do you have to write an authorship paper? personally, i liked VF Perkins theory of film who wrote "Film as Film." basically, Perkins sees film as a means of communication between the audience and the filmmakers (director, DP, editor, screenwriter). you judge the filmmaker based on the choices that he or she made and how effectively these choices communicate with the audience. it's hard to tell what choices a filmmaker has made because no film is the work of one man. you can distinguish what choices a filmmaker has made through first hand accounts (interviews, DVD commentary, etc) and by looking at different films he or she worked on.
anyway, i never liked authorship theory because film is collaborative. also, i've always thought it is more interesting to look at a film from VF Perkin's POV. what choices did the film/filmmaker make? what was the intent of a specific choice? what was their effect on the audience, story, etc.? did this set of choices communicate the right feeling or would other choices have worked better? i guess the point is that Perkins thought to evaluate a filmmaker you needed to think through his thought process looking at how effectively his choices communicated an intended effect on the audience or story.
i don't know if that helps at all, but VF Perkins' theory of film gave me a critical way to evaluate film without any dogmas about how film is this or that.