Learn Film Analysis With This Cheat Sheet

We've all gotten into a debate about a movie with our friends. One says it sucks, another says it's great, and they go back and forth. If your friends are anything like mine, it probably gets personal after that.

But that's not the way it should go.

If you want to work in Hollywood, be a critic, or make films or TV shows, you should know how to speak about them in an educated way.

Late last year, I went on a rant about how important media literacy was to your film and TV career, and I'm back to tell you about this incredible course I watched FOR FREE on YouTube. It helped me in my ongoing journey to understand how to write and talk about filmmaking.

It's from video essayist Patrick (H) Willems, and it's spectacular. Over about 90 minutes, he takes you through the ins and outs of the process, theories, and coherent ways to make an argument.

Let's dive in.

Film Analysis Matters

What I loved about that video was how it guided you through ways to break down and study a movie. It's not just about pot or characters but about the choices the filmmakers made in everything from lenses to music to the very genre of the plot.

Willems explains it much better than I could.

But I drew up a little cheat sheet for you if you wanted to practice analyzing films and TV shows at home. I use these whenever I write about film here. Here are some of the key areas I try to look at when analyzing a movie.

Key Areas of Film Analysis

• Mise-en-Scène: Everything you see within the frame of the shot. This includes:

  • Lighting (how a scene is lit)
  • Setting (location and décor)
  • Props (objects with significance)
  • Costumes and makeup
  • Actor movement and blocking (how they are positioned and move)

• Cinematography: The technical choices behind the camera:

  • Camera angles (high, low, tilted, etc.)
  • Shot types (close-up, wide shot, long take, etc.)
  • Camera movement (pans, zooms, tracking shots, etc.)
  • Focus (what's sharp, what's blurry)

• Editing: How shots are assembled:

  • Types of cuts (fades, jump cuts, etc.)
  • Rhythm and pacing of editing
  • Montage (stringing shots together to create meaning)

• Sound: Everything you hear:

  • Dialogue
  • Sound effects
  • Music (both score and existing songs)

• Story: The plot and its construction:

  • Plot structure
  • Characters and their development
  • Themes

Types of Film Analysis

It turns out there are lots of different types of film analysis. So when you're watching something, you have to lock into what you want to talk about.

Here are some directions you could go:

• Formalist: Focuses on the technical elements (cinematography, editing, sound, etc.) and how they create meaning.
• Narrative: Examines the story, characters, and themes of the film.
• Ideological: Looks at how a film reflects or challenges social, political, or cultural ideas.
• Psychoanalytic: Explores unconscious desires or symbolism within the film.
• Cultural/Historical: Investigates the film within its historical, social, and cultural context.

Moving Past "I Liked It"

The hardest part of film analysis isn’t memorizing definitions or pulling out obscure facts to impress your friends. it’s moving past your gut reaction of just saying, "I liked it".

If you’re trying to do this for a living, you have to reverse-engineer those feelings. You have to ask: Why did I feel that way?

If a scene feels claustrophobic, don’t just leave it at that. Look closer:

• Is it the lens? Are they using a long lens to squash the background and crowd the actor?
• Is it the blocking? Are there physical objects between us and the character?
• Is it the sound? Did the room tone just drop out, leaving us in an awkward silence?

The "Everything is a Choice" Rule

The biggest shift in your brain happens when you realize that in a professional production, nothing is an accident.

If a character is wearing a bright red jacket in a room full of beige, someone spent three hours in a meeting deciding on that specific shade of red.

If the camera stays in a wide shot during a big emotional breakdown instead of punching in for a close-up, there’s a narrative reason for that distance.

When you start looking at a movie as a series of intentional decisions rather than just a story that "happened," you stop being a spectator and start being a student of the craft.

This is huge when you’re trying to figure out how to make your own work stand out, especially in those crucial first ten pages where you're trying to hook an audience.

A Pro Exercise: The "Silent" Watch

If you really want to level up, try this: find a five-minute sequence from a movie you love and watch it with the volume at zero.

Without the dialogue or the score to lean on, you’ll start to see the "visual grammar" more clearly. You’ll notice how the lighting shifts when a character lies, or how the rhythm of the cuts dictates the energy of the scene.

It’s the fastest way to realize just how much the camera is speaking to you without saying a word.

Summing Up Film Analysis

When it comes to analyzing a film, you can use the stuff in this post to form the basis of your argument.

But at the end of the day, the only way to become a real expert is just to watch a ton of movies and TV shows and go from there.

Leave your tips and tricks for film analysis in the comments.