ABSTRACT
Cinema, broadcast TV and non-broadcast video are often gathered under one heading: the audio-visual. This definition elides much that is different about the three forms. They have a common concern with images and sounds, but each has different visual and audible materialities. The cinema image is instantly perceived as different from a video image: the cinema image is photographic; the video image electronic. These distinctions bring with them a series of different attentions to the images and sounds, and therefore a rather different set of possibilities for representations.
