The prescribed films: Paper 2 Section C, and writing about cinema in Turkish

Two questions are offered. Neither is the one you hoped for. Spend two minutes choosing well.

1. 01Read the instruction verb before the topic

   As in Section B, the verb decides what kind of essay is wanted. Çözümleyiniz asks for analysis of how something is constructed; değerlendiriniz asks for a judgement; tartışınız asks for more than one position; ne ölçüde katılıyorsunuz asks for a degree. A candidate who has prepared thematically but not analytically will find çözümleyiniz much harder than the topic suggests, and the choice should be made on that rather than on which noun is more familiar.

2. 02Count your located sequences against each question

   For each question, list in forty seconds the sequences you could cite: where in the film, what is on screen, what claim it supports. Three or more is a workable essay; fewer than two is not, whatever your general grasp of the film. This is why the year's preparation should produce a sequence file organised by theme rather than a memory of the plot, and why watching the film with a notebook is not optional.

3. 03Check that you can say something about how, not only about what

   Both questions on a film can be answered as though the film were a story, and both will band in the middle if they are. Before choosing, test each question by asking whether you could make one claim about camera, editing, sound or setting that bears on it. If one question invites such a claim and the other does not, take the one that does; the AO3 grid explicitly asks for cinematic terminology and the AO4 grid rewards analysis over description.

4. 04Plan in Turkish and commit

   Four bullets: position, three located sequences in order, and the concession. Then start. The single most expensive mistake in Section C is choosing at minute twelve, because the essay then has fifty minutes instead of sixty-five and it will show in the third paragraph. Two minutes of choosing is enough if the sequence file exists; if it does not, no amount of deliberation in the hall will produce one.

Result: A two-minute choice made on the instruction verb, the number of located sequences available, and whether the question invites a claim about how the film is made — followed by a four-point plan in Turkish.

A student has written a paragraph describing what happens in a sequence. Rewrite it so that the description becomes evidence.

1. 01The original, and why it bands in the middle

   Original shape: Bu sahnede karakter odaya girer, pencereden dışarı bakar ve hiçbir şey söylemez. Sahne çok etkileyicidir. Everything here is accurate and nothing is a claim. The AO4 grid calls this evidence from the work that is descriptive, and the evaluative etkileyici is an assertion of effect with no account of how the effect is produced. It would also score poorly on range, because it contains no complex structure and no terminology.

2. 02Ask what the film does that another film would not

   The useful question is always comparative and imaginary: what would a differently made version of this sequence look like, and what would it lose? If the sequence holds on a long shot rather than cutting to what the character sees, the film has chosen to keep us outside; if the sound is only ambient with no score, the film has declined to tell us how to feel. Either of those is a claim, and each requires a term.

3. 03Rewrite with the term carrying the claim

   Yönetmen bu sahnede karakterin baktığı şeyi bize göstermez: kamera genel planda kalır ve kesme yapılmaz. Böylece seyirci, karakterin ne gördüğünü değil, bakışının süresini fark eder. Ses kuşağında müzik bulunmaması da aynı yönde çalışır; sahne, duyguyu yönlendirmek yerine seyirciyi kendi yargısıyla baş başa bırakır. Three terms — genel plan, kesme, ses kuşağı — each carrying a claim, and each claim about the viewer's position rather than about the story.

4. 04Check the range and accuracy grids on the rewrite

   Range: a negative main verb with a nominalised object, a passive in kesme yapılmaz, a nominalised subject in bulunmaması, the connective böylece, and the construction yerine plus a verbal noun. Terminology: three cinematic terms, all load-bearing. Accuracy: check the possessive inside baktığı and gördüğünü, the person on every verb, and the harmony of every suffix. The rewritten paragraph is not longer than the original by much and it scores in a different band on all three grids.

Result: Yönetmen bu sahnede karakterin baktığı şeyi bize göstermez: kamera genel planda kalır ve kesme yapılmaz. Böylece seyirci, karakterin ne gördüğünü değil, bakışının süresini fark eder. Ses kuşağında müzik bulunmaması da aynı yönde çalışır; sahne, duyguyu yönlendirmek yerine seyirciyi kendi yargısıyla baş başa bırakır.

Show the paragraph shape for a question about how a film presents a relationship, leaving the film-specific content to be supplied from your own viewing.

1. 01Locate the sequence two ways

   Filmin ilk yarısının sonunda, iki karakterin ilk kez aynı kadrajda göründüğü sahnede ... Position in the film plus what is on screen: the marker now knows exactly which sequence you mean, and you have used the word kadraj, framing, in the location clause itself, which begins the analytical work before the claim has arrived. The ellipsis is content from your own viewing.

2. 02Describe in the present tense, in one clause, what is done rather than what happens

   ... kamera ikisini ayıran bir nesnenin arkasından çeker ve sahne boyunca hiç kesme yapılmaz. This is description, but of the film's technique rather than of the story: what the camera does and what the editing declines to do. Turkish film criticism uses the present tense for this, as English does. Note çekmek used of a camera shooting, and the impersonal passive yapılmaz.

3. 03Make the claim, and make it about the question

   Bu tercih, ilişkiyi diyalogla açıklamak yerine seyirciye mesafeyi gösterir; yani film, yakınlığı bir bilgi olarak değil, bir görüntü sorunu olarak kurar. Tercih, the choice, is the right noun because it insists that the film is made; yerine plus a verbal noun contrasts the technique with the alternative; and the yani clause restates the claim in sharper form, which is a move worth learning because it converts a good sentence into a memorable one.

4. 04Add the qualification that keeps the paragraph honest

   Ancak aynı yöntem filmin ikinci yarısında terk edilir, ki bu da ilişkinin değiştiğini gösterir. The concessive turns the paragraph and, crucially, the change of technique becomes further evidence rather than a problem for the claim. The relative ki is a borrowed construction and perfectly standard in this use; note that it is not the way Turkish normally builds relative clauses, which is the participle system, and that overusing it is a common mother-tongue-interference error for English speakers.

Result: The paragraph shape: a two-way location clause, a present-tense description of technique rather than of story, a claim about what the technique does that answers the question, and a concessive that turns a change of technique into further evidence.

Here is a paragraph with four errors of the kinds the specification names. Find and fix them.

1. 01The paragraph, as written

   Filmin açılış sahnesinde karakter köye gelir ve etrafına bakar. Kamera onu uzaktan çekiyordu ve hiç yakın plan kullanmadı. Bu tercih, seyircinin karakterin duygularını anlamasını zorlaştırır. Yönetmen, izleyiciyi karakterle özdeşleşmesini istemiyor. Four problems: a tense drift, a second tense drift, a case error, and a government error.

2. 02Fix the tense drift, which the grid calls inappropriate tense formation

   Kamera onu uzaktan çekiyordu ve hiç yakın plan kullanmadı should be çeker and kullanmaz. The paragraph established the present with gelir and bakar, and a film is conventionally discussed in the present throughout. Two verbs in the past inside a present-tense paragraph is the error the grid describes as hindering clarity, and it is the single commonest one in film essays.

3. 03Fix the government error on istemek

   Yönetmen, izleyiciyi karakterle özdeşleşmesini istemiyor has izleyiciyi in the accusative, but the subject of the nominalisation must be in the genitive: izleyicinin karakterle özdeşleşmesini istemiyor. This is the mismatch of subject and possessive that the specification's own error list names, and it is an easy fix once you know to look for it — every -mA or -DIk nominalisation with a stated subject needs that subject in the genitive.

4. 04Read the corrected paragraph and check the remaining endings

   Filmin açılış sahnesinde karakter köye gelir ve etrafına bakar. Kamera onu uzaktan çeker ve hiç yakın plan kullanmaz. Bu tercih, seyircinin karakterin duygularını anlamasını zorlaştırır. Yönetmen, izleyicinin karakterle özdeşleşmesini istemiyor. Now check: köye is dative because gelmek takes it; etrafına is possessive plus dative; duygularını is plural possessive accusative inside the nominalisation; anlamasını is the verbal noun with possessive and accusative as the object of zorlaştırmak. Every one of those is a place a mark can be lost and a place it can be secured.

Result: Corrected: Filmin açılış sahnesinde karakter köye gelir ve etrafına bakar. Kamera onu uzaktan çeker ve hiç yakın plan kullanmaz. Bu tercih, seyircinin karakterin duygularını anlamasını zorlaştırır. Yönetmen, izleyicinin karakterle özdeşleşmesini istemiyor.

The question shape: Filmde mekân, yalnızca olayların geçtiği yer değil, anlamın kendisidir. Bu görüşe ne ölçüde katılıyorsunuz? Plan and draft the opening.

1. 01Identify what the question is actually claiming

   It claims that setting is not a container but a carrier of meaning, and the word to work with is yalnızca ... değil, not merely. The claim is therefore not that setting matters — few would deny that — but that it does the meaning-making. That is strong, and a degree answer can accept it for part of the film and qualify it for another part, which is exactly what the question's ne ölçüde invites.

2. 02Plan around the film's shape

   Paragraph one, the opening sequence: how the film introduces its place before it introduces its people, and what that establishes. Paragraph two, the midpoint: whether the setting changes or the film's way of shooting it changes, which is where a claim about meaning can be tested. Paragraph three, the closing sequence: whether the film returns to the place it began in and what the return does. Concession inside paragraph two or three. Close: the degree.

3. 03Draft the opening

   Bu görüşe büyük ölçüde katılıyorum; ancak filmin mekânı anlam taşıyıcısına dönüştürmesi kendiliğinden olmaz, belirli bir çekim ve kurgu tercihiyle sağlanır. Aşağıda açılış, orta ve kapanış sekanslarını bu açıdan ele alacağım. Thirty-six words. It takes a position with a degree, it adds the mechanism — the meaning is made by technique, not by the place itself, which is a sharper claim than the question's own — and it announces the structure. Dönüştürmesi is a nominalised subject; sağlanır is an impersonal passive.

4. 04Check the plan for the film-essay traps before writing

   Does every paragraph contain a located sequence? Yes, one each, and they are spread across the film. Does every paragraph end on a claim rather than a description? Check the plan bullets: if any of them is a noun phrase rather than a claim, rewrite it now. Is there a concession? Yes, and it is placed where the argument is weakest rather than at the end as an afterthought. Is any of the plan about the director's career or the film's reception? If so, delete it.

Result: Opening: Bu görüşe büyük ölçüde katılıyorum; ancak filmin mekânı anlam taşıyıcısına dönüştürmesi kendiliğinden olmaz, belirli bir çekim ve kurgu tercihiyle sağlanır. Aşağıda açılış, orta ve kapanış sekanslarını bu açıdan ele alacağım.