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I'm looking for suggestions for any kind of brief, accessible primer on film form for a new course I'm doing, in which students without any real academic experience related to film are required to watch a series of films and offer their own insights on them in a series of short papers. So far, they're not quite getting it. I want them to take a broad view of filmmaking technique, paying attention to the multitude of ways that filmmakers can convey meaning and elicit feelings in the audience. Unfortunately, they're mostly falling back on thematic and plot elements to make their points. They're hitting on a lot of the same insights one might get from reading a film's screenplay without seeing the film, i.e. missing a lot of the visual elements of composition, camera movement, etc.

I don't want to give them too many concrete examples from the films we're watching for the course because that will lead them too much and limit their ability to discover things on their own.

I know about Bordwell's book Film Art, and some of the resources cited in it, but this won't quite do simply because the relevant passages are too long (and too textbook-y) for me to give them a third of the way into a course on top of what they've already been assigned. It's hard to get them to read and remember assigned readings as it is, but something short might be perfect. I'm looking for something that explicates technique in a way that's not only concise but also not too technical and that avoids referencing heaps of Important Films that these folks are completely unfamiliar with.

I've thought of showing them a video essay by James Quandt from the Teshigahara box, or Tag Gallagher's visual analysis of Madame De... from the Criterion disc, both of which are good examples of how to analyze a film. However, I'm afraid this would be a bit too advanced for them, (the Teshigahara stuff in particular and especially because they haven't seen the movies themselves.

I know there are other members who are teachers incorporating film, not to mention a whole lot of others who did film studies (I didn't), but I welcome suggestions from anyone.

Pulling some excerpts from Amy Villarejo's Film Studies: the Basics might be useful. It's very much geared towards beginners and if memory serves makes great pains to explain things on a simple level

The DVD that's included with this book might work -- some of the demonstrations of techniques are kind of cheesy, but some of them, such as an analysis of the editing of the Odessa steps sequence in Potemkin, are quite professionally done and helpful. I'm not sure how old your students are, but I've shown some of the demos to high school students (mostly seniors) in my intro to film class with some success -- one student even watched Potemkin on his own later in the semester. My copy is at school, but if I remember correctly, there are demonstrations/clips for narrative form (suspense vs. surprise, etc.), mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound.

Yuri Tsivian or Casper Tyberg on anything.

Well, I'm probably the same age as your students, and a summer ago I read James Monaco's How to Read a Film by myself and it was very helpful and accessible. Though I guess it wasn't brief.

I remember when I started Film Studies at Warwick University (UK) thirty years ago, we did not watch any movies at all in class for the first month, but spent it analysing still photographs from magazines - adverts, anything really. I recall writing a long essay on the construction of a photograph of the then newly elected PM Margaret Thatcher! In some ways it's anti-cinema and I remember finding it frustrating but it did get us concentrating on the purely visual and away from plot, themes, etc.

It's perhaps not much use to you since it's in German, but there's an excellent two-part educational dvd set called "Filme sehen lernen" available exclusively from Zweitausendeins.

The great thing about it that it's a thematically ordered selection of film excerpts, providing all the right examples for anything from mise en scene, camera movements, editing techniques, long shots or close-ups, aspect ratios and what they might possibly be good for. And because the students don't get to see a full film, they simply cannot fall back to plot recapitulation. Once they have understood these techniques and especially have learned to use the terminology, I suppose your course will go much smoother. Perhaps you can even use the discs despite the language problem, as long as you provide the terminology while showing the excerpts.

The first thing for me is to find the most correct title for the course - whether its based on technical issues, plot/drama, asthetics or whatever ... . After that its important for me to find out what the students can actually learn i.e. what are they able/willing to get out of the whole thing in the end. With this in mind i can look at the number of classes i have - most of the time its between 10-15 so i can give each date a specific topic. With this plan in hand i can start digging out video clips, sound files, text files (not just first hand cinematic related texts but also newspaper cut outs, short stories, chapters from novells that relate to a (cinematic) "viewing experience" and so on…). I would not suggest using a single "complete" book (like the Monaco) for a whole course - i would feel very limited and from a learning standpoint i think its always good for the students to work with as many different sources as possible.

I have not done a complete film-course for some years now but once in a while we watch a movie and the students must develop a movie poster "without" using images from the actual film - this makes them aware of all the little things and symbols in the movie - and the outcome is always very interesting. (by the way, i am giving classes in graphic design/university once a week).

The whole brevity thing is probably the most frustrating part. One of the biggest problems in dealing with neophyte film students, I think, is knowing when to say when with the intro to vocabulary and techniques. A textbook is obviously too much, though, even if you take excerpts like you want to, Gregory, you try the patience (and ability levels) of a lot of students.

The only thing that makes sense for me, and might for you as well, is to pick out certain concepts and techniques (i.e., the 180-degree rule, camera movements, diegetic/nondiegetic sound, etc.) that you feel are of paramount importance for them to learn, and show clips that illustrate those concepts. That's why I suggested that DVD from the Understanding Movies textbook -- it has tutorials geared towards explaining specific concepts like camera angles, point of view, the Kuleshov effect, etc. The only problem is you'd have to buy the textbook, which is around $65 dollars.

What I've ended up doing is taking about two weeks or so at the beginning of the semester to go through a crash course in narrative, mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, and sound. A lot of the clips I show are suggested by the Bordwell text, though I've tried to personalize it by using of some of my favorites as well. The downside is I always feel like I left something important out -- this thread has prompted me to go back into my textbooks and the online resources that accompany them to see if there's anything I should add for next year. The upside is that no matter how much you fit in, it helps the students -- when I survey the students at the end of the semester, they consistently say learning about techniques this way changes the way they watch movies.

All these responses are much appreciated, and I'm now looking into several of these resources.
The time constraints are indeed frustrating. Most of classtime is taken up watching the main course films and discussing them from a historical standpoint (it is a history course). This leaves little time to go back and give them the basics on different ways of seeing and understanding films, not to mention writing basics! Additionally, we're on the quarter system, but that's really only the tip of the iceberg. The gears in the assembly line are moving pretty fast and with great "efficiency" these days, as far as I can see. What Jonathan S described above sounds like it could be wonderful.