ABSTRACT

The camera’s verisimilitude and tried-and-true editing patterns can make events unfold on the screen as naturally and inevitably as a rose blossoming in June. Newcomers assume that cinema’s equipment, processes and techniques are the alchemy that does this. But lm language is not simply a mechanical system. Using cinema intelligently and expressively means pulling sound and image away from their most blunt representational function and recognizing how lm syntax can communicate the full complement of human experiences, including: physical experiences like glancing, studying, walking, chasing, rushing, trembling, falling, scanning, gliding, and spinning; emotional experiences like tension, fear, humor, anticipation, affection, loneliness, compassion, excitement; and intellectual understanding like irony, memory, metaphor, consequence, subtext, association, and theme.