About the Rubric

The following is an extraction from my very first post (How to Turn a Hobby into a Chore) in which I layout the system I came up with to digest and judge these movies. 

The Rubric...

1. Acting- actors bring life to the characters of the story trying to be told. In considering acting I will reflect on a wide range of skills including emotional range, physical expression, vocal projection, embodiment, nuance, authenticity and the ability to invoke feeling in the audience. 

2. Cinematography - is the art and craft of photographing motion pictures in order to tell a story. We will consider its ability to convey mood and feeling as well as its technical use of lighting, camera, movement, color and composition. 

3. Production/Costume Design - How does the environment tell a story? What choices were made in use of architecture, space, shapes, colors? How was the technical execution of creating the world in which the story lives? 

4. Writing - How well did words on a page translate into actually becoming a story? Was there originality/authenticity? How were the characters? Their dialogue? Was there clear structure, lack of cliches, believability, clarity, and did it grasp us? 

5. Sound - Sound design is the development and editing of all audio in a film. It includes the speech, sound effects, ambient noise and soundtrack. How did these elements work together? How did it work in the context of the story?

6. Editing - Perhaps of all the elements this is the one that is most unclear. A good edit is invisible. A great edit might smack you in the face. But perhaps the things to consider here will be the pace, timing/rhythm, creativity, cohesion and integration within the story

7. Visual Effects - Defined as the process by which imagery is created or manipulated into live-action footage. Much like cinematography, we will have to consider not just its technical execution, but how does it fit into and help tell the story.

8. Originality or Strength of Adaptation - Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years. How does this new story match up? If we have seen this before, how does it alter or reinvigorate what came before it?  

9. Stunt Coordination - Somehow, there still isn't an Oscar for best stunts. This overlooked element is important. Its not just about Tom Cruise hanging off an airplane. How do the characters move within the story? How does the action tell its own story? How was the technical execution? How did it integrate with VFX, tone, character, sound, and editing?

10. Direction - The director is responsible for the integration of all the previous listed criteria. Did all the different elements fuse together into a totally cohesive piece? Or was the final product a mixed bag of strong and weak components? 

Bonus Thoughts/Legacy - In the end, do all of these individual elements add up to something that is greater than itself? What is the context that the film or my read of it fall into? Based on everything I observed, why am I scoring the film this way? Or maybe just any other last minute thoughts that didn't fit into the other categories.