How to Take Notes During a Film: Film Critiquing

Video Transcript

"Hi there! I'm Amy Wallace on behalf of Expert Village and today we are going to be discussing how to be a good movie critic or more importantly, how to start out as a movie critic with a budget. Some of the tools that you will need in order to be a good film critic is fairly basic. It is going to sound pretty obvious but you are going to want to have a good notebook with. You are not only going to want to have this with you when you are viewing the film, but afterwards as well. It is always good to reflect after a film, more on that later and you are going to want to make notes at any point so it is just good to carry it with you if you have the chance and always have a good pen that works as well. I have another friend who likes to actually take her sketch book with her and this is in case if she sees any certain scenes that she finds interesting or flattering and she will very quickly just sketch. It doesn't have to be perfect but she will sketch what it is about the camera angles or the scenes that she particularly likes. It is a different way of doing things but it is definitely recommended. If you are going to the cinema, it may be a little dark in there. As I mentioned before, don't use this all the time but you might want to have a little bit of a light on you just to shine on your book when you are making any notes. I like to use it only in extreme circumstances. If you are watching a very dark movie say like Miami Vice which is very blue and dark, you are not going to have any bright scenes where you can make your little notes at or when they do come along, you will have forgotten. So what I like to do is cover up about half of it so it just shows up on my page. That way you can make sure you are not bothering anyone around you which is very important. Anyways other than that, you might want to have a computer for making your notes and also possibly for transcribing any sound files or when you are going to be publishing yourself, which we will discuss later. "