Watching a curated collection of movies each week and Writing Responsive Essays 

I have always had a passion for film and movies, an interest that has flourished throughout my high school years. I knew immediately that I wanted to turn this interest into a Senior Project. While I had originally planned on doing a deep dive study into Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga books and movies, as time went on I came to realize that it would be better for me to expand off that and give myself room to explore film more generally rather than focus on a specific series. For my senior project, I plan on deepening my knowledge and understanding of film by watching a collection of movies and then writing about them in a reflective/personal essay each week. I plan on considering the following essential question: What does film tell us about pop culture and ourselves? Sub-questions include: What makes film a unique and singular medium for communication? How do we as spectators interact with film in comparison to other art forms? How has film evolved? How does film impact us and how do we impact film? And what does film mean to me?

Each week I will explore a different genre, era, or theme of film. I will also have certain weeks dedicated to a particular director or series. Examples might include Women in Horror, Twilight Week, Historical/Period Pieces, Stanley Kubrick Week, or Novel-to-Movie Adaptations. 

In addition to watching the movies, I will conduct background research (on era, genre, direction, acting, etc.) in order to better understand the works and their contexts, as well as their cultural impacts, or what they reflect on the culture of their time.  

I do have previous experience writing about film: last year in my Spanish class I kept a blog where I watched Academy Award winners of the Best Picture awards and then reviewed them. I also took the Personal Essay class last year, which made me realize that I want to explore my own vice as a writer, and that I have a lot to say about the way I interpret things. But in my writing for my project, I want to be more thorough and detailed in my writing. 

In the essays, I will be pulling information from movie critics, academic essays, or even opinions from people I know who may just be passionate about a certain movie I watched that week. Using the research as well as my own opinions on these movies I will do my best to review the movies, choose my favorite and my least favorite, as well as tie in some aspect of my personal life that connects me to the collection.  By looking at both my own reactions to the film as well as doing formal research on how these films were perceived at the time, I hope to answer my essential question of what film can tell us about us individually as well as pop culture.

I will be sharing my writing in a blog that I will update weekly with my essay for each theme. The final product will be a collection of these essays. 

Other ideas to include in my project might be conducting interviews with people who work in film or other movie lovers. I might also keep a daily “journal” with short entries and notes for the movies I see as I watch them.