Activity: Screening Sheets

Pamela Krayenbuhl, University of Washington Tacoma

The Screening Sheet is a tool I developed to help engage students in the very specific work of close, analytical moving image analysis. I created this tool for my Introduction to Film Studies students, but with modifications this tool could be repurposed for many lower-division courses. Indeed, a Screening Sheet can help students meet learning objectives in just about any course that depends upon students’ ability to engage with a screening beyond the basics of the plot and main ideas.

Screening Sheets help to level the playing field amongst students, particularly in introductory courses. While we media instructors often take the pedagogical value of screenings for granted, many students have no way of knowing what to write down when we tell them to “take notes” during a screening. Screening Sheets eliminate the mystery and guide all students in how to watch and what to take notes on. Furthermore, Screening Sheets can easily be used to help students draw the connections between a film’s form and its politics/ideological position, leaving them with an artifact to remind them of this as they produce their own media.

Side 1 of a Screening Sheet is meant to be completed during the screening itself; Side 2 is meant to facilitate critical reflection immediately afterwards. Depending on time and class structure, Side 2 can then be used as a transition into immediate post-screening discussion or it can be a starting point for later. Moreover, I encourage my students to use their Side 1s to study for our midterm or final exam, and their Side 2s as models for the kinds of issues they might want to write about in their essays. Some students have even used a single Side 2 as the seed for an argument in such an essay.

Download the activity overview here: Screening Sheet Activity Description

Editing Screening Sheet: Editing-Screening-Sheet

Genre Screening Sheet: Genre-Screening-Sheet

Mise-en-Scene Screening Sheet: Mise-en-Scène-Screening-Sheet

Keywords: analysis, editing, genre, mise-en-scene