Critical Reflection #1 – Kamara Duruaku

How Can We Talk About and Understand Film?

Prior to starting this senior project, Nate and I hadn’t really done much constructive and thoughtful criticism of the films that we watched. Generally, our conversation revolved around whether or not films were “good” or “bad.” We had never taken the time to dive into some of the themes a movie explores, regardless of how good or bad, the film was. With this project, we’ve been working towards acknowledging what a film does, aside from being “good” or “bad.” Additionally, I usually had not seen many of the films that he would bring up around me, so this project is an opportunity for us to watch the same films, and be able to have actual discussions about them. So far, this has been working for us. Many of the movies that we have watched have been thoughtful enough to the point in which we can actually incorporate our personal experiences into our discussions. This, in my opinion, has been the highlight of our project so far, simply because it allows for more complex discussions that can allow us to enjoy a movie for more than just its cinematography and music choices, etc. Furthermore, the sources that we have used–which are usually film critique videos–have been a format for us to discuss our films. Most of our conversations were short and never led to anything deeper than what we liked and disliked, but with this project, we’ve been very successful in drawing out our conversations with talking points, similar to how film critiques do. I think at this point, something that Nate and I should focus on is finding a real, unique format for our podcast. Part of our “advertising” for this podcast was it being very casual, where we’d steer off track at times, but so far we haven’t stayed true to that advertising.