Thinking for Yourself
Now that I’ve left you with numerous recommendations and my personal opinions, it is now time for you to create your own. Have you ever been asked for your thoughts on a show and your mind goes seemingly blank? This post is designed to help you overcome this and organize your personalized opinions for the future. Or in simpler terms, my goal is to assist you in forming your own movie/TV show reviews.
So what makes a good film review? Well, according to Glide Magazine, you should shape your review off of tangible evidence you can point out directly from the show. To take this a step forward, I would encourage you to start with the basics. Think about the plot and what sticks out to you. How easily were you able to determine the next event while watching the film for the first time?
Another easy path for a review is to form a base with the characters. Think about the purpose that each character serves in the film and how well each were developed throughout the course of the plot. The folks over at Pen and the Pad encourage the critique to look deeper than the role each character plays and also analyze how well the acting portrays the emotions of the characters. How well did the actors pull at your heart strings and what emotions did they leave you with? If the answer to these questions are unclear, it’s pretty likely the acting wasn’t exactly convincing.
Next, let’s think about some more background details that may be less obvious than the plot. This is where I would go back to dramatic pieces of the film and take note of any ‘add-ons.’ This could be anything from dramatic music, dimmed lighting, to intentional silence. These things are easy to miss the first time through but play such a large role in creating the scene and mood of the piece. In director David Green’s interview with Fast Company, he makes an interesting point in using music that is contrasting to the tone of the scene. He also focuses some on editing, another key detail when analyzing film.
Lastly, I urge you to think back to your initial emotions and reactions to when you had first watched or even heard of the film. Did something about the title make you feel a certain way? What aspects of the movie or TV show stick out to you the most? Then think back to what left this imprint on your mind and how the director created this effect. I like to think about a film in terms of a rhetorical situation, meaning I think about the ethos, pathos, and logos in different points of the show. How did the characters motives and practices change throughout the movie?
With this brain-dump of information, I hope you are better able to understand the insight to my review processes and a new way to develop yours. I also hope that you come out of these posts with a few new shows you’d like to try or a new lens over the genre of crime drama. Happy binging, my friends.