 VCCS Litonline
Checklist for Spoken Presentation
To earn the highest points possible, use several of the topics listed in
the column appropriate the medium you have chosen; after all, a movie scene
is fiction (except for most documentaries), and a song is poetry.
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For a movie
Performance Topics
See an
introduction of the topics below for Hamlet before
considering these ideas for the scene you selected from another movie.
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- Camera Angles
- Blocking (Actors' Positions and Movements)
- Light vs. Shadow
- Music
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For a song
Performance Topics
Consider the aspects below and the "Poetry Topics" in the bottom cell
to note how emphasis is achieved in the song, what words or phrases
stand out in the performance, and how these point to a theme (an image
of how life works).*
The singer, the instruments, the back-up singers might create emphasis
by using
- longer notes
- louder sections
- a capella sections
- more instruments
- harmony
- repetition
- more singers
- reverb
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Fiction Topics
For more information on the topics below, consult your textbook.
- plot (especially conflicts)
- character (especially motives)
- point of view (perspective or character from which story is
told--who's thoughts are given directly and how, e.g. voiceover
narration, dream sequence)
- setting (impact of era or locale on conflict)
- atmosphere, or mood (the "feel" of the four above combined)
- tone (the author's apparent attitude about the characters and
their conflict)
- theme (the image of how life works conveyed by the movie)
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Poetry Topics
For more information on the topics below, the smart play is to
consult your textbook's index.
- imagery (Translate the figurative language into plain English to
point to a theme or tone.)
- rhythm (What's the beat of the song? Or, what mood does the beat
suggest?)
- rhyme (Do any of the rhymes hint at the song's main idea, or
theme?)
- connotation (Which words mean more than they say outright?)
- theme, of course
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* Your handout will likely be a copy of the song lyrics marked to show
how emphasis is achieved by the use of one or more of the "performance"
features in the list above.
Finding Lyrics: Although you can use any search engine to look up a song
title and find someone's rendition of the lyrics, you may find this note
handy--
The lyrics used in the demonstration were
found at "Lyrics
World".
The main index of this site lists songs and singers who have been in the top
40 since 1930. The site provides printed lyrics only, not recordings, bios,
nor links to song writers nor singers.
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