How to write a film review

Read a book before writing a book review, and ask for a movie before writing a film review. You can't just watch movies, but also watch the doorway. Only by making full preparations can we write excellent film reviews.

How to watch a movie?

Everyone likes watching movies, but not everyone can.

To write a good film review, we need to think of some preset questions for ourselves before watching the movie for the first time. These questions may be very basic, for example,

What is the relationship between the title of the film and the content of the story?

Why does the movie start like this?

Why did it end like this?

Go to the movies with questions, and at the same time, record the places that move you and the doubts that arise during the movie, and see if you can give the answers to these questions at the first time.

If you want to write a good film review, you can't just watch the movie once, because it is impossible to capture all the details of the movie only once. We need to watch it again and again, twice, three times or even more.

And when we watch the movie for the second time, we can start thinking about some deeper problems, for example,

How is the narrative of the film constructed?

In what order are these stories told?

Are the characters in the play real? In what ways?

The second time, the third time or even more, you should take notes as detailed as possible, not only the characters and contents in the film, but also some photography forms, angles, lighting and so on. These are the writing materials for our follow-up film reviews.

Remember: repetition is the basis of understanding movies.

Determine the theme

Ok, now that I have watched the movie several times and made some notes, what should I do next?

When we review our notes, the most important thing is to determine the theme of the movie and think about what the movie is about. The theme of the film is not the central idea and enlightenment we summarized when reading the article, but many concepts used in the film to help people understand the plot of the film. For example:

Who is the protagonist?

Why is the story conveyed by the film incoherent?

What does the relationship between characters and others mean?

While reviewing movies and sorting out notes, we sort out some themes about movies from this information, which is the basis of our next film review.

Writing film reviews will inevitably involve some professional terms and contents, such as the connection between movies and other arts, the scene scheduling of movies, the editing of movies, the sound in movies and so on. These four aspects are our professional perspectives in writing film reviews. When we have established a good theme, we can consider writing film reviews from these aspects.

3. How to write a film review?

After watching the movie, the notes have been made and the theme has been determined. Finally, it's time to formally write. In his book, Timothy J. corrigan introduced six methods of analyzing movies and the writing methods that should be paid attention to when writing film reviews.

Six methods of analyzing movies

Historical method: This is one of the most widely used methods in film and television criticism. When writing in this way, we can start from the perspective of historical development according to their position in the history of movies. We need to consider whether the historical background can help us explain the narrative or technical skills in movies, or which part of history is suitable for our writing.

Ethnic films: In addition to historical methods, it is also a common perspective to write film reviews from the characteristics of ethnic groups and cultures. A film must have its cultural environment. Putting the film under the historical conditions at that time and learning from strange cultures will help us to understand and understand the social environment reflected by the film.

Genre: Classify movies according to the pattern of form and content. This type of distinction is an effective way to examine how a film organizes stories and audience expectations, such as science fiction movies, musical movies, westerns and so on. , usually classified in this way.

Author's Theory: Author's criticism is a widely accepted method of film criticism, which connects the film with the director or protagonist of the film, because each director or actor has his own strong style and their films have their own similar characteristics. This way of film creation is to analyze the actors, directors, screenwriters and other creators as "authors", so it is called "author theory".

Types of formalism: the analysis method of discussing the style and structure of movies and how movies are organized is the type of formalism. This method focuses on the mode of the film, such as how the film starts and ends, how the lens changes and how the editing changes. Through the analysis of these technologies, their effects on thin films are discussed.

Ideology: This is to discuss the orientation of movies from the perspective of values. A movie must have the message it wants to convey. What does this information mean? What does it mean? What nerves did these values stimulate the audience? When using this method for film analysis, we can't limit ourselves to the film content. The best way is to link ideological analysis with the relationship between characters and plots, and between shots and characters.

2. Appropriate written expression

When we are writing film reviews, why do we always feel that writing film reviews is not a film review?

Because every moviegoer has his own views and understanding of movies, he may unconsciously bring out these feelings in the process of writing film reviews. As soon as the vomit or love mode is started, he can't stop immediately, and the last wonderful film review may become a mediocre running account.

When writing film reviews, you should pay special attention not to reveal your personal feelings in the article, because it will make your article very unconvincing. Once you show this attitude in the article, it will soon be seen through by readers, who will immediately think that the film critic is too biased to evaluate objectively. We need to analyze and describe everything that the film presents to us as objectively as possible, rather than our feelings and thoughts after watching the film.

The writing of film reviews, like other articles, should be concise and vivid, especially with clear structure and clear theme. At the same time, in the process of writing, constantly thinking and expanding their own themes and ideas, enriching the content of the article.

Finally, revise and improve our article, check whether it is logical and whether the arguments are sufficient, and a wonderful film review will be completed.

Movies are particularly beautiful things in life. We give ourselves to an unknown world in the dark. It took us two hours to experience a life we had never experienced before. We draw strength from movies, laugh and cry. We need and should enjoy it in many ways, including enjoying the fun of thinking, explaining and writing about the viewing experience.