Camera-cut-composition

the long version

Camera-Cut-Composition: A Learning Model is a film rhetoric based on the uniquely cognitive nature of motion pictures. It is designed for filmmaking and film studies programs. A historical survey of breakthrough technical advances and artistic triumphs is combined with an analysis of the filmmaking process to show the constructive perceptual unity surrounding the making and interpretation of motion pictures. According to author Aaron Sultanik, the viewer's response to a film derives from three visually ascertained, dramatically realized cognitive elements: (1) the multiple points of view of a camera's placement, angle, and mobility; (2) the dynamic spatiotemporal assemblage of a film's editing; (3) and the final meaning of a film through the story's pictorial stylization. Sultanik offers instructive analogies to classic texts in rhetoric, visual perception, and film criticism to define a movie's distinct aesthetic properties and their perceptual-cognitive interdependence.