Prospectus for the Inquiry Project

Prospectus for the Inquiry Project

This is an initial exploration, class. You can use bullets if you need them, but you want to write as much of your question and questioning strategy as possible at this stage. You will have to live with this topic for the rest of the semester, so you will want to make sure that it is self-directed. If you write what you believe will interest me, you will probably find yourself bored. Think about a topic that interests you, figure out what genre you think it plays with well, and then fan out in your explorations. If you use sources in your initial (everyone uses sources when we get to work on the annotated bibliography) draft, please say where you got your ideas.

1) What is a question about film and genre that interests you? How does architecture (historical, cultural or even modern) affect the films perspective and audience interest. The movie I am using as an example is Letters to Juliet, the movie is shot in beautiful Italy and the architecture presents a strong relation between the place and theme.

Remember that any topic has genre; in fact, topics shape genres. It will help you to have a film in mind when designing your question. That will keep you from starting too broad and getting discouraged. We want to feel free, however, so creating your question is a delicate balance between broad and narrow. You want to think about your purpose here.

2) Why is this question important to you? Why is it worth your study? What personal beliefs does it make you consider? Since I am an architecture major, I find great interest in everything architecture and design related, and I want to get more in debt in combining film and design, how they are interconnected and how they rely on one another to get the plot of the film across, the background is a major component in film, sometimes it can take the spotlight from the film itself. When does architecture become over powering the film? That is the question I want to research more in debt.

3) Do you have any prior assumptions about how this genre operates or about the values that the genre elevates? Explain your beliefs.

For architects film is a very powerful medium because it allows me to walk through a virtual model of the building while the client is watching, and enables them also to demonstrate the design ideas as if the building was explored by the eyes of the visitors. Film can be used to help explore the effects of buildings on our society today.

4) What do you hope to learn in terms of relationships and observations of the genre and related films? You might want to throw out some examples here.

In a movie such as The International, you can overcome a ridiculous script by just focusing on the buildings. German parking lots and train stations, gleaming steel and metal constructions whose qualities make you distrust the transparency of the corporations inside. This relationship between the film and the background is incommensurable because the background is overpowering the film rather than telling the story together.

Another example is “Play Time” it is the infamous ultimate example of architectural extravagance onscreen, as Tati constructed his own “Tativille,” complete with a power plant the cost of the whole enterprise kept him in debt for years. The architecture of Tati’s platonic modern city is both intimidatingly massive and strangely designed for the characters; it is exploring and having fun with the space. It’s the rare movie that responds to impersonal architecture with delight and curiosity rather than automatic suspicion. In this film the architecture is working in harmony with the characters.

5) What are some issues that you anticipate may be problematic in the collection of data or in analyzing the genre or film? I think organization is most challenging, I can already anticipate that it would be challenging, as I have many ideas that I want to go with in this topic it’s going to be difficult to follow just one path or theme.

6) Think about the time periods of the genre, whether the genre or your films belong to the studio system period or after, consider the audience of the genre, and brainstorm the sub-genres that evolved from the mother genre. What new ideas do these considerations tell you about the genre? What new angles do you see?

I think it explores the relationship between Architecture and the development of early and modern films. There are the many sources and portrayal of architectural expression in film, precedents for imagery, its relationship to the development of early and modern architecture, and its vision of the urban future. Contemporary and futuristic architecture in recent films to learn more about its expression of the vision of the future of urban built form.

7) Where do you hope to take this paper? What do you hope to learn?

Learn more about this relationship that exists in every film and come up with my own thesis and conclusion with this topic.

8) Who do you think would find your study interesting, in addition to me? Why?

I think it’s only natural that movies are on people’s minds. As architects, watching films doesn’t relate solely to following the plotline or catching the work of a favorite actor or director. Just as in real life, we can’t help but pay attention to the built environment that surrounds us, nor can we when watching the latest flick. It’s nice to come across some modernism gracing the scenes of movies, and it’s worth bringing them to light so even the people with no architecture background can find interest in.

9) Where do you think you will find the best sources to answer this question?

From books, websites and my own background.

10) If your topic had a face, what would be its expression? Why?

Amusement and interest

In architecture we learn a lot about experiencing architecture with our senses rather than just watching and observing, by experiencing something you get a much deeper view as you become part of it and develop stronger ties. It opens a whole new world for the audience to experience and be amused.