In this assignment, you’ll practice writing two important types of sentences for your Documentary Film Research and Analysis assignment:

1. a thesis sentence for your essay
2. a topic sentence for each paragraph

Refer to Writing About Movies, chapters 7 and 8, on “Developing Your Thesis” and on “Considering Structure and Organization,” respectively, for guidance.

Thesis Sentence

A thesis sentence should not be a description of your topic nor should it be a summary of the film.

A thesis sentence should include your evaluation of the film.

• What is this film about?
• How do you interpret the film?
• Is your evaluation faithful to entire film, not just a specific scene or sequence?

Thesis Sentence Assignment Prompt

Write a one-sentence thesis sentence about the film you’ve selected in the outlining and organizing assignment. Your thesis sentence should include:

• your focused and specific evaluation of the film
• an ordered list of topics that demonstrate this evaluation and can also function as the structure of the film

Thesis Sentence Example

The Atomic Cafe presents a variety of footage that, in the context of the esclation of the Cold War in the early 1980s, challenges the misleading information—if not outright lies—about the dangers of atomic weapons in defending the “American way of life.”

Topic Sentence

Each paragraph requires a topic sentence.

• A topic sentence declares a single point of the argument
• A topic sentence relates the paragraph to the thesis
• A topic sentence is located at the beginning of the paragraph
• Every sentence in the paragraph relates to the topic sentence

Topic Sentence Assignment Prompt

Write a topic sentence for one paragraph that is part of your shot/sequence analyses.

The paragraph should be about a sequence of the film that does one of the following tasks:

• describes the sequence and its meaning to overall meaning of the film, or
• analyzes a specific formal element used in this sequence, or
• analyzes a cultural dimension represented in this sequence

Topic Sentence Example

The topic sentence is set in bold type to clearly show you that this is the topic sentence. You should never set your essay’s topic sentences in bold type. Note that my last sentence also summarizes the paragraph, but does not act like a topic sentence.

In the sequence where we see the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we see evidence of how little Japanese civilian lives mattered in this unprecedented bombing campaign. In this sequence, we see the aftermath of the bombings, expressed through an interview with one of the pilots and a celebratory gathering after Japan surrendered to the Allies. This footage expresses the euphoria of the victory through an American perspective. But the sequence also includes footage of the destruction that the atomic bombs left in their wake, particularly the burnt bodies of civilians and even children. By including this footage, the filmmakers make a point about the human toll of this victory, countering the idea that Japanese lives didn’t matter as suggested by the earlier footage.