manly thing to do. It is also interesting that the cigarette were originally branded for women until it was associated with men in the 50s. No matter what kind of man you were the Marlboro man seemed to be directed towards you. The advertisement we saw in class also made smoking cigarettes into the masculine thing. They stated that if you smoked a cigarette you were the kind of guy that worked on a car, smoking also was associated with any type of working, and they even said that you could never forget to smoke a cigarette although you could forget to eat. Marlboro man then transformed into the cowboy, the ultimate man. The kind of man that could smoke a cigarette, was rugged, and tough. I loved that at the end of the Marlboro ad they stated that the two men they were advertising had lung cancer, proving that the ads really took a toll on their lungs.
With all the commercials against smoking, it is odd to see an ad from the earlier integration of cigarettes into the market because it is such a contrast between now and then. The commercial associates smoking with the everyday life of being a man. I man likes to work on his car, and so he has to smoke while he does it. It seemed rather redundant to be the number of times the actor repeated that he needed to smoke, however, that could be because commercials today are so different. They are less explicit, but they still impact us as viewers and consumers. This commercial was saying that to be a man, you have to smoke Marlboro reds, and to experience what the actor was experiencing, and to take part in the lifestyle, you have to smoke. If you don’t, you’ll never be a Marlboro man, which itself is something that isn’t strictly defined. After all, a Marlboro man is a man who fixes his car while smoking, a man who rides a horse and shoots a gun like a cowboy while smoking, etc. Any sort of man can be a Marlboro man, if only there is a Marlboro cigarette in his mouth.
“A Short Guide to Writing About Film” is incredibly informative, a great tool I will use in developing my essay. It thoroughly explains mise-en-scene, and goes through so many various ways in which one can pick apart a scene of a film, or even just a particular shot. Upon reading this, I now have a much better feel for what kinds of stills to take and use for writing my essay. The “Back to the Future” falling-off-of-a-clock shot is so symbolic, and really gets the different time themes across to the audience. And the bit about “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” as well as mise-en-scene and realism got me thinking back to my high school contemporary literature, here we discussed something called “magical realism” that is surprisingly present in many different films. Magical realism is basically when something profound and unbelievable occurs, but the characters in the film/novel/play/etc. act as though it is NOT that big of a deal. It is a very cool concept. If memory serves, this happens in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (great still by the way, reminds me of The Defiant Ones, with Cullen and Joker) where the real people are not very surprised to see real-life cartoons. Mainly, I feel I have taken away a much better sense of powerful shots after reading this writing piece. But I have also realized how common it is for the average moviegoer to overlook so many aspects of mise-en-scene, (I will try to take myself away from this comfort zone when analyzing the films we view for class, as I have tried to do in the past) such as music and sounds. I love music, ans I may choose this as a part of my thesis for my first film essay for this class. Lastly, the sample essay was enlightening, as it opened up my eyes to some different ways to write.
oops disregard my first comment, i put it in the wrong thread