ABSTRACT
An interesting aspect of the evolution of filmmaking is the speed with which viewers have assimilated the changing conventions of the craft. Creative filmmakers once felt compelled to move carefully when dealing with innovative techniques lest they lead to confusion. Now they must use all their cunning just to keep abreast of the average viewer. Even obvious paradoxes of a medium sired by incongruity and bom of contradiction are taken in stride. The most casual filmgoer accepts the fact that the “moving picture” is an illusion, a succession of tiny transparencies, no more than an inch square, which, at the instant of their projection on the screen must be absolutely still, and that the giant reflections on the flat screen are merely two-dimensional reproductions of people and things. However, overriding all this is the viewer’s willingness to assume that these reflections are three-dimensional, and more real than most “live” representations.
