What does the climax of the film reveal about human nature and human society? An annotated bibliography is a research tool that organizes your research/secondary sources and the information they contain. It is essentially a list of the sources you will use for your research project as well as notes about each source in the form of a summary and information about the author and/or publishing source. It is not an essay, but preparation for a future essay (technically, a research paper). Each entry in the annotated bibliography contains the bibliography source information (per MLA guidelines). This will include items such as the author or artist, the containing source, and your access point for the information. After the bibliography entry, include a summary of the source in 200-300 words. The summary must be in your own words, with only short cited quotes as needed. Do not copy and paste an abstract of the source; this is plagiarism and will result in a grade of zero for the whole assignment. The final sentence of the summary must explain how this source is particularly helpful to your project: what is different, special, or significant about it. After the summary, include a biography of 80-150 words about the author or producer of the source. Because biographical information may be limited, you are allowed to copy and paste this information as long as you identify the source. You do not have to copy information from other sources; you may summarize and paraphrase as well. Entries longer than 150 words will be penalized for being too long. If there is a lot of biographical information available, cut it down to the most important points to validate the writer’s/artist’s authority on the topic. A minimum of six research sources must be used in addition to the primary source (the film). That means the works cited page will have a total of seven sources listed. They may be scholarly articles or magazine/newspaper articles about the film; film reviews from the Web; or book/articles on topics related to the topics you will address in your paper. For example, if you are writing about revenge, you may find an e-book that explains revenge fantasy films in a book on film studies. The sources should come from Google Scholar; all website sources must be thoroughly vetted. This means you will need to prove in your biographical information in the annotated bibliography that the source is fact-checked for accuracy. That is your responsibility as a researcher. If you cannot find accurate biographical information, you cannot use the source. If the biographical information does not prove that the writer is an expert in the field and the publisher is a fact-checked source, you cannot use the source.
