What students get wrong about credits

Every semester, roughly the same thing happens. Students are asked to analyse a film and they organise the analysis around the director, and when asked why, they say some version of: that is whose film it is.

It took me longer than it should have to notice that I had taught them this. The reading list was organised by director. The screening schedule was organised by director. The assignment prompt used the possessory form without comment.

The fix was not a lecture about collaborative authorship. The fix was reorganising one unit around a cinematographer's filmography and letting them notice, unprompted, that the through-line held across four directors.