In Our book, Nichols writes, "When persuasion regarding a particular issue is the goal, reason is a very valuable tool. Reason or logic carries a discussion from premises through well-reasoned arguments to a conclusion. However, often there is a no clear-cut solution to a real life problem, and logic alone cannot persuade.

What i think Nichols means by this is you need reason and logic when watching documentaries or films. If you want people to understand and like your documentaries you need to let them know the reason and logic behind it is. Also you do need both of these to make the film successful to the viewer. Even if there is no clear-cut solution to the problem having reason and logic will help the viewer understand it a lot more.

history through film

#1 After reading the introduction chapter to Engaging cinema, what are your initial thoughts as to studying the subject of film?

               I think it will be fun and interesting learning how film came about. You probably never realized what it all took to create movies and all the jobs and things that are required to even start producing a film. i think learning about it from the way beginning will be very interesting to me. I thought the introduction was alright besides the fact it got really long and kind of hard to follow along with all the different terms and things that deal with film.

#2 Are movies a social danger or a social benefit?

                I think movies can be both. It all just depends what the movie is about, if the movie is based on a true story it can be benefit by telling us what happen and if they movie was fake and made up and had a bunch of violence and they didn't get in trouble for doing anything bad that could be a social danger by telling people if you do something wrong there wont be any consequences to what you did.

First Post

What are your thoughts about taking the class History through Film? What do you hope to get out of this class and what strength do you bring to the class that will help us all progress forward as we learn?

I think this class will be fun and very interesting about learning how film was made and what they had to do to make it. I hope to learn what it took to start the first films and what is actually behind movies now a days. The knowledge of movies and film i already have and doing my homework assignments.