ABSTRACT
The act of perceiving a filmic product consists of not only the presence of images that have been edited, projected or broadcast; there needs to be a "receiver" who gathers the stream of information and watches it, pays attention to it, processes it and evaluates it. Editing and its technical mechanisms are able thus to reproduce the constant process of projection-identification according to certain conventions and knowledge of the creator, who assumes the viewer possesses the same knowledge. "The realistic effect designates, in effect, the effect produced in the viewer by a representative image through a set of analogous indicators". Editing is, therefore, the creation of a believable product and acts as the first step towards the understanding of meanings and ideas. The Phi Phenomenon, which could be considered the basis of cinema, is only an imitation of the human visual system and is based on the concept of persistence of vision.
