CVC "Rubric" Reflection

Critical and Creative Thinking: 3. Ability to summarize a text clearly

Writing the summary of Christo's Valley Curtain, a short documentary directed by the Maysles brothers with Ellen Giffard in 1973, really taught me how to turn something black and white into something abstract. I had a hard time adding detail to my summary because when I think of writing a summary, its short and sweet and hits all the major plot points. Well, that is not exactly the way it should be done. Also, I am the type of person who prefers words on paper, so watching something and trying to get detail was difficult. However, once I was able to piece the story together in a way that made sense, I was able to make a summary that I didn't feel terrible about handing in.

Genre Knowledge: 1. Ability to write appropriately regarding the situation

Since we were writing a summary, we were not able to write our feelings, give meaning to the scenes, or write about why we liked a specific detail. For me, that was kind of rough. I found myself going back right after I had written a sentence to change it due to the analyzing I did. After a while, I felt as if I was doing okay without adding my opinion, but with a project like Christo's, it was hard not to. It was also difficult not to applaud the theatrical aspects of the documentary, like the way the directors used similar sounds to transition between scenes. Now that we have completed this project, I feel a lot more comfortable writing more summaries without adding my own thoughts.