A2 Film - Easter Holiday Work

Please complete essays fro both of these questions. exam conditions. allow sixty minutes. I have included the examiners comments. Please read them and try to follow the advice in your actual answer.

1. ‘One of the great pleasures of popular cinema is surrendering to the film experience and allowing ourselves to be emotionally manipulated.’ Discuss this statement with reference to the films you have studied for this topic.
From the examiners report...
The best responses did the following:
A detailed and sophisticated knowledge and understanding of the films studied, particularly their affective characterisitcs
A sound appreciation of the variety of ways in which emotional response in the spectator is generated – with the ability to offer detailed analysis of different ways in which the popular film examples chosen manipulate response
An ability to develop an argument that focuses very directly on the pleasure of surrendering to manipulation. A variety of examples will be very effective in demonstrating this. The detail of the argument may be on whether we “allow ourselves” to be manipulated or controlled by the mechanisims at work within the film.
The argument may be extended, burrowing deeper into questions of complicity and questioning wheter in fact, we have the capacity as spectators to simultaneously stand inside and outside the experience.

2.’Emotional response to a popular film is dependent on the ways in which we are made to identify with particular characters.’ How far has this been your experience?
Again, from the examiner...
A detailed and sophisticated knowledge and understanding of the films studied, particularly their affective characterisitcs
A sound appreciation of the variety of ways in which emotional response in the spectator is generated – with the ability to offer a detailed account of character construction and the ways in which systems of identification are set up.
An ability to develop an argument demonstrating the extent to which identification with character is a key component of the pleasure the spectator takes from the film viewing experience.
This argument may be extended by means of comparison with other factors that determine the spectator’s emotional response, including detailed reference to macro or micro features of film form.