BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

The attentional theory of cinematic continuity

Smith, Tim J. (2012) The attentional theory of cinematic continuity. Projections 6 (1), pp. 1-27. ISSN 1934-9688.

[img]
Preview
Text
6679.pdf - Author's Accepted Manuscript

Download (920kB) | Preview

Abstract

The intention of most film editing is to create the impression of continuity by editing together discontinuous viewpoints. The continuity editing rules are well established yet there exists an incomplete understanding of their cognitive foundations. This article presents the Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity (AToCC), which identifies the critical role visual attention plays in the perception of continuity across cuts and demonstrates how perceptual expectations can be matched across cuts without the need for a coherent representation of the depicted space. The theory explains several key elements of the continuity editing style including match-action, matchedexit/entrances, shot/reverse-shot, the 180° rule, and point-of-view editing. AToCC formalizes insights about viewer cognition that have been latent in the filmmaking community for nearly a century and demonstrates how much vision science in general can learn from film.

Metadata

Item Type: Article
Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Attention, cognition, continuity, editing, empirical psychology, eye, movements, film, continuity, space perception
School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
Research Centres and Institutes: Moving Image, Birkbeck Institute for the (BIMI), Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD)
Depositing User: Administrator
Date Deposited: 10 May 2013 07:51
Last Modified: 18 Feb 2025 01:36
URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/6679

Statistics

6 month trend
4,187Downloads
6 month trend
3,464Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

Archive Staff Only (login required)

Edit/View Item
Edit/View Item