Sequence analysis is a staple assignment for first-year introductory cinema & media studies courses. In our first-year undergraduate intro courses at York University’s Department of Cinema & Media Arts (CMA), we emphasize sequence analysis in exams and essays, but for over a decade we have introduced how to perform analysis through an innovative collaborative project fostered in a small tutorial setting. Inspired by Jennifer Horne’s original idea for students to present analysis of a short sequence on the model of spoken DVD commentary, and further developed by Tess Takahashi’s adaptations and other feedback from Teaching Assistants (TAs) and students, the changes in this assignment over the last fifteen years are symptomatic of larger transformations in the film and media pedagogical landscape. Learning goals encompass knowledge of film and media terminology and capacity to identify and analyze elements of style, all towards articulating how films construct meaning both textually and contextually. Variations on this assignment have spoken to different generations of students in different ways—and students can literally speak to the assignment, engaging the learning goals on their own terms with their own choice of sequence example. At its core, this innovative assignment remains an invaluable exercise in slowing cinema down, looking and listening closely, and making connections between aesthetic parts and conceptual wholes, as well as the cultural and political meanings embedded therein. But modifying the assignment to suit varying institutional, pedagogical, and student circumstances has been vital to its success.

In the current form of the assignment, students partner up in groups of two or three to produce a maximum ten-minute sequence commentary, presented live or pre-recorded, that shows how stylistic elements contribute to the meaning and effect of a sequence (two to five minutes in length) of the students’ choice (approved by the TA). At York, the CMA intro course has a large lecture/screening component (250-300 students) with numerous discussion tutorials of 25-30 students each; with the luxury of a 24-week course, we can devote seven weeks to elements of style, allowing for two student presentations per tutorial.[1] The assignment has four components: 1) an oral or video presentation; 2) a sequence analysis script; 3) a detailed point-form shot breakdown; and 4) a process narrative—a short, individually written reflection on each student’s learning process, in which they may report on any issues that arose in the collaboration (for example, not all students play well with others, although the assignment has guidelines and learning objectives related to collaborative learning). Most students really get into the assignment, partly because they have the chance to dive deep into a film or television episode of their choice—and the sequence variety makes TA grading more interesting than evaluating a single, set clip.

The evolution of this assignment over the last fifteen years is a barometer of changes in the teaching and learning landscape related to technology (and student access to technology), academic integrity, and equity. It is also an example of how teaching innovation itself is collaborative and adaptive, as generous colleagues gift teaching ideas to others, releasing those ideas into the pedagogical wild for other teachers to adapt to their own instructional circumstances. I heard of the assignment thirdhand from Tess Takahashi, who was teaching on a postdoc at Oberlin College; she learned of the assignment from the previous postdoc, Jennifer Horne, who had begun using the assignment while teaching at Bryn Mawr in the early 2000s (Horne had adapted what was originally a graduate assignment in a multimedia criticism course, consulting with Richard Abel on its design).[2] Horne, a silent cinema scholar, was inspired by her experience preparing a DVD commentary for one of the National Film Preservation Foundation DVD collections at the invitation of Scott Simmon.[3] As Horne says, writing for performance is a distinct exercise, as the analytical commentary script must be prepared with considerations of economy of pacing and timing, keeping a listener in mind—and, if nothing else, it requires you to view a film or sequence many, many times. The commentary directs the viewer’s eye to see what they might not otherwise see, while also providing historical context to enhance understanding.[4]

Horne first used the assignment in a one-term first-year class: students worked alone and recorded their voiceover in iMovie, burning the .mov file on a DVD disc, submitting it along with their script as the final assignment of the course. Bryn Mawr had a computer lab with the technology to rip clips from DVDs and provide iMovie access to students. Takahashi shifted the assignment to an in-class presentation mode for her first-year intro class at Oberlin, but rather than serve as the final assignment, it recurred throughout the term with students paired in groups presenting in a small in-person class setting. In Takahashi’s version, the same prep work was involved, but without the need to learn iMovie or mobilize computer lab resources. In this live version of the assignment, students had less control (though they were encouraged to rehearse in advance) and needed to adapt to contingencies. The learning objectives now included collaboration and public speaking, not only for the voice-over performance, but also in leading a brief discussion of the sequence with the rest of the class. When Takahashi further adapted the assignment for the first-year intro class at York in 2008, the performance version was even more appropriate, as York, a public university for which half the students are the first generation of their families to attend a postsecondary educational institution, could not presume that students had access to video and sound editing technology, nor could it afford to provide such technology. Moreover, the intro course is a required class for students in four different degree programs (those pursuing a Cinema and Media Studies BA, along with BFA students in Production, Screenwriting, and, most recently, Media Arts): this produces significant differences in student expertise in, and access to, media technologies, with live performance evening the playing field.

My own subsequent adaptations of Horne and Takahashi’s assignments since 2014 reflect ongoing changes in the teaching and learning landscape. Everything from smartphones to TikTok have increased student familiarity with audio and video editing, while free software mitigates the issue of equitable access. The COVID-19-induced adoption of online teaching has somewhat hampered student collaboration, while contingencies from internet and learning-management system glitches make live presentation of commentary over clips a challenge. As a result, more students have chosen the pre-recorded video option, bringing the assignment back to Horne’s original design. Although this reduces student experience with live presentation, it also accommodates students who may feel disadvantaged by the stress of performance, and/or being English as an Alternate Language (EAL) speakers, a significant portion of the York student population. This flexibility is part of the overall Universal Design in Learning (UDL) course design, in which a wide variety of assignments accommodate a range of student learning styles, making the collaborative sequence analysis just one mode of evaluation among many.

The general rise of videographic criticism as a mode of analysis in cinema and media studies has made many video essays available on the internet as models for students. This proliferation of examples presents a new challenge: plagiarism of pre-existing video essays, which is difficult to check using text-based tools like Turnitin. While students do not submit whole video essays they haven’t made, some take the central ideas from an already existing video and mimic the analysis. As with written essays, video essay contract cheating (students paying a third party to complete assignments) is another danger. Finally, some students, in their choice of clips to analyse, too often favour stylistically flashy filmmakers: among the usual suspects are Spielberg, Tarantino, and Aronofsky. Pushing students past the white male pantheon is a mission that the course syllabus takes up by foregrounding films by women, BIPOC, and global film and media artists, but encouraging students to broaden their palate midway through a first-year class remains a challenge.

Adapting the parameters of any assignment is necessary year to year. In the case of the collaborative sequence analysis, we work to create equitable collaboration amongst students, ensure academic integrity, and diversify the curriculum. These adaptations keep the assignment fresh but require constant redesign, sustained communication among the teaching team members, and active learning from each generation of students.

1. These elements include, in order, mise-en-scène, lighting, framing, perspective relations, camera movement, sound, and continuity and discontinuity editing. Since students are responsible for more and more terms as the weeks accumulate, there is incentive to present in the early weeks, although the focus of the presentation is the stylistic element for the chosen week. ↑

2. Jennifer Horne, Zoom interview with the author and Tess Takahashi, August 16, 2021. All subsequent references are to this interview. I am grateful to Horne and Takahashi for their contributions to this article. ↑

3. Scott Simmon and Martin Miller Marks, eds., Treasures III: Social Issues in American Film, 1900-1934 (San Francisco: National Film Preservation Foundation, 2007). ↑

4. Horne’s sense of how commentary tracks can “transform engagement with the image” was inspired by Tom Gunning’s commentary on What Happened on 23rd Street, New York City (1901), found on More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931 (2004), and Rick Prelinger’s CD-ROM, Ephemeral Films, 1931-1960: To New Horizons and You Can’t Get There from Here (New York: Voyager, 1994). It is worth noting that the week on film sound is trickiest since the student’s verbal commentary on sound-image relations competes with the clip during the presentation. ↑