User:KC.Ma14/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Filmmaking

Why have you chosen this article to evaluate?
The filmmaking article was chosen out of personal interest in the subject, as much of the art I've experienced rgrowing up were influenced or using the subtle language of filmmaking in some way. It would be lovely to know more about the subject.

Filmmaking is not only an important visual artform that explores how objects relate to each other in motion, but also as an important tool to communicate major messages and themes.

My preliminary impression of filmmaking was this fun and fantastical artform where the imagination is put to the test to tell a story to the viewers; more often than not, filmmaking just had to be entertaining and without much thought required to be considered "good." However, I was completely wrong. Some of the best films in history have so much effort and thought behind the craft of the film that it is honestly baffling that schools are not studying Citizen Kane, Schindler's List, Blade Runner, or Parasite, as films such as these constantly deal with the themes of the meaning of humanity and moral ambiguity.

Lead Section
The lead section of the article does have an introductory sentence that consisely and clearly describe the article's topic, as well as a brief description of most of the major sections but does not specify the stages of production and forgets about the independent filmmaking section of the article. The lead does not include information not present in the article. For the most part, the lead section feels concise in communicating the information to the reader.

Content
The article's content is relevent to the topic of filmmaking, as it goes through the entire process of what a typical production cycle would be like. The content is up-to-date since the last edit was made on January 29th, 2021. Although to be fair, the process of filmmaking has not changed much since its creation and only the advancement in technology has allowed it to go though the production cycles faster. Although technically not missing, the bullet point of principal photography as a major stage in the stages of production is not included and listed as a separate page entry in the production section of the article. It seems that the inclusion of the principal photography bullet point is repetitive and redundant. Unfortunately, the article does not discuss topics related to historically underrepresented populations or topics as many of the notable figures mentioned are white males.

Tone and Balance
This article feels like it is from a neutral perspective, avoiding the use of personal ideas and information for a misleading purpose. There may be a claim that the article is biased for white males in the filmmaking process since, as previously mentioned, the notable figures referenced in the article are white males. It is understandable as the industry has been historically and is heavily dominated by white males. Only recently has the film industry shifted to represent peoples of other cultures, ethnicities, sexualities, religions, etc. It can be argued that the article is more so focused on the process of the stage at hand rather than the representation of ideas. It does not seem that there are overrepresented or underrepresented viewpoints as the entire filmmaking article reflects the process length of the stages of production represented, although it would be nice to have notable achievements or odd processes mentioned from filmmakers that are not white males. There are no minority or fringe viewpoints from what can be read, nor does it try to pursuade the reader towards a certain biased position, the article is focused on relaying information about the processes of filmmaking.

Sources and References
There are facts backed up by a reliable secondary source of information, but the majority of the article is not cited, making the information provided questionable in soundness. The sources are thorough, reflecting the available literature on filmmaking, albeit somewhat dated since the sources' date range is between the 80s and mid-2000s. The sources are not written by a very diverse spectrum of authors, nor do they include historically marginalized individuals whenever possible. There are better and more recent sources available for information on filmmaking, quick searches on OneSearch and Google Scholar show more these entries, one of which is even written by Female director Marcie Begleiter. There is only one source that has a link, the rest are cited text entries. The link does work and directs the reader to a biography about this said person on the link.

Organization and writing quality
The article is well-written, very concise, clear, and easy to follow. There were no grammatical or spelling errors during an initial read of the article. However, on a second glance at the article, majority of the sentences are very short with some punctutation errors sprinkled throughout. The article is certainly well-organized into sections that explain the different processes and what happens during the said major point of the filmmaking procedure, making it easy to follow since the important information is sectioned off while also in a chronological format.

Images and Media
This article does have images that enhance understanding of the topic, but there is a total count of three pictures with two of them not actively portraying any stage of the filmmaking process. The images are well-captioned with a lengthy description for each of them and also adhere to Wikipedia's copyright regulations since the images are either under public domain or under CC licencing. The three images are not laid out in any visually interesting or appealing way, all three are lined up on the right-hand side of the page.

Talk page discussion
There are a lot of discussions going on about the representation of the filmmaking Wikipedia article, 17 separate sections from the community talking about the production cycle to someone stating their attempts to order a Mark Twain adaptation. According to the yellow box at the top, the article has been rated as Start-Class and is a part of WikiProjects Film. In the way Wikipedia discusses filmmaking, there is a lot of information about the rigorous steps of the filmmaking process with some steps even overlap each other in some instances. However credibility comes an important factor here as most, if not all, of the information do not have a source.

Overall impressions
The article is okay, it does its job in informing the reader about filmmaking and the processes that come with it. The article succeeds in informing the reader with how a film is typically made from the development stages to the post-production stages, even showing the lengthy process of getting approval and backing from major studios and productions before making the film. Improvement can begin with credibility, having many sources and also citing where information came from would definitely help the article's credit. Also, having more images that actively depict the process of filmmaking would help the reader digest the information at hand. Furthermore, adding a history section would also help with understanding the broad idea and reaches of filmmaking. The article is underdeveloped, there's a good start but there are only edits and not enough additional information that would enrich the topic.