Close analysis of how a film works: shot, edit, sound, mise-en-scène and narrative structure.
Key thinkers: David Bordwell, Laura Mulvey, André Bazin
The longer story
Film analysis brings together multiple traditions—formal analysis of shots and editing, narrative analysis of story, ideological analysis of representation. Bordwell's neoformalism, Mulvey's psychoanalytic approach, cognitivist models of viewer response. What does this film do, and how? The unit might be the shot, the scene, or the whole film; the approach depends on your question. The challenge is capturing what cinema does as a medium while remaining systematic about analysis.