Study by subject
Film studies
In film studies you learn directors, films, movements and the vocabulary of staging by heart. Lumi asks who made what, when and in which movement, until it comes on its own.
How to turn this subject into cards
Make one card per director with the main films, one per movement with its traits, and one per staging term, such as shot, framing, shot and reverse shot or long take. Always ask in both directions, from the film to the director and from the director to the film. The trap is mixing up the films you have watched with the ones you can actually place, because watching is not remembering. With Lumi you pull the name, the date and the movement from memory. Testing yourself makes you remember longer than rereading (Roediger and Karpicke, 2006). Revise a little each day, since spacing helps you keep dates and attributions (Cepeda et al., 2006).
What you need to know by heart
- Directors and their landmark films.
- Movements, French New Wave, German Expressionism, Italian Neorealism.
- Types of shot, wide shot, medium shot, close-up.
- The vocabulary of staging, shot and reverse shot, long take, editing.
- Historical landmarks, from silent cinema to sound.
How Lumi helps you remember it
You teach your cards to Lumi, directors, films, movements, shots. It forgets over time, like you do, then quizzes you right before you would forget. As the deadline approaches, the Mist settles over what you know less well and Lumi asks that first. You arrive able to place each film, not only to recognise its title.
Example cards
Three cards the way you would write them, with the answer Lumi expects.
Who directed The 400 Blows?
François Truffaut.
What is a long take?
A shot filmed continuously without a cut.
Who directed Metropolis?
Fritz Lang.
Example card
Try it, Lumi turns it into fill in the blank questions in your browser.
Film studies · teach this card to Lumi
The Lumière brothers held the first paid public screening in 1895. The French New Wave is a film movement of the late 1950s. A close-up frames a face or a detail from very near. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a landmark of German Expressionism.
Lumi’s question
The Lumière brothers held the first paid public screening in _____.
Pick the missing word
Answer right to light Lumi up
Its lamp fades when a fact slips away.
Frequently asked questions
- Do I need to have seen every film?
- No. You can learn the director, the year and the movement of a film without having seen it, although watching it helps place it. Lumi asks those landmarks back.
- How do I remember staging terms?
- Write one card per term with a short definition and an example film. Lumi asks you for the term from its definition, and the other way round.
- How do I revise film movements?
- Make one card per movement with the country, the period, the directors and two traits of style. Revise a little each day, because spacing makes you remember longer (Cepeda et al., 2006).
Read next
Sources
- Roediger, Karpicke (2006). Test-enhanced learning. Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3). doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01693.x
- Cepeda, Pashler, Vul, Wixted, Rohrer (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks. A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3). doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.132.3.354
Teach this to Lumi
Give Lumi your film studies notes, it gives them back as questions at the right moment.