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Moving Image
Theory
Edited by
Joseph D. Anderson
and Barbara Fisher Anderson
Foreword by
David Bordwell
Ecological
Considerations

Moving Image
Theory
Ecological
Considerations

Moving Image
Theory
Southern Illinois University Press
Carbondale
With a Foreword by
David Bordwell
Edited by
Joseph D. Anderson
and Barbara Fisher Anderson
Ecological
Considerations

Copyright © 2005 by the Board of Trustees,
Southern Illinois University
Paperback edition 2007
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
10 09 08 07 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Moving image theory : ecological considerations / edited by Joseph D. Anderson and Barbara
Fisher Anderson ; with a foreword by David Bordwell.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Motion pictures—Psychological aspects. 2. Motion picture audiences—Psychology. I.
Anderson, Joseph, date. II. Anderson, Barbara Fisher, date.
PN1995.M688 2004
302.23'43—dc22 2004015236
ISBN 0-8093-2599-3 (alk. paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8093-2746-1
ISBN-10: 0-8093-2746-5
Printed on recycled paper.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National
Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI
Z39.48-1992. ∞

To James D. Simmons

Contents
Foreword ix
David Bordwell
Preliminary Considerations 1
Joseph D. Anderson
Part One. Information Available in Moving Images 7
1. Perceiving Scenes in Film and in the World 9
James E. Cutting
2. The Value of Oriented Geometry for Ecological Psychology
and Moving Image Art 28
Robert E. Shaw and William M. Mace
Part Two. Perception of Simulated Human Motion 49
3. Creating Realistic Motion 52
Jessica K. Hodgins, James F. O’Brien, Nancy S. Pollard,
Robert Sumner, Wayne L. Wooten, Gary Yngve, and
Victor Zordan
4. Perceiving Human Motion in Synthesized Images 61
Joseph D. Anderson and Jessica K. Hodgins
Part Three. Acoustic Events 67
5. Background Tracks in Recent Cinema 70
Charles Eidsvik
6. Acoustic Specification of Object Properties 79
Claudia Carello, Jeffrey B. Wagman, and Michael T. Turvey
Part Four. Information in Facial Expression 105
7. Three Views of Facial Expression and Its Understanding
in the Cinema 107
Ed S. Tan
8. Facial Motion as a Cue to Identity 128
Karen Lander and Vicki Bruce
Part Five. Coupling of Perception and Emotion 149
9. Film Lighting and Mood 152
Torben Grodal
10. Cinematic Creation of Emotion 164
Dolf Zillmann

Part Six. Appeals of Reality-Based Moving Images 181
11. Documentary’s Peculiar Appeals 183
Dirk Eitzen
12. Reality Programming: Evolutionary Models of Film and
Television Viewership 200
William Evans
Part Seven. Events, Symbols, and Metaphors 215
13. Through Alice’s Glass: The Creation and Perception of
Other Worlds in Movies, Pictures, and Virtual Reality 217
Sheena Rogers
14. Metaphors in Movies 228
John M. Kennedy and Dan L. Chiappe
List of Contributors 245
Index 249
VIII/ CONTENTS

ix
Foreword
David Bordwell
WHAT PROCESSES ENABLEus to perceive, comprehend, and respond emotionally to mov-
ing pictures?
Here, in gross outline, is one answer. As humans we have evolved certain capacities
and predispositions, ranging from perceptual ones (biological mechanisms for obtain-
ing information about the world we live in) to social ones (e.g., affinities with and cu-
riosity about other humans). By exercising these capacities and predispositions and by
bonding with our conspecifics, we have built a staggeringly sophisticated array of cul-
tural practices—skills, technologies, arts, and institutions.
Moving pictures are such a practice. We designed them to mesh with our perceptual
and cognitive capacities. What hammers are to hands, movies are to minds: a tool ex-
quisitely shaped to the powers and purposes of human activity.
A great deal of movies’ effects—more than many contemporary film theories allow—
stem from their impact on our sensory systems. We are prompted to detect movement,
shape, color, and sounds, and this is surely one of the transcultural capacities that mov-
ies tap. Similarly, films from all nations and times draw upon more cognitive skills, such
as categorizing an object as living or nonliving or seeing a face as furious—abilities that,
it’s reasonable to think, are part of our evolutionary heritage. And because affective states
and counterfactual speculation are of adaptive advantage, it is likely that an artistic me-
dium that permits emotional and imaginative expression would have appeal across cul-
tural boundaries.
If we consider culture to be an elaboration of evolutionary processes, there’s no inher-
ent gulf between biology and society in this explanatory framework. True, these elabo-
rations vary historically, yielding (among other things) what we usually call conven-
tions—local practices that seem more artificial and that differ from one society to
another. Yet some conventions are less artificial than others.
1
A verbal language takes
years to learn and is perhaps the epitome of hard-core conventionality. Other conven-
tions can be picked up fast because they are functionally similar across cultures. Some
countries require drivers to stay on the right side of the road, others on the left, but the
idea of ordering the traffic flow governs each choice. Still other conventions require only
the slightest adjustments of our natural proclivities. In a picture, if the most important
element occupies the center of the format, viewers from any culture will probably not
be surprised. Centering (manifesting the principle of symmetry) is in some sense a con-
vention of pictorial composition, but it seems to run with the grain of our visual pre-
dispositions, taking the line of least resistance. Strategic decentering, on the other hand,
may be a convention that requires a little more tutoring.

X / DAVID BORDWELL
Films use conventions. In most movies, characters face each other in an odd way:
their bodies and faces are conveniently tilted in three-quarter view for the camera. Scenes
are cut according to the tactics of continuity editing. We may hear music that does not
issue from the locale of the scene, and a dissolve or fade may convey a passage of time.
Still, such conventions are mostly of the quickly learned variety. Many of them piggy-
back on our natural predispositions; others require only slight adjustments. Several
amplify and streamline regularities of human interaction, as when movie characters
talking to one another stare more fixedly and blink far less than they would in real life.
We understand movies fairly easily because in many respects their conventions are easy
to learn: they are simplifications of things we already know.
Of course, a particular filmmaker may wish to block that easy understanding—to
be, as we say, unconventional—but very often will have to tap into other of our capaci-
ties and proclivities. If the story is told out of order, then we will need some redundant
cues to that design as well, such as Pulp Fiction’s replay of the opening dialogue when
the action returns to the diner for its climactic scene. Nevertheless, a great deal of what
is conveyed in a movie is conveyed “naturally”—through those perceptual-cognitive-
affective universals that are part of our biological inheritance.
This view, I believe, is likely to be true. Yet it would be stoutly rejected by most film
scholars. The reasons are partly due to certain strongly held opinions within the hu-
manities and partly due to the history of film studies as an academic discipline. My fuller
version of the story can be read elsewhere,
2
but in brief it goes like this.
The framework I just sketched presumes contingent universals of human makeup
and experience, but most scholars in the humanities tend to doubt the existence (or the
importance) of empirical universals. Further, the framework hypothesizes causal and func-
tional explanations for social practices. Most humanists, though, prefer interpretation
to explanation, and when they do seek explanations, biological causes or functions are
usually ruled out as deterministic. The framework I traced also takes rational inquiry,
of which science is our most successful exemplar, as the most promising way to explain
cultural practices. But academic humanists on the whole mistrust science and, sometimes,
rational inquiry more generally.
Film academics are on the whole even more suspicious of this framework than their
peers in other disciplines, I believe. This is largely because film studies, entering uni-
versity humanities departments in the late 1960s, became rather quickly attached to
certain doctrines. Most of these, such as semiotics and psychoanalytic theory, were deeply
antinaturalistic (at least in the versions that became influential). While these particular
doctrines have lost their grip, an extreme version of cultural constructivism is at the base
of most film studies. Consider just a few premises.
• All personal experiences—identity, concepts, feelings, even percep-
tions—are socially constructed. (Constructed out of what? That matter
is not addressed.)
• Because everything is socially constructed, there is no such thing as a
more or less realistic representation; every sign is equally arbitrary. (Can
the concept of the arbitrary sign be intelligible without a concept of the
non-arbitrary sign? Shouldn’t one then consider that there might benon-
arbitrary signs? And why should all signs be equally arbitrary? These
questions are not asked.)

FOREWORD/XI
• Realism is a myth because no representational system provides total ac-
cess to some reality out there, if indeed such a thing exists. (Doesn’t this
set the bar unreasonably high? A realistic representation need not pre-
serve all aspects of its referent in order to be reliable, as we see in archi-
tectural design and forensic photography. But these objections are cari-
catured as naive realism.)
• Every culture creates its own web of meaning; there may be hybridity
when cultures come in contact, but there is no universal human culture.
(If every culture is sui generis,how could theorists have grasped enough
features of alien cultures to arrive at this generalization? This circularity
isn’t considered.)
Despite some claims that the discipline has become more pluralistic since the 1980s, pre-
mises like these, invoked ritualistically in the literature and taught by rote and exem-
plar in courses, have become operational assumptions of most academic film writing.
Film studies also got off on the wrong foot methodologically. Instead of framing ques-
tions,to which competing theories might have responded in a common concern for
enlightenment, film academics embraced a doctrine-drivenconception of research. Es-
sentially scholastic in its impulse, it held that certain theorists had revealed core truths,
and their gospel could then be applied, in more or less mechanical fashion, to particu-
lar movies. First came Mulvey’s gaze theory, then postmodernism, then versions of iden-
tity politics, multiculturalism, and modernity theory—none weighed as candidate answers
to a puzzle or problem but accepted unskeptically, then used to churn out interpreta-
tions of film after film. Film studies remains, in a word, dogmatic.
In these circumstances, the appearance of Moving Image Theory: Ecological Consid-
erationscan only be welcomed. The editors have assembled a distinguished cast of em-
pirical researchers and film theorists to explore, within a naturalistic framework, the ways
moving images mesh with our minds. Every essay teems with insights and fruitful sug-
gestions for further reflection and experiment, and all point toward ways of reconsider-
ing some of the tenets I’ve already outlined.
Take, for example, the very issue of ecological psychology. Most generally, this means
treating evolutionary considerations as one constraint on theorizing about the psychology
of film. It is one of James J. Gibson’s most long-lasting contributions to have brought
evolutionary issues into the study of perception. At this level, any examination of mov-
ing image media that reckons evolutionary constraints or tendencies into account—as
Torben Grodal, Dolf Zillmann, and Dirk Eitzen do in their accounts here—deserves
the name ecological.From the same adaptive perspective, certain candidates for contin-
gent universals can be illuminated by robust, nuanced overviews like that provided by
Ed S. Tan’s discussion of facial expression or by John M. Kennedy and Dan Chiappe
who (fittingly enough in a paper on metaphor) offer us the image of human culturesas
islands linked into an archipelago by an unseen common ground, what used to be called
humannature.
We also encounter ecological theorizing in a narrower sense, that is, as proceeding
from the direct-perception theories Gibson developed. Here we find essays ranging from
selective treatment of some ideas as in Karen Lander and Vicki Bruce’s contribution to
explorations of Gibson’s system as a whole as in the essays by Claudia Carello et al. and
Sheena Rogers. I have no competence to assess these contributions, but they promise

XII / DAVID BORDWELL
to be as much of value to psychologists as to those of us interested in the psychology of
art. Perhaps they will link up in time with the emerging ecological strain in cognitive
theory, such as Gerd Gigerenzer’s concept of ecological rationality.
3
Encouragingly, all these essays allay any concerns that a Gibsonian view commits one
to preferring only realistic art. Nearly every study shows how a realist psychology gives
special meaning to artists’ efforts to violate ecological validity, as Robert E. Shaw and
William M. Mace present, to defeat our normal responses as well as to build upon them
(Zillmann and Grodal again), to create filmmaking traditions that preserve certain in-
variants and stylize others, for example, James E. Cutting on—what else?—cutting. This
is a subtle and supple realism, one that takes veridicality as a bridgehead—biologically,
perceptually, cross-culturally—and then shows how conventions might arise out of sys-
tematic revisions or rejections of it.
The difference between these contributions and most current film theory might boil
down to this. Contemporary theory assumes that cinematic communication is almost
wholly conventional (and the conventions come from culture); what is not conventional
amounts to very little (often called physiology!) and not considered very important. Ac-
cording to the ecological view, cinematic communication relies on a great many non-
conventional capacities and processes, and the conventions are correspondingly small
in number and easy to learn—riding as many of them do upon just those ecologically
constrained processes.
It’s appropriate that Gibson developed his perceptual theories out of his work with
cinema. As a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force during World War II, he was in charge
of testing films that could train pilots. In trying to simulate the problems of identify-
ing other aircraft and landing on airstrips, he was led to treat human vision not as a
snapshot but as a flowing optic array—oriented to the horizon, displaying texture gra-
dients, and illuminated by light from above.
4
Film turned out to be very effective in
teaching young pilots what flying looks like, and so Gibson had pretty solid empirical
reasons for adopting a realist perceptual psychology. Movies, he understood, could faith-
fully capture essential features of a life-or-death situation. If we invited today’s postmod-
ern academics to come up with reliable ways to represent airplane maneuvers, I shud-
der to think what casualties would result. But maybe not, at least once these academics
got off the ground. If there are no atheists in foxholes, perhaps there are no culturalists
in cockpits.
Notes
1. On pictorial conventions, see Noël Carroll, “The Power of Movies,” Theorizing the Mov-
ing Image (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 80–81.
2. See my “Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory” in Post-Theory:
Reconstructing Film Studies,ed. David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (Madison: University of Wis-
consin Press, 1996), pp. 1–36. I try to defend the “moderate constructivism” sketched above in
“Convention, Construction, and Cinematic Vision,” ibid., pp. 87–107.
3. See Gerd Gigerenzer, Adaptive Thinking: Rationality in the Real World(New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000).
4. See Motion Picture Testing and Research: Army Air Forces Aviation Psychology Program Re-
search Report No. 7,ed. James J. Gibson (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1947), pp. 181–212, 219–30. Edward S. Reed explains the importance of these experiments in
his superb James J. Gibson and the Psychology of Perception(New Haven: Yale University Press,
1988), pp. 114–80.

Moving Image
Theory
Ecological
Considerations

1
Preliminary Considerations
Joseph D. Anderson
Muddles and misconceptions prevail. We are led to conceive a sort of apparatus inside
the head that is similar to the apparatus for making a picture show outside the head. We
have been taught that a picture is sent up to the brain and so we conclude that a series of
pictures can be sent up to the brain. We all know what a snapshot is, and we know that a
film is a series of snapshots. If we are told that a movie presents us with a sequence of
retinalsnapshots joined by what is called the “persistence of vision,” we believe it. But we
are misled.
—James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception
AFEW YEARS AGOa student, a very bright Ph.D. candidate, stopped me in the hallway
after class and said, “Why do you persist in your ecological approach to film theory when
it makes everyone so angry at you?” I was a bit stunned. I opened my mouth, but noth-
ing came out. Then he continued. “Is it just because it makes so damned much sense when
it comes to explaining motion pictures?” “Yes,” I heard myself answering, “It makes sense.”
This student had come to us with a master’s degree in film studies, and he was fa-
miliar with conventional film theory, usually referred to by its adherents as “contem-
porary film theory,” the residue of a series of theoretical formulations and political po-
sitions that fueled a succession of academic fads from the 1970s through the end of the
century. The followers of these conventions were presumably the everyone to whom he
referred as being angry. Apparently what made the conventionalists so angry was the
introduction of literature from the sciences into the discussion of motion pictures. They
were categorically against such a thing no matter how much sense it made.
At our urging, the student had also taken several courses in psychology and was aware
of the controversy between advocates of perceptual psychology based on a tradition
extending from Hermann von Helmholtz to the present and those who support the
newer, ecological approach based on the work of James J. Gibson. At the heart of their
disagreement is a difference in their basic conceptions of what it is to perceive the world.
For the followers of Helmholtz,
We are essentially separate from the world of objects and isolated from ex-
ternal physical events, except for neural signals which, somewhat like lan-
guage, must be learned and read according to various assumptions, which
may or may not be appropriate. (Gregory, 1987, p. 309)
Percepts are thus constructed from the raw sense data. Ecological psychologists offer quite
a different idea. They propose that we are part of the environment that shaped us and

2 / JOSEPH D. ANDERSON
that through evolution we have developed the capacity to perceive the world directly.
That is, we see the world, not our sense data. They argue that within well-defined bound-
aries, we see and hear the events of the world around us without mediation; and we pre-
sumably share the capacity to do so with other biological creatures who have no capac-
ity for language and less capacity for logic or inference than we.
Film theorists who would draw upon the sciences, particularly psychology to help them
understand what motion pictures are, how we gain meaning from them, why we seem
so attracted to them, and what effects they have on our lives, have gained a greater ap-
preciation of the complexity of perception itself. They have learned that psychologists
do not all agree on how we perceive the world nor is there general agreement on how
we perceive motion pictures. From the other side, psychologists are thinking that a better
understanding of how we perceive the comparatively limited phenomenon of the mo-
tion picture might open the way to further insight into how we perceive the world at large.
Who would have thought that so much attention would be paid to the seemingly
casual and inconsequential act of movie viewing? Much to our regret, the student was
so dismayed by the storm of controversy surrounding film theory that after completing
his degree, he switched to another field of study. We were unable to convey to him that
we are not dismayed. If people are passionate about such matters, that is all the better.
Intellectual controversy is good, and open debate is often very productive. Spirited com-
petition can expose error or uncritical adherence to dogma, and in time what was once
distant and incomprehensible can become known. Considering the pervasive role of
media in our world and in our individual lives, the debate is crucial, and the study of
moving images is an important and terribly exciting pursuit.
This book is about perceiving mediated images and sounds. It will take us beyond
conventional film theory and traditional psychology, and it will encompass images and
sounds that are currently being produced at the convergence of film, video, and com-
puter technologies. The authors of these essays come from a variety of fields, from com-
puter animation, media research, ecological psychology, philosophy, and film studies,
yet they all share an interest in discovering how mediated images and sounds are some-
how intensely meaningful and emotionally engaging. The book itself constitutes one
of those rare and delightful occasions when scholars from different disciplines come
together through mutual interest and general goodwill to add to the common store of
knowledge, in this instance to increase our understanding of one of the most pervasive
and controversial phenomena of our time—moving images.
While the authors of this set of essays are quite knowledgeable concerning other points
of view, their commitment in this volume is to an ecological consideration of moving
images. To greater and lesser extents, the authors are all building on the foundation laid
by Gibson, the founder of ecological psychology. Of course, others could have been asked
to elaborate some of the competing theories, but that would have resulted in a much
larger, and perhaps unwieldy, volume. Readers interested in seeking information about
alternate theories should have no difficulty in finding extensive material on film and
other related media from other points of view.
For the reader who is new to ecological psychology, perhaps a brief introduction is
in order. As its name implies, ecological psychology takes into account that we (like all
other animals) are creatures that have evolved in an environment. The environment has
provided the things we must have for survival, and we through evolution have devel-
oped the capacities to gain the informationwe need to guide our actions in that envi-
ronment. The environment provides patterned arrays of energies such as are found in
reflected light and vibrations of molecules in the air, which specify in their patterns of

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS/ 3
activity the objects and events of the world. Our senses are attuned to certain of these
energies, which we therefore refer to as “visible” light and “audible” sound frequencies.
Through our perceptual systems, we can obtain the informationabout objects and events,
and in doing so, we generally are unaware of either the arrays of energies or our own
sensory processing. Instead we see and hear the world—its objects and events.
Of course, the properties of an environment are not static, and the perceiver does
not remain stationary but instead moves through the environment. Therefore, the ar-
rays of energies to which our senses are attuned are constantly changing, yet we are able
to perceive a stable world. The objects that are stationary are perceived as stationary,
and the objects that are moving are seen as doing so. Moreover, we are able to detect
theinvariantsof a layout despite changes in lighting or our own movement. Invariants
are the things that do not change with changes such as lighting or the position of the
perceiver. For example, the rectangular table does not change its shape as we dim the
dining room lights or walk around it.
A major tenet of ecological psychology is that we do not passively catalogue random
properties of the world as they are revealed to us through our senses; instead we actively
look and listen (and touch, taste, and sniff) for the things that the environment might
afford us. Gibson proposed that to perceive the layout of the environment, its arrange-
ments of objects and events is to perceive what they afford. He coined the word affordance
to name that “complimentarity of animal and the environment” (Gibson, 1979, p. 127).
“Affordances are properties of the environment as they are related to an animal’s capa-
bilities for using them. . . . To perceive an affordanceis to detect an environmental prop-
erty that provides opportunity for action” (E. Gibson & Pick, 2000, pp. 15–16). An
obvious example in the natural world is that the flatness and solidity of the ground specify
the affordance of walking upon for a human. A log might afford sitting.
It also seems to be possible to attend to whatever information we need and to sim-
ply ignore much of the rest. While it is no doubt true that we have access to (perhaps
one could say are bombarded with) more information today than ever before in our
history as human beings and therefore this capacity is very useful to us, the basic strat-
egy of seeking the information we need to function and ignoring the rest is apparently
an ancient one. Even though several different species may physically occupy the same
space, the same valley or mountain, each occupies its own ecological niche. The physi-
cal objects and actual events that occur in that space are not equally important or equally
attended to by all its inhabitants.
But, of course, the moving images that we are primarily concerned with in this vol-
ume are not those of the natural world but those of motion pictures, television, and
computer displays (including video games and virtual reality) and therefore we are not
in the area of Gibson’s greatest interest. In the introduction to his 1979 book The Eco-
logical Approach to Visual Perception, he says,
We are concerned with direct perception, not so much with the indirect
perception got by using microscopes and telescopes or by photographs and
pictures, and still less with the kind of apprehension got by speech and
writing. (p. 10)
Yet, in the same work he devotes a chapter to “motion pictures and visual awareness”
and frets that there is no term to refer to what he wants to call the “progressive picture”
as opposed to an “arrested picture.” “The term motion picture,” he notes, “implies that
motion has been added to a still picture” (p. 293), and he is perhaps uncomfortable with

4 / JOSEPH D. ANDERSON
the baggage of cinema; andfilmseems to exclude television. With a similar interest in
being both precise and inclusive, we have arrived at the term moving image, hence the
main title of this volume, Moving Image Theory.
Gibson said that he was not much concerned with motion pictures, yet he laid a
foundation upon which his successors might build a comprehensive theory of progres-
sive pictures, or moving images if you will. His approach to perception seems to shed
light upon many of the problems that have puzzled students of the motion picture ever
since its inception. The implications of this approach for a theory of moving images
are pursued in considerable detail in the essays that make up our current volume, hence
the subtitle, Ecological Considerations.
The writers of these essays are in a position to avoid a problem that plagued much
of the theorizing of the last half of the twentieth century—the construction of elabo-
rate and complex theories with no moorings in reality. The ecological approach is “a
theory about everyday perceiving in the world, and it differs greatly from theories that
begin with a motionless creature haplessly bombarded by stimuli” (E. Gibson & Pick,
2000, p. 14), or we might add, haplessly sutured into texts or haplessly victimized by
dominant ideology (see Bordwell, 1996). Ecological psychology takes into account rou-
tine, everyday selection on the part of the perceiver. It is readily apparent that images
are different in kind, that they differ in their meanings, and that some are much more
interesting or useful or entertaining than others. What information we choose to gain
and how we gain it from a plethora of moving images is the common theme of the es-
says that make up this book.
A set of capacities for gaining information from our environment developed during
the millions of years of our evolution as living organisms because information guided
our actions in that environment. The development of capacities for extracting infor-
mation was possible in evolutionary terms because those individuals with better informa-
tion were better able to obtain the things they needed from the environment and better
prepared to avoid dangers that the environment presented. Today, makers of moving
images exploit these capacities, and we willingly engage with the images and sounds of-
fered. But our capacities are not unlimited; they are finite in number and bounded in
extent. Exactly what are our capacities for gaining information, precisely how do the
makers of motion pictures exploit them, and why do we attend to images and sounds
that we know are purposely crafted? The essays in this volume address these questions.
Although it becomes very apparent as one reads the essays that the writers are not
all of a stripe, they nevertheless in aggregate make a case for an ecological approach to
film theory that is much too compelling to ignore. They address fundamental questions
that puzzled film scholars throughout the last century and offer answers of such clarity
and complexity that an open-minded reader may indeed be surprised and delighted.
For example, basic questions surround the status of the image itself. What is a moving
image? What is its relationship to the world, to the viewer, to its creator? In a fiction
film, what is the relationship of the image to the fictional world and to the profilmic
event, the action staged before the camera?
The renowned French film theorist André Bazin argued that the photographic im-
age bears the relationship to the thing photographed that a fingerprint bears to the fin-
ger that produced it. Just as the ink is mechanically transferred from the finger to the
paper, point-by-point the rays of light reflected from an object imprint the features of
the object upon the light-sensitive emulsion of the film. For both the fingerprint and
the photograph, there is a mechanical link between the image and its referent. Accord-

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS/ 5
ing to Bazin, it is this purely mechanical relationship that connects a photographic image
to reality in a way that does not exist for other methods of depiction such as painting
(Bazin, 1971). Similarly, Siegfried Kracauer argued that “Film . . . is uniquely equipped
to record and reveal physical reality and, hence, gravitates toward it” (1960, p. 28). Both
Bazin and Kracauer realized that the photographic image had a special relationship to
reality, but neither was able to fully resolve the problem of the relationship of the im-
age on the film to the event in the fictional world.
In the years following the deaths of Bazin and Kracauer, film scholars gradually aban-
doned these questions. At first, they proposed that film was essentially symbolic and
should be treated as language, where, of course, the connections between referent and
symbol are arbitrary. And as this semiotic project failed, they posed political or social
questions that avoided confronting the image as image.In fact, in film studies, the word
imagecame to refer not to the pictures presented but to the political positioning of
persons, groups, or other entities by their portrayal in a motion picture.
An ecological approach to moving images returns us to the basic questions and
grounds us in everyday reality. Events are the everyday stuff of reality and the patterns
they create in light and air, the stuff of ordinary information. Claudia Carello, Jeffrey
B. Wagman, and Michael T. Turvey make the point that events structure energy distri-
butions such as arrays of light or patterns of vibrations in the air that specify the prop-
erties (size, shape, mass, momentum, friction, etc.) of the source that generated the
energy distributions in the first place. As perceivers, we can access the arrays of light
with our eyes and the patterns of vibrations in the air with our ears and thus see and
hear the event itself. We thus have direct mechanical access to the actual event. A cam-
era may record the event by recording the array of light energy, and a microphone may
record the patterns of vibrations of air. These in turn may be re-presented to our per-
ceptual system. But the existence of information does not guarantee perception. As
Robert E. Shaw and William M. Mace point out,
We do not see what is simply in the light to the eye, as the physicist might
construe it; rather we see what is functionally specified by the light to a
highly evolved visual system—one that has been adaptively designed to fit
its environment by evolution and further attuned by experience.
We might say that perception is lawfulbut not rigid. It is in fact highly flexible. The
arrays of light and sound structured by an event often contain a great deal more infor-
mation than we can comprehend at any given moment. This is where selectivity comes
into play, and for a variety of reasons we perceive some patterns and not others. This
holds for arrays structured by natural events and for arrays structured by the hand of man.
It is indeed possible to construct arrays artificially that specify events that exist only
in a fictional world, and when presented to our perceptual system, we process these arrays
by the same laws of perception as actual events. Carello et al. and James E. Cutting
address the problem of a synthesized event, that is, information created not by a natu-
ral event in the world but by either staging the event before a camera and microphone
or perhaps by generating such information on a computer or, as is often the case, doing
some of both. Shaw and Mace observe most succinctly that “the source of the informa-
tion may not possess the property that the information from that source specifies.” Once
an actual physical event is no longer required to produce the array that carries the in-
formation, then it is possible to create information for events of any kind, even impos-
sible events.

6 / JOSEPH D. ANDERSON
An ecological theory of moving images has no problem dealing with these synthetic
images. It begins with the premise that we have developed a sensory system specifically
adapted to gain information from the usual events that occur in the natural world that
have in our past been important for our survival as creatures who walk around on the
ground. Our senses are constrained in many ways. For example, we cannot directly
perceive the very small or the very distant; for these purposes we have invented micro-
scopes and telescopes to allow us to perceive these objects and events indirectly because
we could not easily adapt to perceiving them directly. We can, of course, perceive syn-
thetic events in moving images, not because we have adapted to the fast pace or discon-
tinuity of editing but because these images have been specifically tailored by their mak-
ers to fall within the boundaries of our perceptual system for perceiving events in the
world. Our perception remains lawful and constrained whether we are seeing events in
the natural world or impossible events on the movie screen. The events depicted may
or may not adhere to the laws governing the natural world. Shaw and Mace observe that
“To the extent that such extraordinary circumstances defy rational (lawful) explanation,
they serve to increase the mystery, metaphoric depth, and hence expressive power of the
indirect perceptual event.” To the extent the events of a movie follow a rational course
and adhere to natural constraints, they are made more accessible to a larger audience
and tend to gain in credibility.
The idea that perception of moving images may be lawfully constrained is perhaps
frightening to some scholars in the arts and humanities who may not fully understand
or appreciate the creativity required for the theory building that is an indispensable part
of scientific pursuit; but they should be reassured that within the constraints articulated
by ecological psychology, there is plenty of room for discussion about particular rela-
tionships between moving images and viewers. By proposing lawful relationships for
the perception of motion pictures, students of the moving image are invited to engage
in substantive debate, to discuss matters of consequence, and to propose explanations
that stand a chance of being true.
References
Bazin, André. (1971). What is cinema?(Vol. I). Hugh Gray, Trans. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press.
Bordwell, David. (1996). Contemporary film studies and the vicissitudes of grand theory. In
Bordwell and Noël Carroll (Eds.), Post theory: Reconstructing film studies(pp. 3–36). Madi-
son: University of Wisconsin Press.
Gibson, Eleanor J., and Pick, Anne D. (2000). An ecological approach to perceptual learning and
development. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gibson, James J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception.Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gregory, Richard L., ed. (1987). The Oxford companion to the mind.New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Kracauer, Siegfried. (1960). Theory of film: The redemption of physical reality.London: Oxford
University Press.

7
Part One Information Available in Moving Images
THE CONCEPT OFinformationis central to ecological psychology. It is a precise term that
denotes arrays of energy that are patterned and quantifiable; a discussion of the infor-
mation available in moving images seems an appropriate place to begin.
James E. Cutting in “Perceiving Scenes in Film and in the World” notes that movies
are not really very much like the world. Movie space and time are different, and things
are arranged differently. In Hollywood-stylemovies, all elements are arranged to support
the narrative. A number of techniques have been developed to minimize our awareness
of the way the film is constructed and to maximize our attention to the story. “To go
unnoticed,” Cutting says, “these techniques must mesh with the human visual system.”
He offers nine sources of information and then demonstrates how each has been ma-
nipulated for a desired effect. For example, in Notting Hill(1999) and Rope(1948),
occlusionis used to hide the cuts. In Twelve Angry Men(1957),height in the visual field
is varied to manipulate objects in space. He notes that in Vertigo(1957), Hitchcock
combines a dolly shot with a zoom-out to manipulate relative size and distance.“This
procedure keeps the near steps the same size, but dilates the space changing the appar-
ent depth by changes in the relative size of farther objects but not nearer ones.” He also
notes that shadows and lighting are used to the advantage of narrative in The Lady Van-
ishes(1938) “where a handwritten message in the condensation on the interior of a train
window is invisible in daylight but appears when the train is in a tunnel.”
With regard to space from the viewer’s point of view, Cutting defines three regions—
“vista space (that beyond about 30 m) for a pedestrian, action space (from 30 m inward
to about 1.5 m), and personal space (closer than about 1.5 m).” He argues that action
space is the primary space of the movie. Vista space may be occasionally employed in a
wide shot of a landscape, and more importantly, he claims “that part of being a viewer
of the action in a film is contingent on nothaving things enter one’s personal space.”
Cutting also observes that many violations of continuity editing will be tolerated by
an audience if the narrative is sufficiently powerful, as in the cutting back and forth
between shots with a blue sky and shots with an overcast sky in the boating scene in
The Sound of Music(1965). But he also points out that neither filmmakers nor editors
nor psychologists know for sure in advance which discontinuities will be accepted by
an audience and which will not. He goes on to observe that the 180-degree rule may
not be as inviolable as some have thought, and that “such cinematic ‘rules’ are not, as
often proposed, like a ‘grammar’ of film.” Recalling that we did not evolve to watch
movies, he marvels that they work so well and offers that the reasons for film’s success
stem from our biological endowment, how it constrains and does not constrain our
cognitive and perceptual systems in dealing with space and time.
Robert E. Shaw and William M. Mace in “The Value of Oriented Geometry for
Ecological Psychology and Moving Image Art” distinguish between direct and indirect

8 / PART ONE
perception and suggest a modification of standard projective geometry that would al-
low a more lawful approach to both. They offer that representations can be ecologically
validby conforming to the laws of nature. A set of representations in violation of the
laws of nature would be ecologically invalid.“Direct perception has ecological validity,”
they write, “because, in principle, it has direct access to confirmatory information while
indirect perception may or may not.” We are reminded that “[a]rt is always lacking some
degree of ecological validity because the expressive stylistics imposed by the individual
artist are unique and defy rational conventions.” But it is possible, they argue, to have
a set of conventions which when followed will allow indirect perceptions to conform
to direct perceptions. One might consider this to be the case with films that use classi-
cal continuity cutting techniques. But what about those films in which artistic expres-
sion overrides clarity of narration? These are, according to Shaw and Mace, extraordi-
nary circumstances, where the conventional constraint is suppressed or unavailable.
Under such circumstances, the indirect perceptual event can “take on a life of its own.”
Let us pursue an example using the concepts just introduced. A scene may begin with
a series of shots that depict an event in a perfectly lawful way where the editing chan-
nels the information within the bounds of normal direct perception, and in a sense, our
perception of the event represented in the scene is direct. It is ecologically valid.But then
af lashforwardis presented, thus introducing an ecologically impossible element, and
suddenly the representation is made invalid.Now, we may assume that most viewers
are aware of the filmic convention of the flashforward and are made aware of the status
by the narrative; thus, the flashforward becomes completely comprehensible, and we
are able to continue perceiving the scene as ecologically valid. On the other hand, it is
also possible that the narrative suppresses the information about the convention (and
that we do not somehow figure it out), and we are left with an incomprehensible event
that inexplicably jumps forward in time. This situation may or may not be acceptable
to us the audience, and it may or may not have been intended by the filmmaker. But
the filmmaker is free to create an ecologically invalid situation if he likes, and he fre-
quently does. A film that comes to mind is Matrix(1999), in which the ecological sta-
tus of the image is often in question. Sometimes, the viewer is aware of a shift in status
to flashback, flashforward, dream, or hallucination, and sometimes not. That is, some-
times the events are made as though lawful by the use of filmic convention, and some-
times they are not. In the latter case, perhaps a sense of disorientation and unreality is
created in the viewer, which presumably is a desirable effect for this film. Of course,
the questionable status of most of the images is supported by the narrative, thereby
placing the irrational events of the movie in a rational narrative context.
Shaw and Mace observe that projective geometry has for some time been generally
thought by both psychologists and artists to be the most descriptive possible mathemati-
cal formulation of information that is available to visual perception. But they argue that
ordinary projective geometry merely explains how the retinal image is formed and is
inadequate to explain how we gain information in actually seeing the world. They of-
ferorientedprojective geometry as “a simpler and more accurate description of visual
perception.” Such a geometry might prove especially useful to artists creating computer-
generated images, perhaps allowing artists both the possibility of creating more-accu-
rate representations and of creating more-controlled violations of natural law.

9
1Perceiving Scenes in Film and in the World
James E. Cutting
THE REAL WORLDis spatially and temporally continuous; film is not. We evolved in a
continuous world and, regardless of how much we may enjoy them, we emphatically
did not evolve to watch movies. Instead, movies evolved, at least in part, to match our
cognitive and perceptual dispositions. The result is a curious melange of short shots with
instantaneous camera jumps between them, something not at all like the rest of the world
around us. Why and how do we accept this? Part of the answer, I claim, is that we do
not necessarily perceive the world according to its physical structure. For example, al-
though we evolved in a Euclidean world, our perceptions of space around us are gener-
ally not Euclidean and generally do not need to be (for more discussion, see Cutting &
Vishton, 1995; and Cutting, 1997). In addition, although we evolved in a temporally
continuous world, our perception of time is not tightly bound to any temporal meter.
Thus, there is a considerable plasticity to our perceptual world; it just happens that the
world is mostly rigid and evenly flowing.
Part of the success of film can be attributed to the goals of what is sometimes called
Hollywood style (see Bordwell, Staiger, & Thompson, 1985).
1
Without endorsing any
political or social aspects of this genre, one finds that Hollywood style has a main goal
that is almost purely cognitive and perceptual—to subordinate all aspects of the pre-
sentation of the story to the narrative (e.g., Messaris, 1994; Reisz & Millar, 1968). This
means that, generally speaking, all manipulations of the camera, lighting, editing, and
sets should be transparent, unnoticed by the filmgoer. To go unnoticed, these techniques
must mesh with the human visual system. Finally, to understand why film works so well
is to understand much about how we perceive the real world; and to understand how
we perceive the world tells us much about how we understand film. This is, I claim,
the fundamental tenet of an ecological approach to cinematic theory.
This chapter is about our perception of space (or, better, layout) in the world and in
film; and then of how space and time can be cut up to make a film scene. But first let
me establish some terminology. Film is made up of shots,each consisting of the con-
tinuous run of a camera. For seventy-five years, the maximum standard shot length for
35 mm film has been ten minutes—a thousand feet of film or the running time of one
standard reel—although few shots are ever that long. In the production of a typical
Hollywood film, shots tend to be much longer in the initial photography, and then in
the editing process, each shot is trimmed to a few seconds in length for the final film.
The shot is then juxtaposed, without transition, with another shot taken from another
point of view. This juxtaposition is called a cut. Asceneusually takes place in a single
location. Typical scenes are made up of many shots and cuts; and most films, of course,
are made up of many scenes. We do not usually speak of real life as being made up of

10 / JAMES E. CUTTING
scenes, but it does no real injustice to speak this way. We walk through life. When our
environs are roughly the same, such as when strolling outside across a town square, we
could call this a scene; when they change, perhaps when we then enter a building, we
could call this a break between scenes, going on to the next. Episodic memory, a cen-
tral concern of cognitive science, is essentially the memory of scenes from our life.
In film, every shot shows an environment of some kind. This environment has a
physical arrangement, or a layout, of objects and people. The projection of this layout
is unique to a particular camera position, but as viewers, we pay little attention to this
projection. Instead, we focus on the “world behind the screen.” We also view the real
world at any given time from a particular position and also generally ignore its particu-
lar projection to our eyes, focusing instead on the general three-dimensional layout of
the environment. Cinematographers and film directors, of course, pay considerable at-
tention to camera position, crafting the composition of the image. In particular, they
manipulate the information available to portray the layout of the scene as they deem
best. What are they manipulating? Consider an answer in terms of contemporary and
traditional research in the visual sciences.
Revealing Layout (Depth) Through Different Information
To begin, it will be useful to separate nine of the different sources of information (tra-
ditionally called depth cues) available to an observer in the real world and then apply
these sources to film. Few if any of these sources by themselves imply a metric space
(measured in ratios and absolute distances). Although in consort all can contribute to a
near-Euclidean representation of space relatively near us under ideal conditions, there
is enough leeway for a seasoned cinematographer or a film director to carve out of them
more or less what he or she wants us to see. Consider each in turn applied to the world
and then to film.
1.Occlusionoccurs when one object partly hides another from view. Cup one hand
in the other, and the hand closer to your eyes partially occludes the farther. As an artis-
tic means of conveying depth information, partial occlusion has been found in art since
paleolithic times where is it often used alone, with no other information to convey depth.
Thus, one can make a reasonable claim that occlusion was the first source of informa-
tion discovered and used to depict spatial relations in depth. And, of course, it is found
in the earliest photographs and films as well. However, occlusion is never more than ordi-
nal information—one can only judge that one object is in front of another but not by
how much. Thus, the kind of space that can be built up from occlusion information alone
is an affine space—one that can squash, stretch, and shear. Camera position and the
layout of clutter in a scene will dictate to the observer (and camera) which objects occlude
or partly occlude others. If only occlusion occurs within a shot, a perceiver will not be
able to know exactly where two objects are. It gives great power to the cinematographer.
Occlusion is unavoidable in film, so much so we often take it for granted. We should
not. It is used very effectively, for example, in a temporal-lapse sequence in Roger
Mitchell’s 1999 film Notting Hill. Between flirtatious episodes with movie star Anna
Scott (Julia Roberts), bookseller Will Thacker (Hugh Grant) walks through the market
in London’s Notting Hill, being occluded by arcades, stands, and people. The sequence
appears continuous, and the camera follows Thacker with a long tracking movement,
most of it with the camera’s line of sight at 90° to its motion. Seasons change through
a full year during the stroll and track, juxtaposing two types of time—that measured in

PERCEIVING SCENES/ 11
seconds with that measured in months. Given that the camera follows Thacker, our at-
tention remains on him even when he is out of sight. Among other things, this demon-
strates that objects at different depths but at the same retinal location can be attended
to separately, an idea that has received much laboratory focus (see Atchley, Kramer, Ander-
sen, & Theeuwes, 1997, for a review; see also Neisser & Becklen, 1975). Despite appear-
ances, this Notting Hill sequence is not a continuous shot. Manipulating the viewer’s at-
tention, the editor uses occlusion to hide a cut in the shot transitions, which is necessary
for the circular movement of the camera in the second part of the sequence, a fine ex-
ample of following Hollywood style. A similar solution to a technical problem is used
in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 film Rope, about which more will be said later.
2.Height in the visual field concerns object positions in the field of view, or in the
frame. Objects occupying higher positions are generally farther away. This information
typically measures relations among the bases of objects in a three-dimensional environ-
ment as projected to the eye or camera. Like occlusion, height in the visual field offers
only ordinal information, and like occlusion it has been used in pictorial representa-
tions since near the beginning of art. Moreover, with photography and film, camera
height is often manipulated for specific effect. A high, downward-tilting camera reveals
greater differences among the bases of ground-plane objects measured in the picture
plane, giving more-articulated information. A low and level camera, on the other hand,
diminishes the availability of this information, forcing us to compare object juxtaposi-
tions without height information. A high and level camera yields the same kind of dis-
tance information as a lower one but goes farther out into space, giving a grander view.
Relations among objects in terms of height in the frame reciprocally specify the height
of the camera and the camera angle with respect to the ground plane. The height of the
camera and its angle, in turn, place the perceiver in a subjective position—high often
indicating dominance (as with adults looking down at children) and low a more sub-
missive role (as with children to adults; see Messaris, 1994). The first half of Robert
Wise’s 1965 film The Sound of Musicis largely about the Von Trapp children. It is shot
mostly from an eye height slightly less than an adult. The second half of the film, how-
ever, is largely about the romance between Maria (Julie Andrews), the governess, and
Captain Von Trapp (Christopher Plummer). It is shot mostly from the eye height of an
adult. Indeed, viewers are supposed to identify with the children in the first half of the
film (Maria is also winning us over as governess) and with the adults in the second. The
point here is that the relations among objects, particularly as revealed by height in the
picture plane, tell us where our eye is—and thus help tell us whether we, the film audi-
ence, are “children” or “adults.” We don’t notice this watching the film; it is a part of
Hollywood style.
In his 1957 film Twelve Angry Men, Sidney Lumet used systematic differences in cam-
era height across the course of the film, manipulating information (among other things)
about height in the visual field (Lumet, 1995). Unlike Wise’s film, dominance and iden-
tification are not primary factors here; manipulation of space is. Roughly the first third
of the film was shot at a standing eye height that, because most of the actors are sitting
at the jurors’ deliberation table, gives ample information about the locations of objects
on the table and positions of individuals around it. The second third of the film was
shot generally at a sitting eye height. This foreshortens the table and makes less clear
where things and people are, but we already know this because of the first part of the
film, and the lower camera height draws us into the deliberation around the table. The
final third of the film was shot just below sitting eye height, removing the plane of the

12 / JAMES E. CUTTING
table almost completely. This deletes the space in front of the individual jurors, isolat-
ing them in their deliberations from their locations at the table and thus from each other.
But again, we don’t notice this manipulation.
3 and 4. Relative size and relative densityconcern how big objects are and how many
there are as seen by the eye. Pebbles are large and not numerous when seen held in the
hand, but they are smaller and more numerous seen on a rocky beach. More techni-
cally, relative size is a measure of the angular extent of the retinal (or image) projection
of two or more similar objects or textures. It has been used in some rough sense since at
least early Greek, if not Egyptian and Persian, art. Unlike occlusion and height in the
visual field, relative size has the potential of yielding ratio information. That is, for ex-
ample, if one sees two similar objects, one of which subtends one half the visual angle
of the other, the former will be twice as far away. Technically, relative density concerns
the projected number of similar objects or textures per solid visual angle and is what
Gibson (1950) meant by term texture gradient.It works inversely to relative size and is
considerably weaker in its perceptual potency (Cutting & Millard, 1984; Cutting &
Vishton, 1995). Relative density is a relative latecomer to art; its effects were first seen
in the local (not fully coherent) perspective piazzas of the fourteenth century. Its late-
ness to the armamentarium of depiction is due to the fact that only with the invention
and use of linear perspective in Renaissance art are these first four sources of informa-
tion—occlusion, height, size, and density—coupled in a rigorous fashion. The technol-
ogy of depicting density differences is the hardest to carry out. Unlike relative size but
like the first two sources, relative density provides only ordinal information about depth.
Computer graphics allow independent manipulation of relative density and relative size,
but with a camera in the real world, the two are yoked: As size of texture elements
doubles, their density decreases by half.
In photography, relative size and relative density are manipulated through the use
of lenses (e.g., Swedlund, 1981). Perhaps the most familiar example of issues concern-
ing relative size occurs in portrait photography. Here the photographer typically stands
back from the subject and uses a long lens. For 35 mm film, the standard lens has a
focal length of 50 mm; a lens with a focal length greater than about 100 mm is consid-
ered a long lens, also called a telephoto lens. With a short focal-length lens on the cam-
era, the camera must be placed close to the person being photographed, with the result
that the difference between camera-to-nose distance and camera-to-ear distance is great,
and the person’s nose appears large. With a long lens on the camera, the camera can be
placed farther away from the person being photographed. With the camera farther away,
the difference between camera-to-nose and camera-to-ear distances becomes negligible,
so the person’s features appear close to their actual sizes. This is also one reason why
most shot-reverse-shot sequences in cinematic dialogs are taken with relatively long
lenses. They make the actors look better. More on dialogs later.
Manipulations of relative size through lenses have other important effects, dilating
and compressing space with short and long lenses, respectively. One memorable scene
near the end of Mike Nichols’ 1967 film The Graduatehas Benjamin Braddock (Dustin
Hoffman) running down a sidewalk, his car having broken down, trying to stop the
wedding of the young woman he loves. He runs for more than ten seconds directly
towards the camera (into a very long lens), with the appearance of getting nowhere. This
getting-nowhere effect—enhancing the anxiety of the viewer—is conveyed by the fact
that the long lens compresses depth. This compression results from decreased differences

PERCEIVING SCENES/ 13
in relative size (and relative density) in the sections of sidewalk and the surrounding trees
and bushes and also keeping Braddock from growing much in size as he strains to get
to the church.
Such spatial compression and dilation effects find themselves useful in many situa-
tions. Again in Twelve Angry Men,Lumet shot the first third of his film with relatively
short lenses, dilating depth and conveying a wide-angle spaciousness of the delibera-
tion room. He then shifted to more-standard lenses in the next third; and a long lenses
in the final third, narrowing the field of view and compressing the space around the
jurors as the debate progressed, creating more tension. Combined with the progressively
lower camera angles, by the end, the ceiling is revealed to be pressing in on the jurors as
well. But again, all of this is unnoticed; we follow the narrative, and the lens effects sup-
port the narrative.
Perhaps the most striking spatial transformation is attributable to Alfred Hitchcock
(Truffaut, 1983) in a sequence that gives eponymic visual force to 1957 film Vertigo.
Hitchcock wished to simulate Scottie Ferguson’s (James Stewart’s) fear of heights dur-
ing his views down a bell tower’s stairs. The effect is done in a subjective shot (one fol-
lowing an objective shot of Ferguson looking down the stairwell, called point-of-view
editing) by combining a dolly in with a zoom out.
2
This procedure keeps the near steps
the same size but dilates the space, changing the apparent depth by changes in the rela-
tive size of farther objects but not nearer ones. The scene has a stomach-churning plas-
tic and deforming character. The bottom of the stairwell rushes away from the viewer,
getting deeper and more dangerous.
It should be noted that the effectiveness of this dolly/zoom depends on the viewer
havingsome near-metric information about depth. If the visual system’s ability to deal
with depth were completely plastic (affine), such effects would not be noticed at all! Thus,
there is a sense in which we notice the effect. This would appear to conflict with the
idea of Hollywood style, but it does not. The effect is the key element of the narrative.
Ferguson has vertigo, and we, personally, can see that it is an awful and debilitating thing.
5.Aerial perspectiverefers to the effects of fog, mist, and haze. These create an indis-
tinctness of objects, with distance determined by moisture or pollutants in the atmo-
sphere. Its perceptual effect is a decrease in contrast of the object against the background
with increasing distance, converging to the color of the atmosphere. Aerial perspective
was systematically discussed and understood by Leonardo da Vinci (Richter, 1883) and
has been used photographically and cinematographically since their beginnings. Like
many other sources, it is ordinal information. Objects are dimmer and less distinct when
farther away, but as viewers we don’t know by how much because we really cannot ac-
curately assess the density of the atmosphere.
In photography and film, aerial perspective (particularly as fog) can also be manipu-
lated with lenses. Long lenses bring more of the atmosphere into play among objects in
focus and in the field of view. The final scenes of Michael Curtiz’s 1941 film Casablanca
use lenses and fog quite effectively. Wondering who, if anybody, will escape the Nazis
from this North African city, the audience sees—because of the fog—the airplane at a
barely attainable distance behind Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), Ilsa Lund (Ingrid
Bergman), and Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). This heightens the viewer’s anxiety about
possible departure.
Perhaps the clearest example of this effect is not with fog but with rain. The bulk of
televised baseball games is typically shot with long lenses from behind the catcher or

14 / JAMES E. CUTTING
from center field. These show the pitcher, batter, and catcher occupying what seems to
be the same space, nearly on top of one another. This, of course, is the effect of relative
size compressing depth discussed earlier. But on nights with a smattering of rain, not
enough to stop the game, the images shot with long lenses make the scene look like a
veritable downpour. This is notHollywood style, because one wonders why the umpires
do not stop the game. Yet, the downpour is a false impression—more raindrops in depth
are compressed into the field of view than are experienced by ballplayers.
6.Accommodationoccurs with the change in the shape of the lens of the eye, allow-
ing it to focus on objects near or far while keeping the retinal image sharp. Objects at
other distances are blurred. The camera analog to accommodation occurs with dynamic
manipulation of focal depth, which can place one object in focus and another out. This
information tells the viewer only that the objects are at different depths. By itself, how-
ever, it does not even tell depth order. Interestingly, blur first appeared in art about the
same time as Impressionism and with late-nineteenth-century photography (Scharf, 1968).
Manipulation of clear and blurred regions of an image is also a powerful tool for the
cinematographer. It is used to control points of interest in a scene where he or she wants
the viewer to look. This is done effectively, for example, in The Graduate when looking
over Benjamin Braddock’s shoulder and first focussing on Elaine Robinson (Katherine
Ross) in her bedroom, then on Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) in the more-distant hall-
way. Only one is in focus at a time. They are thus revealed at different distances, and
the narrative’s sequence of outrage passes from one to the other.
7 and 8. Convergence and binocular disparityare two-eyed phenomena. Convergence
is measured as the angle between foveal axes of the two eyes. When the angle is large,
the two eyes are canted inward to focus near the nose; when approaching 0° , the two
eyes are aligned to focus beyond 10 m (which is, interestingly enough, functionally the
same as the horizon). Convergence can be registered and used at close range but not
beyond about 2 m. Given that photographic and cinematic images are flat, it is unin-
formative, and given that all of film and much of television is watched from distances
greater than 2 m, this source of information is irrelevant. Binocular disparities are the
differences in relative position of sets of objects as projected on the retinas of the two
eyes. When disparities are sufficiently small, they yield stereopsis, or the impression of
solid space. When disparities are greater than stereopsis will allow, they yield diplopia—
or double vision—which is also informative about relative depth. Stereo is also extremely
malleable, and just one day of monocular vision can render one temporarily stereoblind
(Wallach & Karsh, 1963).
Convergence has never had artistic use, and it is remarkable that stereo has never
played an important role in photography or film except as a type of parlor teaser. De-
spite all predictions at the time and before (see Eisenstein, 1948/1970), few pictures
following the 1953 film House of Wax by André de Toth, have been made in 3-D. Some
theorists suggest that the reason has to do with the relative gimmickry of stereo and the
necessity of wearing glasses (Kubovy, 1986). Without denying this factor, I think ste-
reo films fail as an important medium because stereo in the real world enhances notice-
able depth differences only nearest to the viewer and, as I will discuss later, this is not a
region of space that is important to most filmmakers. Interestingly, Hitchcock’s 1954
filmDial M for Murderwas shot in 3-D but is rarely seen in this format; Hitchcock
had particular interest in low camera angles in this film, and 3-D worked well to reveal

PERCEIVING SCENES/ 15
depth differences in near space (Truffaut, 1983, p. 210). However, perhaps unsatisfied
with its effects, Hitchcock never used 3-D again.
Convergence and disparities are linked in human vision, but having two eyes can
often get in the way of seeing depth in pictures. At the turn of the twentieth century,
Karl Zeiss, inventor of cameras and of the planetarium, hoped to gain (another) for-
tune by selling a device that neutralized both sources for visitors to art museums. Called
a synopter, this apparatus contains a series of fully silvered and half-silvered mirrors at
45°angles that superimpose the lines of sight of the two eyes, nullifying disparities and
convergence. Reports suggest these devices greatly enhance the visual depth seen in
photographs and in paintings (Koenderink, van Doorn, & Kappers, 1994), often even
more than stereoscopic displays. The reason for enhanced depth compared to unencum-
bered two-eyed viewing seems relatively straightforward. This device cancels certain
information about flatness (uniformly graded disparities and vergence on a nearby ob-
ject) in the scene viewed. It also can remove from view the frame and other context
surrounding the picture.
The reason the synopter produces an effect of depth betterthan stereopsis is a bit
more complicated. First, with typical stereo material, there is a coulisse effect (objects
can appear relatively flat with startling spatial gaps in depth between them). This effect
is due to the fact that the two cameras used to take the stereo images are usually con-
siderably more than 6 cm apart, the distance between our eyes. Stereo cameras wider
apart than our eyes will tend to minify a scene (they effectively “enlarge” our head),
making objects appear proportionately smaller and flatter than they are. Indeed, early
parlor stereograms were of European cities, taken with cameras as much as a half-meter
apart (eight times normal) or more. This renders impressions of the cities very much
less grand one-eighth the size), even toylike. Second, zero disparity, which is what the
synopter achieves, does not actually take away depth information. Instead, it specifies
infinite depth, or at least a depth beyond about 30 m. This would probably be pooled
with other sources and enhance the overall depth effect. Most simply, however, movie-
goers can achieve a nearly synoptic effect by sitting more than 10 m from the screen.
9.Motion perspectiverefers to the field of relative motions of objects rigidly attached
to a ground plane around a moving observer or camera. It specifically does not refer to
the motion of a given object, which was the major early accomplishment in the ontog-
eny of film.
3
Motion perspective occurs best during a dolly (or tracking shot), where
near objects and textures move faster than far ones, and their velocity is inversely pro-
portional to their distance from the camera. Thus, objects twice as far move exactly half
as fast so long as the camera does not pan. The first uses of motion perspective in film
were seen at the end of the nineteenth century (Toulet, 1988), where cameras were
mounted on trolleys and trains and their effects presented to appreciative audiences.
Motion perspective is particularly good at generating the impression of self-move-
ment, but it needs to be distinguished from another camera manipulation.In early and
later cinema outside the studio, dollies entailed putting a camera in a moving vehicle
or, more expensively, the laying down of a track on which the camera rolled. For ex-
ample, the filming of the background in the chase sequence through the Ewok (red-
wood) forest near the end of George Lucas’s 1983 film Return of the Jediused a track
and a dollying camera. He also used frame-by-frame photography to enhance the speed
and then hand blurring of the periphery of each image to avoid motion-aliasing arti-

16 / JAMES E. CUTTING
facts. Today, steadycams (cameras using inertia to avoid the bounciness of hand-held
techniques) make the motion-perspective effect easier to attain outside the studio.
The information about motion perspective attained from a dolly should be distin-
guished from the patterns seen in a zoom. Zooming in, as suggested above, is the con-
tinuous adjustment of a variable lens from a relatively short to a relatively long length
(the range of 38 mm to 115 mm is common in a 35 mm camera). The optical differences
between the two are interesting but in short sequences is generally unnoticed by a film
viewer (Hochberg, 1978). Zooming in simply enlarges the focal object, allowing all tex-
ture to rush by with equal speed as a function of its image distance from the center of
the focal object. No occlusions and disocclusions occur in a zoom. Motion perspective,
on the other hand, creates occlusions and disocclusions of far objects by near ones, and
the objects and textures rush by at a speed proportional to their physical distance from
the camera and their angle from the path of the camera.
Although viewers may not be, filmmakers are quite sensitive to the differences be-
tween a dolly and zoom. Dollies are used to indicate observer motion; zooms are typi-
cally used for increased attention. Interestingly, the phenomenon of attention as studied
within experimental psychology generally supports this idea. Attention is a phenom-
enon of increased interest on an object, typically in the center of the field of view, coupled
with an increased rejection of information in the periphery. Indeed, theories of atten-
tion occasionally talk, metaphorically, of zooming in on objects during periods of in-
terest (see Palmer, 1999, for a review of the phenomena of attention).
Shadows and lighting are often added to lists of information contributing to the per-
ception of depth. However, I believe shadows are used almost exclusively for articulat-
ing the shapes of objects, not about object relations in depth around the perceiver. The
reason is straightforward—changes in shadows rarely change depth or one’s perception
of the shape of an object, whereas changes in relative size, height in the visual field,
binocular disparities, and the like almost always do. This is not to underplay the im-
portance of shadows in real life or in cinema. Artistically, it is crucial to play with the
identity of objects and individuals in film, and this is often done best through varia-
tions in lighting. Consider two particularly striking examples of lighting effects. One
occurs in Hitchcock’s 1938 film The Lady Vanisheswhere a handwritten message in the
condensation on the interior of a train window is invisible in daylight but appears when
the train is in a tunnel—a key bit of evidence on which turns possible hallucination into
intrigue. A second occurs throughout Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 film Koyaanisquatsi,a film
without dialog or standard plot. Time-lapsed photography is used throughout with the
camera often remaining in position throughout a full day, recording the passing of events
under the change of light.
Phenomenal Spaces in the Real World and in Cinema
On the basis of the differential relative potency of the various sources of information
listed above, I have found it convenient to divide egocentric space into three regions—
vista space(that beyond about 30 m) for a pedestrian, action space(from 30 m inward
to about 1.5 m), and personal space (closer than about 1.5 m) (see Cutting & Vishton,
1995; Cutting, 1997). In vista space, the only effective sources of information are the
traditional pictorial cues—occlusion, height in the visual field, relative size, relative den-
sity, and aerial perspective—all of which are yoked within the technique of linear per-
spective mastered by Renaissance artists and yoked in camera use as well. Motion per-

PERCEIVING SCENES/ 17
spective for the pedestrian is not particularly effective beyond 30 m, particularly when
looking in or near the direction of motion. Similarly, stereo is also not very effective.
Vista space can be strikingly portrayed in large trompe l’oeil paintings and in cinema,
particularly in wide-screen format. But the typically narrative content of vista space in
film is nil. Vista is only backdrop, and older Hollywood movies succeeded well by sim-
ply painting vistas on walls and on movable sets.
Action space is circular, on the ground plane around us, and generally closer than
about 30 m but beyond arm’s reach. We move quickly within this space, talk within it,
and toss things to a friend. More simply, we act within this space. In everyday life, all
but the most intimate conversations occur within this space. In the real world, this space
appears to be served by a different collection of information sources: three of the five
linear-perspective sources (relative density and aerial perspective are usually too weak
compared to the others) plus binocular disparity and motion perspective. For film we
can omit disparities. Most emphatically, action space is the space of films. Film con-
tent almost always takes place between 2 m and 30 m of the camera. As viewers, we
like it this way.
The near boundary of action space for the pedestrian is delimited by the emergence
of height in the visual field as a strong information source, which also serves to limit
this space to the ground plane. Viewing objects from above or below about 1.5 m to 2
m tends to make perception of their layout less certain by weakening the effect of fa-
miliar size,a phenomenon by which we can scale the size of surrounding objects by what
we know to be the size of a particular object. Many wide-angled paintings and engrav-
ings from the eighteenth century (e.g., Caneletto and Piranesi) use an eye height of about
2.5 times normal, which is about the extreme of its utility without loss of object iden-
tity. Bertamini, Yang, and Proffitt (1998) and Dixon, Wraga, Proffitt, and Williams(2000)
have shown that one begins to lose the impression of object size when eye heights ex-
ceed this value. Interestingly, this is roughly the height typically attainable by raising a
camera on a crane, a common device at the end of a film indicating that the film is over.
Also, the opening shot and several others in Orson Welles’s 1958 film Touch of Eviluse
a crane effectively to dodge up and down within this range. Finally, partly because very
high camera positions can defeat our sense of true object size, Hitchcock and others were
able to use small models to film what would appear to be outdoor scenes.
Personal space immediately surrounds the observer’s head, generally within arm’s reach
and slightly beyond. Within this region, I claim five sources of information are gener-
ally effective (Cutting & Vishton, 1995)—occlusion and relative size from the linear
perspective set, plus the reflexive, biologically engrained set of accommodation, binocular
disparities, and convergence. Given that the latter two are not attained in standard film,
their absence could create a problem. Fortunately, the personal space of the viewer is
not often relevant to film. Indeed, I claim that part of being a viewer of the action in a
film is contingent on not having things enter one’s personal space.
4
This impinges on one’s
person, and typically one does not want to be made aware of oneself when watching a
movie. If you “lost it at the movies,” to use Pauline Kael’s (1965) felicitous phrase, you
did so because you were not made aware of yourself. This is critical to Hollywood style.
Thus, whereas in the real world there appear to be three differentiable spaces (vista,
action, and personal), in film there appears to be but one (action space). This makes
the cinematographer’s job possible. He or she doesn’t have to worry too much about
the background (indeed, many times sets can be substituted for outdoor scenes) and

18 / JAMES E. CUTTING
doesn’t have to worry about the extreme foreground (because it would impinge on the
space of the viewer).
How Cuts, Shots, and Narrative Knit Together a Film
Having broached spatial information and its use in cinema, let us turn next to tempo-
ral structure and how it interacts with space. It is useful to begin historically. Quite
understandably, many early films were shot as theater productions, with an unmoving
camera in mid-audience. It was soon discovered, however, that the camera could move,
and execute close-ups, and the viewer could still make good sense of the action from
different points of view. In addition, with increased demand and the advance of tech-
nology, films became longer, and cuts were needed; one simply couldn’t hold enough
unexposed film in a magazine to shoot the whole movie (difficulties and expense of
multiple takes aside). Early on, different shots were separated by a fading out of the first
and then a fading in of the second. Darkness knit the two shots together. Later, dis-
solves entered the editor’s toolkit, where the fading out of one scene is overlapped with
the fading in of another (see Spotteswood, 1951). Nonetheless, quite early, D. W. Griffith
and others discovered that straight cuts were acceptable and not jarring (see Carey, 1982).
Cuts separating shots in the same scene are by far the most common. In contemporary
television, within-scene, alternating shots, and reverse shots account for more than 95%
of all cuts (Messaris, 1994). Transitions separating shots from different scenes and times,
however, often continued to use fades. For example, The Sound of Musicin 1965 has
straight cuts within scenes but fades when both time and place are changed. More re-
cently, fades have passed out of favor, seeming quaint and unnecessary. A striking straight
cut across scenes occurs early in Steven Spielberg’s 1997 film The Lost World.An En-
glish family vacations on a remote, tropical island off Mexico. The daughter strays and
plays just off the beach beneath some palms. Small creatures surround her and attack.
She screams. The scene then cuts to a yawning Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) with a
palm tree behind him, but it turns out that Malcolm is next to a screeching train in
New York City, and the palm tree is on a poster advertisement. Hollywood style is fol-
lowed because the juxtaposition tells us that Malcolm will be connected to understanding
the cause of the girl’s death.
Why is a straight cut perceptually acceptable? This question divides several ways. First,
why is it acceptable for one image to displace another taken from the same position in
space but with the camera rotated to a new orientation? Second, why is it notaccept-
able for one image to displace another taken from the same position and orientation?
Third, why is it acceptable for one image to displace another taken from a different
position with a new camera orientation?
Cuts, saccades, suppression, and the lack of beta motion.With respect to the first ques-
tion, many conjectures have been made. In a 1965 interview, director John Huston made
an intelligent start, establishing himself as perhaps the first ecological film theorist:
All the things we have laboriously learned to do with film, were already part
of the physiological and psychological experience of man before film was
invented. . . . Move your eyes, quickly, from an object on one side of the
room to an object on the other side. In a film you would use a cut. . . . In
moving your head from one side . . . to the other, you briefly closed your
eyes. (Messaris, 1994, p. 82)
Thus, for Huston, a cut is a surrogate for the real-world combination of saccade and blink.

PERCEIVING SCENES/ 19
Our visual world is usually continuous, but saccades and blinks do alter and cut the
stream. We can often make ourselves aware of temporal discontinuities that occur dur-
ing eye blinks, which are usually about a fifth of a second long (Pew & Rosenbaum,
1986). Make a blink longer than 200 milliseconds (ms), and the “dimming” that often
occurs becomes quite noticeable. Such dimming has a cause beyond mere lid closure.
Some of the effect lies physiologically in the commands to the eyelid muscles. Such
dimming occurs in the dark even when an optical fiber delivers light to the retina through
the roof of the mouth (Volkman, Riggs, & Moore, 1980). Despite this, I know of no
one who has collected normative data on the co-occurrence of saccades and blinks. This
aside, it is quite clear that most of our saccades occur without blinks, so Huston’s con-
jecture must reduce to one of comparing cuts with saccades.
Cuts are instantaneous, one frame to the next.
5
Saccade durations vary, mostly by
the extent to which the eye moves, but 40 ms is about average, with a range of 20 to 90
ms (Hallett, 1986). The velocity of eye rotation during a saccade is quite fast with a range
of 50°to 500°/second. Given that film screens are seldom seen wider than about 35°
and that a full circle is 360°, this is fast indeed. During such movement, one would expect
to see blur. We do not. In fact, we see essentially nothing, a fact called saccadic suppres-
sion. Causes for this are complex but seem to be a mixture of blocking by two sources—
feedback from eye-muscle movements and a particular type of masking, or blotting out
of the message. Technically the latter is called metacontrast masking(Matin, 1986). In
effect, we are relatively blind to visual information occurring from a few milliseconds
beforea saccade, almost completely so during the 50 ms or so of a saccade, and tapering
off for about another 50 to 100 ms afterthe saccade is complete (Volkman, Schick, &
Riggs, 1968). The time course of interruption masking by metacontrast is about the
same (without the presence of a saccade duration). Because interruption masking is
likelyto occur after a film cut, one can assume that we are partially blind to the visual
information in the first 100 ms after a cut, about the duration of two frames. This means
the editor must be a bit careful; one cannot cut quickly again. Quick cuts within this
range are disruptive. They were tried, for example, in Dennis Hopper’s 1969 film Easy
Rider.Toward the end of the film, single-frame and longer shots were incrementally cut
back and forth between scenes of motorcycle riding and camping. These were jarring,
interfered with the narrative, and hence broke with Hollywood style.
However, masking and suppression explain only part of why cuts work. They explain
a temporary blindness between shots at the cut line and perhaps the lack of disorienta-
tion immediately after the cut, but they do not explain the acceptability of the cut. Why
are we able to make sense out of two shots with no transition? Acceptability seems predi-
cated, in part, on the physical differences between shots. Cuts become acceptable only
when the general patterns of light in the two shots are sufficiently different (Hochberg
& Brooks, 1996). This occurs naturally in fixations before and after a saccade. After
rotating our eyes, the backgrounds of what we see are different, the objects focused upon
are typically different, the lighting is often different, and few edges and lines as pro-
jected on the retina line up across fixations. Thus, we accept a disrupted flow quite
naturally, it is a part of our everyday visual world, and this is the heart of Huston’s conjec-
ture. But there is a caveat.
Unlike the perceiver in the real world, the editor composing the film must be care-
ful with the content of successive images. If edges line up or worse, almost line up, a
certain kind of irrelevant motion can occur, which I will call betamotion.
6
This mo-
tion occurs in the laboratory and occasionally in neon street signs, where objects can
change shape and position. This motion is not cinematic motion and would likely de-

20 / JAMES E. CUTTING
tract from the narrative. A particularly interesting candidate case occurs early in Stanley
Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.Protohumans battle, one side wins, and a
leader of the winning group tosses a bone into the air, which the camera follows and
which rotates in slow motion. Cut to a spaceship docking at a space station. What is
interesting about this cut is that across frames the bone and the spaceship do notline
up. In fact, they are at right angles. Surely, the editor must have been tempted to align
the orientations of bone and spaceship. Despite the fact that the backgrounds of the
scenes are very different (light blue against the bone and black against the spaceship),
we can only assume that the editor found it inappropriate to align them; it must have
created jarring beta motion.
The avoidance of betamotion is also part of the answer to the second question: Why
is it not acceptable for one image to displace another taken from the same position and
orientation? Juxtaposed shots taken from the same point of view create what is called a
jump cut.Although used occasionally in French New Wave cinema of the mid-twenti-
eth century, the perceptual effects of a jump cut are often very jarring. The reasons for
this would seem to be that the commonality of the backgrounds of the two shots across
the cut anchors the sameness of what is seen (Hochberg & Brooks, 1996). Within this
sameness, the changes in the focal object can often only be made sense of, perceptually,
as plastic deformation and size change. Because people and cars and other objects that
are the focus of the cinematic narrative cannot spontaneously deform or change size,
anything indicating that they do seems weird and detracts from the narrative.
Shot-reverse-shot sequences, the cinematic viewer, and discontinuity.The third question
concerns cuts and the movement of the camera to a different position and orientation
within the same scene. This is called a shot-reverse-shot pattern and occurs most often in
filmed conversations. Such filming is a technical tour de force with great psychological
interest. There are at least two interrelated problems here. First, after an establishing
shot that shows two (or more) people in the scene, the camera typically frames each
speaker sequentially, alternating position and focus between the two conversants. One
person looks left off the screen as if to the other. The other individual looks offscreen
right. Cinematic practice has shown that it is best if sight lines (gaze directions of the
conversants) line up. The result is as if we (the camera) were a silent third party to the
conversation, looking back and forth.
Because of the necessity of using long lenses, we (as the camera) cannot simply oc-
cupy a position nearby the conversants—they would have big noses. Thus, and reveal-
ing the second problem, we (as the camera) are often looking over the shoulder of one
of the conversants, whether or not his or her shoulder is actually in the picture. In this
manner, we do not occupy a single third position. How is it we can tolerate this subjec-
tive jumping around so much? My view is this jumping is only a problem if one assumes
that we perceive the world metrically. Conversations are focused on the people, not the
backgrounds, and we actually care quite little about the overall coherence of the back-
ground of the scene. We are perfectly happy, as viewers, if the camera positions are only
roughly consistent with a third position generally between and to one side of the con-
versants. More simply, we are much more interested in the story than the details of the
framework around those enacting the story.
This raises an important concern of filmmakers—continuity (see Anderson, 1996;
Bordwell et al., 1985). Among other things, continuity means keeping track of what is
in each shot and making sure that the world that is projected on the screen appears
coherent. However, it appears that we, as perceivers, are not that particular about such

PERCEIVING SCENES/ 21
coherence. Levin and Simons (1997; see also Simons & Levin, 1997), in one of the few
laboratory experiments on the perception of film, showed that objects can appear and
disappear across shots within the shot-reverse-shot sequence of a conversation, and view-
ers don’t notice. In fact, one can sometimes switch actors across cuts as well (and actu-
ally do this in real life) without observers noticing. Indeed, Luis Buñuel did this with
his leading actresses in his 1977 film That Obscure Object of Desire,and viewers often
did not notice (see Buñuel, 1983).
However striking these results may seem, this kind of continuity “experiment” is
forced by circumstances in some way upon the editors of nearly every film. In The Sound
of Music,for example, consider a pivotal dramatic scene. Maria and the Von Trapp chil-
dren are having fun rowing on a lake behind the house. Captain Von Trapp suddenly
arrives home with his betrothed, the Baroness Von Schrader, and the Captain excori-
ates Maria for a breach of strictness in the children’s upbringing. Maria defends herself,
to the point of being fired. The scene demands that it be shot outdoors and that Maria
and the children get wet, falling in the water. The clothes, being sewn from colorful
drapes, are not easily replaced. Thus, different takes of the same scene could not be shot
on the same day. The clothes must dry. The film version of the scene was clearly edited
from shots taken on at least two days with quite different weather, one with clear blue
sky and one with heavy humidity. The shots cut back and forth between clear and hu-
mid days seven times in the course of the argument between Maria and the Captain.
Nonetheless, no student to whom I have shown this clip has ever noticed this fact, even
after hearing a short lecture about continuity in film. Clearly, the narrative is sufficiently
powerful that is doesn’t matter that the sky behind Captain Von Trapp (taking up as
much as half of the surface area of the screen) changes so many times.
The Filmmaker’s Contract with the Viewer
But there are constraints; not everything goes. This idea divides two ways. First, film-
making demands that continuity be as great as possible during the actual filming pro-
cess. This is because of the filmmaker’s and editor’s inability to know, in advance, which
discontinuities would and would not be noticed—and psychological theorists don’t know
either. Unprepared for and noticeable discontinuity could jeopardize Hollywood style
and the success of the film. Second, whereas certain structural aspects of continuity may
be violable, thematic aspects cannot. This raises the issue of montage and the oft-de-
scribedKuleshov effect(Levaco, 1974; Pudovkin, 1958). The Russian filmmaker V. I.
Pudovkin, a student of Kuleshov, made several short movies (each of three shots) using
the actor Ivan Mosjukhin. In the first movie, the first shot showed a close-up of the
relatively expressionless face of the actor, the second a coffin in which lay a dead woman,
and the third another close-up of the actor. In a second film, the first and third shots
were the same, but the second was replaced with a bowl of soup. Reports suggest that
viewers read the expression on Mosjukhin’s face in the third differently in the two short
sequences. Such, it is said, is the power of montage. Indeed, Hitchcock embraced this
idea (Truffaut, 1983, p. 216) and claims to have used it in his 1954 film Rear Window
where, as a temporary invalid, L. B. “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart) views the murder of
a neighbor across a back courtyard.
Yet there is much less here than actually meets the eye. What this description of
montage leaves out is context. The montage will work but only in the context of the
longer narrative. Without that context, every experiment I know that tries to replicate
the Kuleshov effect has failed. Hochberg and Brooks explain why:

22 / JAMES E. CUTTING
Despite Eisenstein’s assertion (1949) that two pieces of film of any kind,
when placed in juxtaposition, inevitably combine into a new concept of
quality, there is no reason to believe that without specific effort at construal
by the viewer anything other than a meaningless flight of visual fragments
. . . will be perceived. (1996, p. 265)
In other words, the filmmaker must first win over the viewer with the narrative. After
the viewer accepts the narrative, the filmmaker has an implicit contract with the viewer
to promote the narrative in an appropriate way. All storytellers in all media have such
contracts with their audiences (see also Proffitt, 1976; Willats, 1995). At this point,
montage is good film practice but only so long as the narrative continues in a satisfac-
tory way. If it does not, the filmmaker has broken the contract, and the perceiver is on
his or her own.
One final point about the acceptability of successive shots. Great importance has been
given in the psychological and film literature to what is often called the 180° rule (see
Carroll, 1980; Hochberg & Brooks, 1996; Kraft, 1987). This rule states that succes-
sive shots should not cross the line of sight between two conversants, or cross the line
of action, but roughly any camera position within the remaining 180°is fine. None-
theless, this rule seems violated quite often with little effect. In John Ford’s 1939 film
Stagecoach,the opening scene cuts across the line of action (the stagecoach enters from
the left, facing right, and we then see it facing in the opposite direction). Later, when
more passengers are added, this “error” occurs again in the opposite direction, yet little
seems lost. Few students, when shown the film, notice it.
More potently, the final scene in Casablancacuts in violation of this rule during a
three-way conversation among Rick, Victor, and Ilsa. Most of the conversation consists
of shots cut between Rick (on the right) and Victor (on the left). Ilsa is between them
but closer to Rick. At a critical moment, however, suddenly Rick is on the left and Vic-
tor and Ilsa on the right. This is important for the story line, because at this moment,
Victor puts the papers of transit in his coat pocket, a gesture that could not be seen from
the previous perspective. Moreover, the new placement of the three seals the fact that
Ilsa is going with Victor and not staying with Rick. Quickly, the camera positions shift
back to Rick on the right and Victor on the left before departure. My experience in
showing this sequence in a class is that no one is confused—indeed, no one even no-
tices. This is probably because the positions of all three characters were well established
in previous shots.
I agree with Murch (1995, p. 18), who suggests that the 180°rule is less important
than often suggested and is subordinate to many other purposes of film. I contend that
such cinematic “rules” are not, as often proposed, like a “grammar” of film. In linguis-
tics, violations of grammatical rules render sentences incomprehensible or ambiguous;
in film, violation of these “rules” typically does not yield unknowable or uncertain re-
sults; one understands the film but is also made aware that something is amiss. Instead
of being like grammar, I content these “rules” are like conversational axioms (Grice, 1957),
the basis of a contract about how people behave towards one another in how they con-
duct a conversation. In film, these are parts of the contract between filmmaker and view-
ers. As I suggested earlier, the Hollywood-style contract dictates that filmmakers will
not let viewers become aware of themselves. Crossing between conversants in the real
world would be bad manners, and one would become aware of oneself. Crossing between
conversants in film, as one apparently would in any violation of the 180° rule, would
be equally rude.
7

PERCEIVING SCENES/ 23
Final Notes on Cuts and Time
Two final comments about cuts. First, can a film have no cuts? I know of only two in
standard-release cinema, Hitchcock’s 1948 film Ropeand Louis Malle’s 1981 film My
Dinner with André.The latter actually has a beginning and ending shot outside a res-
taurant, but the 105 minutes in between is one 16 mm film shot (made with an ex-
tremely large film cartridge), occasionally with a gradual zoom in and out, of a dinner
conversation. It is a remarkable film, but as a viewer, one is teased and made aware of
many things throughout. Ropeis different; eighty minutes long, it is composed in 35
mm film as if it is one shot. As suggested earlier, in the context of describing a scene in
Notting Hill, Ropeis actually shot in ten-minute sections (see Truffaut, 1983). Breaks
in the sections but not in the shot are hidden, for example, with slow pans across a
person’s back. Nonetheless, the action is continuous (walls and furniture having to be
moved for the camera), making the film take place in real time. The camera roves through-
out an apartment as a college professor (James Stewart) gradually discovers that two of
his former students (Farley Grainger and John Dall) have followed the principles es-
poused in his course to an unexpected extreme, killing another former student. I showed
this film to my daughters, and they never noticed that it was filmed in only one shot.
Thus, short shots and cuts are not necessary to film; but it is equally unnecessary for
films to be a continuous shot.
8
Our perceptual and cognitive systems accept either with
equal alacrity as long as the narrative carries one’s interest.
Finally, although films have had cuts and shots for a long time, it is clear that in re-
cent cinema their pace is accelerating. Why? Many would blame music videos. The pace
of shots and cuts in these three-minute clips can often be breathtaking, although the
music overlay is continuous. Gleick (1999) would suppose that this pacing effect is a
cultural one, due to the acceleration of demands on our time and a decrease in thresh-
old for boredom. Indeed, to a degree, this is almost certainly true.
9
However, shot length
beyond a second or two is not biologically constrained. Bordwell et al. (1985) found
shot lengths in Hollywood cinema between 1930 and 1960 to be between about six and
twelve seconds; today it is probably only a bit less. Only the lower limit of shot dura-
tion is limited by our perceptual and cognitive systems being able to make sense of shot
composition and continuity, and this limit for any relatively sustained visual art form
probably has a mean of about one to two seconds, or so. This is still below the pace of
most music videos. Thus, I would claim that music videos exploit a heretofore unused
perceptual and cognitive niche in cinema construction. I would claim further that our
perceptual apparatus and cognitive apparatus have always been able to accept such pac-
ing; it is just that only recently has this ability been tested. Film in general may evolve
to have an average shot of slightly shorter duration than at present, but this would be a
statistical artifact of mixing relatively long-duration shots (which in filmed conversa-
tions and elsewhere are not likely to diminish in length) with more music video-like shots.
Notes
I thank Claudia Lazzaro for listening to near-endless ruminations about film during prepara-
tion of this essay; Joseph D. Anderson, Barbara Fisher Anderson, and Dan Levin for comments
on a draft of this essay and for sharing their expertise about film; Dennis Proffitt for long-ago
discussions of contracts; Michael Kubovy for discussions of Hitchcock; and my children, who
for many years forced me to watch many different films with them many times, allowing me to
become aware of and interested in Hollywood style.
1. Two important points need to be made. First, not all movies made in Hollywood are uni-
formly in Hollywood style nor are non-American movies necessary not made in Hollywood style.

24 / JAMES E. CUTTING
The use of the term Hollywood styleis intended to evoke the commonality of presentation and
narrative found in popular and classic films (see Bordwell et al., 1985). Second, many genres
contrast with Hollywood style and for many reasons. Documentaries and television sportscasts
have a narrative of sorts, but they differ from Hollywood style in that they typically have very
long duration shots and no point-of-view editing. Newscasts also have a kind of narrative, but
they differ from Hollywood style by having long shots and by having people look directly into
the camera, intentionally engaging the viewer with eye contact as in conversation. Advertisements
and political spots differ in that they typically have no real narrative; instead, they have a strong
message that their crafters want the viewers to remember. Music videos differ in that many have
very quick cuts, a continuous music line, and a sequence of shots that often alternates between
the singer(s) and a small plot that uses the song as narration. Television sitcoms differ, having
fewer changes of scene, using a generally proscenium set, and inserting canned laughter. Finally,
much of the film corpus of Sergei Eisenstein, for example, can be taken as a part of a genre of
cinema that is trying strongly to educate the viewer, where the juxtaposition of content across
cuts is often intended to elucidate similarities and dissimilarities, forcing the viewer to make judg-
ments about what is seen.
2. By dolly in I mean that the camera physically rolls closer to the object, and by zoom out I
mean that the lens length of the camera gets shorter (normally minifying the objects in the im-
age and creating a wider field of view). Surprisingly, Hitchcock and François Truffaut misdescribe
the scene as a “track-out combined with a forward zoom” (1983, p. 246). Roland Emmerich and
Dean Devlin’s 1998 film Godzillaprovides another example, although there are many. When
Godzilla is about to erupt through the pavement of Manhattan, the camera is on Nick Tatopoulos
(Matthew Broderick), and the buildings on the streets of New York convulse around him during
the combined dolly in/zoom out.
3. Motion is, of course, the raison d’êtreof film. One of the first “feature” films was the fif-
teen-second film by Louis Lumière, L’Arrivée d’un train à La Ciotat (Ciotat being a small town
outside Marseille). This 1895 film cost one franc per viewing and was an immediate smash hit,
seen by breathless thousands (Toulet, 1988). Accounting for inflation, it is remarkable that viewing
this film cost about $685 per hour in early-twenty-first-century dollars. We may bemoan the cost
of going to the cinema today, but today’s price is quite reasonable compared to previous times.
4. Let me make two additional points. First, it is also not good Hollywood style to have ac-
tors look directly into the camera. If looked at, one becomes self-aware. For example, this is done
early in The Sound of Music. Maria, returning late to the convent and being excoriated by the nuns,
looks into the camera and shrugs her shoulders. It seems quite amateurish and disruptive. Sec-
ond, the camera’s extreme close-ups of actors’ faces and other body parts do not necessarily im-
pinge on the viewer’s personal space. Instead, because long lenses are typically used in such scenes,
the optics are akin to looking through binoculars, giving one a more immediate look at some-
thing that is still rather far away. These shots are notmistaken for being on top of the actor. For
example, contrast them with some of the compelling, computer-graphics shots in Disney and
Pixar’s 1999 film Toy Story 2 . Many are subjective shots from the points of view of toys looking
at human beings. The humans, of course, optically loom large—but not as with a telescope but
because they really are very close—entering the personal space of the toys. But rather than be-
coming aware of ourselves, this is part of the narrative, showing us what it is like to be a toy.
5. Of course, standard film is usually interrupted seventy-two times per second, each of twenty-
four frames three times by an episcotister. This brings the flicker rate above the normal human
threshold, which for a bright light is about sixty times per second. Continuity at this scale is
achieved by exceeding the temporal resolving capacity of the system. See Anderson (1996, chap-
ter 4) for a good analysis.
6.Beta motionis a kind of apparent motion. There are many kinds of apparent motion and
much confusion in the literature. It is sometimes said that film presents apparent motion due to
its stroboscopic presentation of frames. But stroboscopic motion is, neurophysiologically, no dif-

PERCEIVING SCENES/ 25
ferent that real world and typically entails using many separate and sequential displays; apparent
motionisquite different and considerably less compelling (Sperling, 1976). Sometimes this dis-
tinction has been called short-range motion (for stroboscopic) and long-range motion (for ap-
parent), but this distinction is sometimes difficult to maintain. I use the technical and historical
termbeta motionin an attempt to avoid confusion. See Palmer (1999, pp. 471–79) for a good
analysis and presentation of the types of apparent motion.
7. Extraordinary blocking and camera gymnastics, as seen in a conversation in Ivan Reitman’s
1988 film Twinsbetween Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger, may diminish the appear-
ance of this rudeness.
8. Hitchcock runs into a problem in Rope. Typically, in Hollywood style, when an actor looks
offscreen, the next shot is a subject one, showing us what the actor sees. Resolved to have no cuts,
Hitchcock could not do this. Thus, when the professor (James Stewart) finds an extra hat in the
closet, he drops his head in thought and turns the inside of the hat towards the camera which
zooms in and shows us the initials of the dead man. This is a break with Hollywood style, be-
cause Hitchcock could not use point-of-view editing, and the viewer is denied the subjective shot
of what the professor sees. The information had to be conveyed by other means, one that bor-
ders on making us aware of ourselves. Hitchcock has often played with the subjective shot that is
supposed to follow an offscreen glance. In his 1963 film The Birds,the protagonist (Tippy Hedrun)
sits on a bench and looks offscreen several times, interleaved with shots of more and more birds
arriving on a schoolyard jungle gym. We might have assumed that she was looking at the birds,
but later she turns around in horror to see them. However, an establishing shot at the beginning
of the sequence showed her facing away. See Carroll (1980) and Messaris (1994) for more dis-
cussion of this scene.
9. Indeed, pace within a film is important, too, and Lumet (1995) suggests that shorter shots
are necessary to build to a climax. In Twelve Angry Men fully half of the cuts come in the final
third of the film.
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28
2The Value of Oriented Geometry for Ecological
Psychology and Moving Image Art
Robert E. Shaw and William M. Mace
SCIENTISTS AND ARTISTSshare the same environmental habitat (roughly, where they live)
but occupy distinct, somewhat intersecting econiches (roughly, how they live). Although
evolving within the same natural frame, their arenas of life are so dramatically differ-
ent—the former tending toward the rational and the latter toward the expressive—that
no easy comparison can be made of their methods or content. Yet, they have much in
common. For instance, they have both made major contributions to the broadening of
our culture of shared experiences. Such experiences are of two kinds: first, those that
arise from directperception of the environment, something all animals have in com-
mon; and, second, those that arise vicariously, as second-hand experiences, through
indirect perception, or the use of substitutes for the real thing.
Historically, humankind has distinguished itself from other species by its attempt
to produce a vision of nature—to produce records of that vision, with various degrees
of fidelity and stylistic expression, to be shared and appreciated by others. Where art
has pioneered our expressive side through poetry, dramaturgy, painting, sculpture, and
music, among other things, science has advanced our rational side through basic research,
theory, and technology. Milestones for both science and art were the discovery of vari-
ous means for reproducing objects and events of general social interest vis à vis draw-
ing, sculpting, painting, writing, printing, the telegraph, the telephone, photography,
the phonograph, radio, movies, television, and computers. Drawings or paintings of
people, landscapes, seascapes, or social events, such as sports, dance, travels, and trials,
when framed and hung in a public place, become sources that capture some of the in-
formation contained in artists’ once-personal experiences but which can now be shared
publicly by many. Let’s consider more carefully what this act of reproducing might entail.
We are so familiar with various forms of reproduction that we scarcely recognize what
marvels they really are. Why do they work? There are two fundamental reasons: one
having to do with intentionality, the other with causality. First, the very nature of one
object, the object of intention,being in some way a reproduction of another object, the
object of reference,is that the first refers beyond itself to the second. This is what is meant
by the intention of the first being to refer to the second. To referentails, at least, that
when we perceive the first object, something about it formally resembles the reference
object, and that thus in our experiencing the first, there is some part that would agree
with our experiencing the second if such experiencing should occur. Second, there must
be a causal basis for such intentional reference. But the nature of the referential rela-
tionship between the two objects is such that the absence of information about their
causal connection does not mean absence of information about their intentional con-

THE VALUE OF ORIENTED GEOMETRY/ 29
nection. Hence (and this is the main point)the intentional entailment that exists between
them is not solely dependent on the causal entailment.Because this is so, a certain free-
dom for expressive variety exists for intentional entailment that is not allowed for ra-
tional entailment. The concept of ecological validity
1
is useful for comparing views of
the world acquired through direct perception as opposed to indirect perception. To il-
lustrate this concept, consider the following example.
A relief map of a landscape may show the lay of the land, the shape of forests, the
meander of rivers or wiggle of streams and where their courses take them, relative to
mountains and valleys; and, perhaps, it also shows virgin countryside where no houses
or roads have yet been built. Later maps may show progressive variations in the topog-
raphy after erosion has shifted the lay of the land, say, due to a forest being burned and
tumultuous runoffs now allowed where before soaking action contained the water. Still
later maps may show that houses and other buildings have cropped up since the addi-
tion of a major highway and its access roads have made commuting easier. Thus, the
series of maps show what was, what is, and over successive differences, what transpired
in the periods between cartographical perspectives. The series of maps offers graded
records of a natural dynamical perspective unfolding over time, a historical event that
can be causally explained by natural processes acting over the time samples.
Now imagine that someone accidentally shuffles the series of maps because their time-
tags were lost. The differences between the maps would be out of causal order, with laws
of nature appearing to be violated. Burned forests would sprout immediately full-re-
placement growth, and erosion creases would be inexplicably erased, as houses became
dismantled and roads became covered by dirt, rocks, underbrush, and trees. No ecol-
ogy could change in such a manner. Consequently, we would be justified in conclud-
ing that the properly ordered series was ecologically validas a historical event because it
conformed to the laws of nature. On the other hand, the improperly ordered one was
ecologically invalidbecause the processes witnessed were unrealistic, being in violation
of natural law. Direct perception of the landscape daily, say, by a forest ranger from a
tower on a mountain peak or by a pilot whose plane flew daily over the landscape, could
confirm the naturally ordered series but not the unnaturally ordered one. Direct per-
ception has ecological validity because, in principle, it has direct access to confirmatory
information while indirect perception may or may not. To ensure that indirect percep-
tion of the landscape over the series of maps was ecologically valid, that is, that it con-
formed to direct perception, one would have to supply the missing time-tags or some
other means that would leave their temporal order inviolate.
One way is to label the maps with numerals and to give instructions that the maps
are to be looked at in the order assigned, assuming that all who are allowed access to
the maps understand the forward-counting convention. In this way we can see that a
convention acts as a constraint that makes indirect perceptions conform to direct per-
ceptions. Such conventions are required because perspectives taken on the world through
indirect perception have more uncontrolled degrees of freedom than those taken through
direct perception. That is to say, indirect perception allows for ecologically invalid in-
formation to be fashioned about an event even though the source-event is always eco-
logically valid, a fact that can always, in principle, under ordinary circumstances, be
validated by direct perception.
There are, however, extraordinary circumstances where the conventional constraint
is suppressed or unavailable. Under such circumstances, the indirect perceptual event
can take on a life of its own. To the extent that such extraordinary circumstances defy

30 / ROBERT E. SHAW AND WILLIAM M. MACE
rational (lawful) explanation, they serve to increase the mystery, metaphoric depth, and
hence expressive power of the indirect perceptual event. This is one important way,
perhaps the most important way, by which great arts attain expressive dimensions that
surprise, challenge, and entice the viewer. Contrary to what some have argued (Good-
man, 1968), art is not in this sense conventional like language but unconventional. Art
is always lacking some degree of ecological validity because the expressive stylistics im-
posed by the individual artist are unique and defy rational conventions which would
make the art object an easy read.
Of course, there is much that can be rational in art depending on how obvious its
representational content; but there are also dimensions of expressive depth to be ex-
ploited by defying convention, as is found in the extreme in abstract expressionism—
with impressionism falling between these poles of rational content versus expressive style.
The main goal of this paper is to show an example of extending the scope of lawful-
ness of projective geometry and thereby the basis for direct perception, but in doing so
we also show a basis for controlled violations of ecological validity—available for use
by the artist. To take liberties with the laws, one must know what the laws are and how
to violate them skillfully so as to preserve some more-general constraint.
Contrasting Theories of Perspectives
Traditional theories of visual perspectives have been based on ordinary projective ge-
ometries. The technique of central projection is typically adopted without question as
being the proper one for optics (e.g., photography), art (e.g., linear perspective), and
psychology (e.g., retinal image theory). Here we wish to offer a glimpse of another theory
of projective geometry that promises a simpler and more accurate description of visual
perception and, perhaps, will have more potential usefulness for photography and art.
By describing this alternative, orientedprojective geometry, we mean to bring underly-
ing geometry into focus as part of what can be tested and modified in the course of our
science. Sometimes, it appears that researchers take projective geometry to be given and
unmodifiable, leaving hypothesis formation and testing to be about tricks and assump-
tions for applying the geometry rather than revising the geometry itself. The emphasis
of ecological psychology on lawfulness leads us to look to modifying theory as deeply
as possible in order to minimize arbitrariness in the hypothesized system. It is not un-
common or unreasonable to regard limits on geometry to indicate limits on lawfulness.
If we can extend the reach of geometry, we may justify a broader scope for lawfulness.
We will caution that oriented geometry does not have all the properties we ultimately
seek in a geometry but that it offers an advance worth making.
Projective theories have many practical uses in both art and science—a most impor-
tant one being to model linear perspective in drawing and graphical computation. A
second popular use has been to model the optical projection of objects and scenes ob-
served in the world into the visual system. Traditional theorists treat the optical projec-
tion of the retinal image as a putative first stage (p
1
) in visual processing. A second neu-
rological projection (p
2
) over the optic nerve tract and past the optic chiasm eventually
reaches the visual cortex. And, finally, a third phenomenological projection (p
3
) takes
the cortical information into a visual experience in some way still not fully understood.
Under this view, the retinal image is the first and most primitive site containing the visual
information to be projected and, perhaps, cortically processed before being experienced.
The fact that, geometrically speaking, the retinal image is a two-dimensional object
representing three-dimensional objects and scenes has posed a perplexing puzzle for the

THE VALUE OF ORIENTED GEOMETRY/ 31
traditional perceptual theorist. How can we recover the third dimension from a two-
dimensional image? This has been called the tridimensionality problem.If it were pos-
sible, however, to render the retinal image superfluous as a stage of processing, the main
issue would then be how informationgets into the visual system, without worrying about
the specific properties of the retinal image. We could then move our theoretical con-
cern to the second stage of projection described above without further ado.
In traditional psychological terms, we would say that the distal object was the refer-
ent rather than the proximal object (i.e., the retinal image). The issue would be notwhat
image is projected but howthe information about the object remains invariant under
such projection. The optical physics connecting the distal referent to the eye dynami-
cally influences the retinal firing pattern so that the visual pathways project the infor-
mation experienced with high fidelity in a special sense. If perception is to be a direct
(uncorrupted) specification of the world vis à vis information detected and directly
experienced, then the medium of the central nervous system inside the body, like the
medium of air outside the body, would have to be “transparent” and so pass the prop-
erties of the referent invariantly into experience. This transparent projection may be
instantiated in many different energetic modes in between the reference object and the
intentional object, but this is of no concern to the perceiver (unless the perceiver is a sci-
entist); the perceiver merely sees the world as it is through his visual system, which has
been carefully and relevantly tuned by evolution and learning to help him remain adapted
to the environment. That is, it has been tuned to yield ecologically valid experiences.
Why should the retinal image be noticed in the course of perceiving the world? It is
well known that our brains are insensate to being touched by probes; why then might
not the retina, an extension of the brain, be insensate to the ephemeral touch of danc-
ing photons and their rhythmic image? Is it required that the retina be treated as an image
plane? Could this light-sensitive surface at the back of the eye be treated instead as a
window? When one looks at the world through a window, there is a flat surface (the
window glass) interposed between the observer and the world, but we do not say that
the observer is looking at the window in order to look out the window. A window washer
needs to look at the window, but ordinary observation through a window does not in-
volve reading an image off the window. Consider looking outside a building through a
window that is open versus one that is closed. Are these cases very different from one
another? To the extent that window glass is transparent, we do not see it. We see the
plane of the window only to the extent that it is not transparent, and what we see when
we look at dirt on a window is something about the window itself, not the scene on the
other side. A few people have argued that the retinal image, treated as a stage of analy-
sis, is unnecessary or, even worse, a red herring which confuses rather than clarifies our
understanding of perception (Gibson, 1966, 1979/1986; Haber, 1983). Let’s consider
two of these arguments, followed by a third, which is the primary focus of this chapter.
First argument: Retinal image is a red herring.The retinal image is an inverted, smaller-
scale image of objects in the world, being projected upside down on the back of the
eyeball. Yet, we do not experience the world itself as being inverted or small enough to
fit into the eyeball. Furthermore, we have learned that by the wearing of inverting-prism
goggles, before adaptation occurs, a person’s reaching behavior is disturbed in predict-
able ways (Kohler, 1964; Dolezal, 1982). Thus, it seems that the image can be func-
tionally inverted but not experienced as inverted under ordinary viewing conditions.
The stage of interest therefore does not seem to be the first inversive projection (p
1
) or
even the second insensate cortical projection (p
2
) but the information resultantof com-

32 / ROBERT E. SHAW AND WILLIAM M. MACE
posing the first and second projection (p
1
x p
2
) into a third and final experiential pro-
jection (p
3
= p
1
x p
2
). Thus, the perceptual experience is not an event at the end of the
train of three projections, not an effect that magically “pops out” at the end of a causal
chain; rather, the experience longitudinally penetrates all three projections, with one
foot in the environment and the other in the perceiver, and nothing but transparent
physical and neurological media lying between. The resultant projection is over-mixed
media (air and tissue) that are informationally transparent to the invariant properties
of the environment—a distributed experience whose support is over the three projec-
tions. Knock out any of the distributed causal supports anywhere along the three pro-
jections, however, and the immediate consequence is some kind of blindness. The trans-
parency would be destroyed.
Vision may fail because there is no light, or eyes are shut, or when the lenses are
clouded by cataracts, or when the humors of the eye are too filled with debris (diabetic
hemorrhages), or when fluid pressure compresses the ocular nerve (glaucoma), or when
the retinae are detached, or when ocular tract has lesions or arterial occlusions, or when
there is cortical damage, or when one is hit hard on the head, or when one is chroni-
cally inattentive or when temporally distracted. If causes of blindness can be distrib-
uted at different sites along the causal chain,then so can causes of sightedness.Why re-
strict experience arbitrarily to any specific location? Hence, the head is more likely in
the experiencethan the experience is in the head,say, at the retinal image or some par-
ticular brain state. Because no one has solved the hard problem of where experience is
located in the central nervous system (Chalmers, 1996), then we may locate it distribu-
tively over the field of concern. Our experiences join us with the objects experienced
because our objects of intention directly specify our object of reference (Hintikka, 1975),
so long as our history has appropriately attuned our perceptual systems to the relevant
information that information is detected by us (Chan & Shaw, 1996).
This ecological view of direct perception differs somewhat from that of the Gestaltists’
principle of psychoneural isomorphism, for it incorporates their brain field into an eco-
logical field; their brain field is integrated into a more comprehensive psycho-neuro-physi-
calfield that interfaces a functionally defined environment (econiche) with its function-
ally defined organism (a perceiver-actor). (Note: Experiences that arise from dreaming,
imagining, or hallucinating are allowed but simply do not have the referential trans-
parency that direct perceiving and knowing do).
Second argument: Ganzfeld is experienced as three-dimensional.Assume that the total
field of view is entirely filled by an illuminated, white, featureless surface. Such a ho-
mogeneous field of light with no visible boundaries is called a Ganzfeld.There are no
focusable contrasts for binocular hunting to stereoscopically lock onto or to which the
eyes’ lenses can accommodate (i.e., change their shape). Nevertheless, shouldn’t the
experience be one of two-dimensionality? If the retina is an image plane, would we not
still see the retina in the absence of a projection? A blank canvas is still an object to be
seen. If the retina is an image plane to be seen, then shouldn’t it show up as a flat sur-
face if no perspective projections are given? But will a person really see a two-dimen-
sional image of lightness, as if a white surface has been painted on the retina? Or will
one see instead a white, featureless surface located at some determinate distance from
the point of observation? If so, how far? Such Ganzfeld experiments have been done
(Metzger, 1930; Gibson & Waddell, 1952; Cohen, 1957) but with an outcome that
could not be predicted from retinal image theory.

THE VALUE OF ORIENTED GEOMETRY/ 33
Instead of experiencing a white surface at some indeterminate distance in the so-called
frontal plane, people report experiencing a three-dimensional translucent volume of in-
determinate depth. Statements are made like: “I am looking into a penetrable white fog
that completely surrounds me!” Thus is our most primitive visual experience, as the Ge-
stalt theorists argued, an autochthonous experience of three-dimensional, unbounded
openness (Ganzfeld) that arises independently from nowhere. Ecological psychology
would explain this experience otherwise than being a mysterious autochthonous “force.”
Like the rest of science, we would look for a sufficient reason for the phenomenon.
The basic premise of an ecological theory of perception is that we see what we see
because the information from the environmental situation is what it is.In other words, we
do not see what is simply in the light to the eye, as the physicist might construe it; rather
we see what is functionally specified by the light to a highly evolved visual system—
one that has been adaptively designed to fit its environment by evolution and further
attuned by experience.
The information contained in a Ganzfeld specifies no surface because there are no
focusable features on the surface creating the Ganzfeld. The eyes cannot accommodate
to any given distance because no specific distance information is given. A situation in
which there is light but no surface information is an insubstantial medium (like fog)
quite capable of indeterminate penetration. This explains the first part of the argument
needed: namely, how a 3-D object can be represented on a 2-D surface.
Third argument: Ordinary projective geometry does not preserve orientation information.
Because traditional perceptual theory depends on the retinal image projection but such
theory fails to explain the experience of tridimensionality, we must search for a differ-
ent theory. No matter what projective theory is needed for describing the information
input for visual experience, it must be based on a different kind of projection than that
which describes the retinal image. Even if this were not sufficient to cast doubt on reti-
nal image theory, there is a third even more telling argument having to do with the fact
that ordinary projective geometry fails to preserve orientation information. Such a theory
fails because the retinal image does not distinguish two distinct kinds of projections that
need distinguishing if mischief is to be avoided. Consequently, this brings us to our third
argument, which in many ways is the most important one.
Orientability, among other things, allows us to recognize counter-clockwise rotations
from clockwise ones, left from right, top from bottom, and inside from outside. The
argument we wish to present is based on whether the topological property of orient-
ability is present or absent in the projective space of interest—whether this be the reti-
nal image treated as a two-dimensional projective space or the dynamical retinal image
treated as a three-dimensional projective space. We discuss next this important prop-
erty of orientability, which is missing from all ordinary projective geometries regardless
of their dimensionality. After that, we shall turn to framing a mathematical basis for an
ecologically valid projective geometry.
Orientability and Sidedness
Take a few minutes to scrutinize carefully the following figures, and then we shall pose
a few telling questions.
Look carefully at figure 2.1A. It depicts an ordinary two-sided carton with two cells.
There is clearly an outside and an inside. The left-most arrow is inside the left cell; the
middle arrow is outside the left cell and inside the right cell; and the right-most arrow

34 / ROBERT E. SHAW AND WILLIAM M. MACE
is outside the right cell. Compare AwithB: Bis also a carton with two cells; but how
many sides does it have? Notice that the three arrows in B have exactly the same place-
ment as those in Arelative to the flat surface of the page but not relative to the surfaces
of the depicted cartons. The right-most arrows in A andBpoint in opposite directions
on different sides of their respective cells: In A,the right-most arrow is outside and points
backward while the corresponding arrow in Bis inside and points forward. If this does
not seem remarkable, then compare the middle arrows in each. In A , this arrow is in-
side the right cell and points outward but has no clear orientation in B: It seems to be
outside of both the left and right cells and to point outward and inward, respectively,
at the same time! Csimplifies the picture so that it is easier to see that the surfaces of
theBcarton are based on the one-sided Möbius band. To clarify the relationship of
orientability to sidedness, consider figure 2.2.
To understand this breakdown of the orientability property, we need to understand
sidedness—an important topological property that projective geometries usually do not
preserve. Later we shall see that two-sidednessis a necessary property of projective ge-
ometries to have distinguished, as pointed out earlier, front from back, inside from out-
side, left from right, top from bottom, and clockwise from counter-clockwise. To an-
ticipate further: Two-sidednessis the minimal property any geometry must have, whether
projective or not, if it is to have a way to handle occlusion information—a key infor-
mational invariant of a theory of the three-dimensional layout of surfaces in the envi-
ronment and hence one of the most ubiquitous sources of information for perceiving
three-dimensionality.
Try this demonstration: As shown in figure 2.2A, glue the corresponding ends of a
paper strip together to make a cylindrical band (i.e., a⇔a,b⇔b). Notice that an ant
crawling on the inside circumference of the band would stay on the inside or if crawl-
ing on the outside surface would remain on the outside surface. It would have to crawl
over an edge to change sides. For this reason, the cylindrical band is called a two-sided,
bounded surface.
Fig. 2.1. Orientability and sidedness. Ais a two-sided, surface with orientability while both B
andC are one-sided surfaces without orientability. Can you see why?

THE VALUE OF ORIENTED GEOMETRY/ 35
Now, as shown in figure 2.2B, take another paper strip and glue the noncorresponding
ends together by giving the paper strip a half-twist (i.e., a⇔b, b⇔a). Notice that an
ant crawling on this surface, even without crossing over an edge, will nevertheless cover
what appears at one moment to be the inside but at another moment the outside. This
is why the Möbius band is called a one-sided unboundedsurface. If we draw a closed path
on the circumference of the cylindrical band, an arrow transported around this path will
retain its orientation (see fig. 2.3), but an arrow transported around the corresponding
closed curve on the Möbius band will not retain its orientation. The property of ori-
entability is a consequence of the surface being two-sided, while the loss of this prop-
erty is a consequence of a surface being one-sided.
Orientable and Nonorientable Objects
To make clear the way in which projective transformations typically lose orientability
information, consider the simple example of rotating a triangle in the plane.
Fig. 2.2. The two-sided cylindrical band versus the one-sided Möbius band.
Fig. 2.3. Preservation or loss of orientability. A, parallel transport around a two-sided surface
preserves orientability while B, parallel transport around a one-sided surface does not.

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The Golden Goose. Houghton Mifflin Co.
TÉnnyson , AlfrÉd: Poems. Houghton Mifflin Co.
TÜoméson , JÉanÉttÉ May: Water Wonders Every Child
Should Know. Doubleday, Page & Co.
Tomlinson , EvÉrÉtt: Young Folks’ History of the
American Revolution. Grosset & Dunlap.
TucâÉr, LouisÉ E., and Ryan, EstÉllÉ L.: Historical Plays
of Colonial Days. Longmans, Green & Co.
Uéton, GÉorÖÉ P.: William Tell (Life Stories for Young
People). G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Van DyâÉ, HÉnry: The First Christmas Tree. Grosset &
Dunlap.
The Lost Boy. Harper & Brothers.
The Mansion. Harper & Brothers.
Van DyâÉ, HÉnry, and Abbott, Lyman: Women of the
Bible. Harper & Brothers.
Vasari, GÉorÖio : Lives of the Painters. 4 volumes.
Charles Scribner’s Sons.
VÉrÜoÉff , Carolyn: All about Johnny Jones. Milton
Bradley Co.
WallacÉ, LÉw: Ben Hur. Harper & Brothers.

WalsÜ, K.: The Story of Santa Claus. Moffat, Yard & Co.
Warman, Cy: Short Rails. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
WarnÉr, CÜarlÉs DudlÉy: Being a Boy. Houghton Mifflin
Co.
WarrÉn, HÉnry Pitt: Stories from English History. D. C.
Heath & Co.
WarrÉn, MaudÉ Radford : Robin Hood and His Merry
Men. Rand-McNally & Co.
WatÉrs, Clara ErsâinÉ ClÉmÉnt : Saints in Art. L. C. Page
& Co.
Stories of Art and Artists. Houghton Mifflin Co.
WÉÉd, ClarÉncÉ M.: Bird Life Stories. Rand-McNally &
Co.
WÉlls, Carolyn: Jolly Plays for Holidays. Walter H.
Baker.
WÉstÉrvÉlt, W. D.: Legends of Old Honolulu. George H.
Ellis & Co., Boston.
WÜÉÉlocâ, ElizabÉtÜ M.: Stories of the Wagner Operas.
Bobbs-Merrill Co.
WÜiéélÉ, WaynÉ: The Story Life of Lincoln. John C.
Winston Co.
WÜitÉ, Eliza OrnÉ: When Molly Was Six. Houghton
Mifflin Co.
WiÖÖin, KatÉ DouÖlas: The Birds’ Christmas Carol.
Houghton Mifflin Co.
WiÖÖin, KatÉ DouÖlas, and SmitÜ, Nora E.: Tales of
Laughter. Doubleday, Page & Co.
Talking Beast Fables from India. Doubleday, Page
& Co.

The Children’s Hour. Milton Bradley Co.
The Fairy Ring. Doubleday, Page Co.
The Story Hour. Houghton Mifflin Co.
WildÉ, Oscar: The Happy Prince. Frederick A. Stokes
Co.
Williston, TÉrÉsa P.: Japanese Fairy Tales. Rand-McNally
& Co.
Wilmot-Buxton, EtÜÉl M.: A Book of Noble Women.
Small, Maynard & Co.
Stories from Old French Romance. F. A. Stokes Co.
Stories of Persian Heroes. T. Y. Crowell Co.
Wilson, Calvin Dill: The Story of the Cid. Lothrop, Lee
& Shepard Co.
WiltsÉ, Sara E.: The Story in Early Education. Ginn &
Co.
Hero Folk of Ancient Britain. Ginn & Co.
Wradislaw, A. H.: Slavonian Fairy Tales. Houghton
Mifflin Co.
WriÖÜt, MabÉl OsÖood: Birdcraft. Macmillan Co.
Gray Lady and the Birds. Macmillan Co.
WriÖÜt, MabÉl OsÖood, and CouÉs, Elliott: Citizen Bird.
Macmillan Co.
WycÜÉ, RicÜard TÜomas: Some Great Stories and How to
Tell Them. Newson & Co.
Zitâala-sa: Old Indian Legends. Ginn & Co.
COLLECTIONS OF STORIES OF WHICH
AUTHORS ARE NOT GIVEN

Cat Stories Retold from St. Nicholas. Century Co.
Civil War Stories Retold from St. Nicholas. Century Co.
Colonial Stories Retold from St. Nicholas. Century Co.
Dumpy Books for Children, The. Frederick A. Stokes
Co.
Great Masters in Painting and Sculpture. George Bell &
Sons.
Half a Hundred Stories. Milton Bradley Co.
Indian Stories Retold from St. Nicholas. Century Co.
Master Musician Series. E. P. Dutton & Co.
Our Holidays Retold from St. Nicholas. Century Co.
Panther Stories Retold from St. Nicholas. Century Co.
St. Nicholas Book of Plays and Operettas. Century Co.
Stories from the Classic Literature of Many Nations.
Macmillan Co.
Stories of Chivalry Retold from St. Nicholas. Century
Co.
Stories of the Ancient World Retold from St. Nicholas.
Century Co.

INDEX
Abraham, story of, suitable for children in heroic period, 124.
Adventure stories,
period for telling, to children, 32;
opportunity offered by, 32-33;
class of pernicious, 33;
examples of good, 34-40;
sources of material for, 41;
found in Old Testament, 124-128.
Æsop’s fables, suitability of, for acting in pantomime, 114.
Alp horn, Swiss legend of the, 274.
Alsatian folk tale, “The Story of the Man in the Moon,” 203.
American Folklore Society, work of, 172.
Andersen, H. C.,
high character of tales by, 28;
beginnings of tales by, 54.
Animals, fascination of stories introducing cries and calls of, 14.
“Apollo and Daphne,” story of, of little meaning to young
children, 37.
Arabian folk tales retold, 195, 269.
Art,
story-telling to awaken an appreciation of, 95-106;
music and, to be drawn upon by the Bible story-teller, 129-
130;
story to use in connection with teaching, 283.
Arthur, King, stories of,

as sources of material for heroic period, 35-36;
enjoyed in romantic period 43;
care necessary in use of tales from, 43-44;
material for dramatic work in, 114.
Aryan theory, Max Müller’s, 3.
Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin, Stories for Sunday Telling by, 137.
Bancroft, George, legend “Why Grizzly Bear Goes on All Fours”
adapted from, 299.
Basile, Giambattista, early collector of fairy tales, 26.
“Bat and His Partners, The,” story of, 208.
Bavarian folk tales, 208, 228.
Bayard, story of, admirable for heroic period, 38.
Beginnings of stories, 54-55.
“Belle au Bois Dormant,” Perrault’s, 26.
Ben Hur, to be read by tellers of Bible stories, 123.
Bible stories,
history tales suitable for heroic period found among, 40;
in The Courtship of Miles Standish, 79-80;
discussion of use of, in story-telling, 118-130.
Biographical stories,
suitable for heroic period, 38-39;
types of, suited to romantic period, 45-47;
as a means of interesting children in authors’ works, 71-73;
use of, in field of art, 98-101;
material in, for teaching of ethics, 140;
use of, in history teaching, 145-146;
story of “The Duty That Wasn’t Paid,” 278;
story of “Wilhelmina’s Wooden Shoes,” 283.
“Blue Beard,”

first appearance of, 26;
not suitable for children, 29.
Bonheur, Rosa, pictures by, suitable for little children, 99.
“Boy of Old Vienna, A,” story of, 89-93.
Bradley, Will, “The Wonder Box” by, 28.
Breton, Jules, introducing children to paintings by, 103-104.
“Brier Rose,”
story of, 25;
retelling of, 209-212.
Building the story, 52-57.
Cabot, Ella Lyman, Ethics for Children by, 136.
Chapin, Anna Alice, The Story of Parsifal by, 44.
Charlemagne,
stories of time of, suitable for heroic period, 37-38;
stories of, suitable for romantic period, 45.
Children,
story interests of, in rhythmic period, 12 ff.;
stages of mental growth of, determining story interests, 13;
story interests in imaginative period, 20-30;
story interests in heroic period, 32-41;
story interests in romantic period, 42-50.
Children’s Crusade, story of, 46.
Chinese folk tale, “How They Came to Have Kite Day in China,”
330.
Christmas stories, 203.
Chubb, Festivals and Plays by, 114.
Cid, story of the, suitable for heroic period, 38.
“Cinderella,”

common to many lands, 25;
published by Perrault, 27.
Classics,
mistake of studying by dissecting process, 75-76;
study of, by story method, 77-81.
Claude Lorrain, works of, for children of intermediate period,
102.
Climax,
working up to a, 55-57;
rapid closing of story after reaching, 57.
“Coat of All Colors, The,” story of, retold from Grimm, 212.
Coffee, story of discovery of, 195-197.
“Coming of the Wonder Tree, The,” story of, 269.
Composers, introducing children to, by story-telling, 86-89.
Contentment, stories teaching, 204, 251.
Contes du Temps Passé avec Moralités, publication of, 27.
Coral polyp, story of the, 185-186, 188-190.
Correggio, acquainting little children with, 101.
Courtship of Miles Standish, study of, by story method, 79-80.
Craig, The Dramatic Festival by, 114.
Cruelty, an undesirable element in stories, 29.
“Cupid and Psyche,” of little meaning to young children, 37.
Darmancour, P., collection of fairy tales published by, 26-27.
Date palm, story of origin of the, 269.
“David and Jonathan,” Miss Phelps’s, appeal of, for children, 16.
“Dervish of Mocha, The,” Arabian folk tale retold, 195-197.

Dialogue,
use of, in story-telling, 53;
change of voice in, to add to clearness of pictures, 64.
Dickens, Charles, experience of, in recommending fairy tales for
children, 29.
“Discontented Pig, The,” story of, 204-207.
Dissection method of studying classics in schools, 75-76.
“Dog of Flanders,” Ouida’s, 16.
Dole, Nathan Haskell, quoted, 49.
Domestic science, use of story-telling in, 192-197.
Dramatization,
story-telling and, 107-116;
pictures, books, and stories for use in, 116.
Drunkenness in parents, undesirable element in stories, 29-30.
Dutch legend, “The Lady of Stavoren,” 289.
“Duty That Wasn’t Paid, The,” story of, 278.
“Easter Eggs, The,” story of, 229.
Ebers, Georg,
quoted on fairy tales, 22-24;
novels by, suitable for romantic period, 49-50.
Ekkehard, recommended for high school pupils, 49.
“Emperor’s Vision, The,” legend of, 306.
Entertainment, not the chief aim of story-telling, 9.
Epic subjects,
sources of story material in, 35-38;
suitable for romantic period, 44-45;
paintings that portray, 104-105.

Esenwein, Berg, rules as to story-telling by, 54.
Ethics,
story-telling and the teaching of, 132-140;
stories to use for teaching, 203, 204, 218, 222, 229, 251,
274, 278, 289, 299, 302, 306, 311, 317.
Europe,
general knowledge and love of music in, 83-84;
knowledge of art possessed by average person in, as
contrasted with average American, 95-97.
Evangeline, study of, by story method, 78-79.
Facial gymnastics in story-telling, use of, 63.
“Fairy, The,” publication of, 26.
Fairy stories,
origin of, 20-21;
care in use of, with children, 21-22;
question of encouraging falsehood by, 22-24;
theories as to beginnings of, 25-26;
one of the oldest forms of literature, 26;
early collections, 26-27;
care necessary in selecting, for children, 28-29;
elements in, to be especially guarded against, 29-30;
bibliography of, 31.
“Fall of London Bridge, The,” story of, 326.
Fallersleben, H. von, story of “The Forget-me-not” adapted
from, 226.
Falsehood, not encouraged by fairy tales, 22-24.
“Forget-me-not, The,” story of, 226.
Gainsborough, pictures by, suitable for little children, 99.

Geneva, Lake,
luck boat of, 5;
story of, retold, 295.
Geography,
story-telling to intensify interest in, 168-177;
stories to use in teaching, 222, 269, 274, 289, 295, 296,
299, 302, 317.
Gest, Lady Charlotte, translator of the Mabinogion, 36.
Gesture in story-telling, question of use of, 63.
“Gift of the Gnomes, The,” story of, 274.
Glinski, story of “Prince Unexpected” adapted from, 239.
“God of the Thundering Water, The,” Iroquois legend, 174-176.
“Goody-goody” stories, harm done by, 133-134.
“Great Stone Face,” climax of, 56.
“Greedy Cobbler, The,” story of, 251.
Greek myths, as source material for stories for heroic period,
36-37.
Grimm Brothers,
appearance of, as collectors and preservers of Thuringian
folklore, 27;
beginnings of stories by, 54;
stories retold from, 209, 212, 218.
Guerber, Helène A., Legends of the Middle Ages by, 44.
Halévy, Ludovic, fascination of stories by, 50.
“Half-Chick,” source of, 25.
Hall, G. Stanley, plea of, in behalf of Bible stories, 118-119.
“Hansel and Gretel,” modification of, for children, 30.

Heroic period,
story interests in, 32-41;
works of art suitable for, 104-105;
Bible stories for, 123;
Old Testament stories suitable for, 124.
Hiawatha,
as material for stories for heroic period, 38;
material for dramatic work in, 114.
History,
stories from, suitable for children in heroic period, 38-40;
plays and pageants to be used in connection with, 115;
material found in stories from, for teaching of ethics, 140;
story-telling to intensify interest in, 143-167;
stories to use in teaching, 263, 326.
Honesty, story to teach, 203.
Hood, Margaret Graham, “The Search for the Seven Cities” by,
149-167.
“Hop o’ My Thumb,” first appearance of, 27.
“How They Came to Have Kite Day in China,” Chinese folk tale,
330.
Iliad,
stories from, suitable for children in heroic period, 35;
material for romantic period in, 44.
Imaginative period, story interests in, 20-30.
Indian legends, stories based on, 174, 299.
Jacques, introducing children to paintings by, 103-104.
Japanese legend, “Why the Japanese Love the Stork,” 296.
Jerusalem Delivered, material for romantic period in, 44.

John of Hildesheim, works of, a help to the Bible story-teller,
123.
Jordan, David Starr,
science stories by, 182-183;
“The Story of a Salmon” by, 255;
“The Story of a Stone” by, 331.
Joshua, book of, as an adventure story, 125.
Judges, book of, viewed as a collection of narratives, 126.
“Jussieu and the Heliotrope,” story of, 325.
Key, Ellen, use of love stories in romantic period advocated by,
48.
Kindness, story teaching, 218.
Labor, artists and paintings that lead to respect for, 104.
“Lady of Stavoren, The,” story of, 289.
Lagerlöf, Selma,
works of, a help to the Bible story-teller, 123;
legend of “The Emperor’s Vision” adapted from, 306.
Landseer, Sir Edwin, pictures by, suitable for little children, 98-
99.
Lang, Andrew, totemistic theory of, 3, 25.
Langobardian myths, interesting in romantic period, 45.
Lanier, Sidney,
The Boy’s Mabinogion by, 36;
The Boy’s King Arthur by, 44.
“Last Lesson,” Daudet’s, climax of, 56.
Libraries, story-telling in, 9.

Literature, story-telling to lead to appreciation of, 69-82.
“Little Stepmother, The,” story of, 227.
“London Bridge, The Fall of,” story of, 326.
Longfellow, H. W., study of poems of, by story method, 78-80.
Love stories, use of, with children in romantic period, 48-49.
“Luck Boat of Lake Geneva, The,”
Swiss legend, 5;
retold, 295.
“Luck Boy of Toy Valley, The,” story of, 302.
Lying, fairy tales and, 22-24.
Mabinogion,
stories from, suitable for heroic period, 35, 36;
material for dramatic work in, 114.
MacManus, Seumas, quoted, 7.
Madonna pictures, use of, with little children, 100-101.
“Man in the Moon, The Story of the,” 203-204.
Manual training,
use of story-telling in, 192-197;
story of “The Luck Boy of Toy Valley” for use in, 302.
Marlitt, Eugénie, works of, suitable for romantic period, 49.
Memorizing of stories, a mistake, 63.
Millet, introducing children to paintings by, 103-104.
“Monarch, the Big Bear of Tallac,” Thompson Seton’s, 16-17.
Moni the Goat Boy, suitable for the romantic period, 49.
Moralizing, avoidance of, 67-68.
Moral training, story-telling and, 132-140. See Ethics.

Mother Goose, reason for love of children for, 13.
Mozart, story of “The Duty That Wasn’t Paid” dealing with life of,
278.
Mühlbach, Louisa, novels of, for romantic period, 49.
Müller, Max, Aryan theory of, 3.
Murillo, an ideal painter to introduce to little children, 100.
Music,
story-telling to awaken an appreciation of, 83-93;
use of, by Bible story-tellers, 129;
story to use in connection with, 278.
Mythological subjects, paintings that portray, 104-105.
Narrative style better than dialogue in story-telling, 53.
National epics,
as sources of story material in heroic period, 35-38;
portions of, suitable for romantic period, 44-45;
first issue of, in poetic form, to be made clear to children,
45;
paintings portraying subjects of, 104-105.
Nature study,
story-telling to intensify interest in, 178-190;
stories helpful in, 208, 226, 227, 255, 269, 325.
Nibelungenlied,
stories from, suitable for children in heroic period, 35;
material for romantic period in, 44.
Nightingale, Florence, story of, suitable for romantic period, 46-
47.
Odyssey,
stories from, suitable for children in heroic period, 35;

material for romantic period in, 44.
Ogier the Dane, story of, suitable for heroic period, 37.
Ohnet, Georges, novels of, for romantic period, 50.
Olcott, Frances Jenkins, Bible Stories to Read and Tell by, 122.
Old Testament, stories in, for children, 120-129.
Ouida,
“A Dog of Flanders” by, 16;
“The Child of Urbino” by, 102.
Pageants, use of, 115.
Pantomime, acting stories in, 114.
“Parsifal,” tale of, suitable for children in romantic period, 44.
Partridge, G. E., quoted, 63.
Pentamerone, Il, early collection of fairy tales, 26.
Perrault, Charles,
“La Belle au Bois Dormant” by, 26;
Contes du Temps Passé avec Moralités credited to, 27.
“Pet Raven, The,” legend of, 317.
Physical education, story for use in connection with, 330.
Pictures,
story-telling for teaching love of, 95-106;
scenes for dramatization suggested by, 116;
to be used in Bible story-telling, 129-130.
See Art.
“Pied Piper,” suitable for dramatization by little children, 112-
113.
“Pigeons of Venice, The,” story of, 263.

“Poor Man and the Rich Man, The,” story of, retold from Grimm,
218.
Primitive-why story, period when child enjoys, 20.
“Prince Unexpected,” story of, 239.
“Puss in Boots,” first appearance of, 26.
“Pygmalion and Galatea,” of little meaning to young children, 37.
“Rabbit and the Easter Eggs, The,” story of, 228.
Racial tales,
fascination of, in rhythmic period, 14;
enjoyment of, by children in imaginative period, 20.
Raphael,
acquainting little children with, 100-101;
paintings by, for children of intermediate period, 102.
Realistic period in children’s story interests, 13-18.
Recitations, shortening of, to give time for story-telling, 169.
“Red Riding Hood,”
first appearance of, 26;
beginning of, 54;
climax of, 56.
Reference work necessary to story-telling, 11.
Rembrandt, story of “Wilhelmina’s Wooden Shoes” dealing with
life of, 283.
Repetition in jingles, surprise element in, 57.
Repetitive stories, fascination of, in rhythmic period, 13-14.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, pictures by, suitable for young children,
98.
Rhine, legend of the, “The Pet Raven,” 317.

Rhythmic period, story interests in, 12-18.
Richards, Laura E., Life of Florence Nightingale by, 47.
“Riquet o’ the Tuft,” published by Perrault, 27.
Robin Hood,
story of, a good adventure tale, 34-35;
material for dramatic work in, 114.
Roland and Oliver, dramatic qualities in tale of, 37.
Romantic period, story interests of childhood in, 42-50.
Rubens, pictures by, suitable for children of intermediate period,
103.
Ruskin, John, on use of Bible stories, 119.
“St. George and the Dragon,” a favorite story in heroic period,
38.
Scheffel, J. V. von, Ekkehard by, 49.
Schmidt, Canon, story of “The Easter Eggs” adapted from, 229.
Schools,
place given story-telling in, 8-9;
time for telling stories in, 67;
mistake of study of literature in, by dissecting process, 75-
76;
value of story-telling in, 199-200.
Schubert, Franz, story concerning boyhood of, 89-93.
Science teaching,
story-telling and, 178-190;
stories to use in, 255, 325, 331.
Scottish Highlands, story-telling in, 5.
“Search for the Seven Cities, The,” by Margaret Graham Hood,
149-167.

Sentimentalism in stories, lack of response by children to, 184.
Shasta legend, “Why Grizzly Bear Goes on All Fours,” 299.
Shedlock, Marie L., five minutes of silence after each story
advocated by, 57.
“Shepherd Who Turned Back, The,” Syrian legend retold, 311.
Sicily, knowledge of classics possessed by peasants of, 18.
“Silver Cones, The,” story of, 222.
Slavic wonder tale, “Prince Unexpected,” 239.
“Sleeping Beauty,”
“Brier Rose” a modification of same story, 25;
published by Perrault, 26.
Social instincts, development of, by use of stories with
geographical or historical background, 170-171.
Southey, Robert, “The Three Bears” by, 28.
Spyri, Johanna,
Moni the Goat Boy by, 49;
story of “The Silver Cones” adapted from, 222.
Stevenson, R. L., interesting children in works of, by telling
stories about, 71-73.
Story interests of childhood,
in rhythmic period, 12-18;
in imaginative period, 20-30;
in heroic period, 32-41;
in romantic period, 42-50.
“Story of a Salmon, The,” by David Starr Jordan, 255.
“Story of a Stone, The,” by David Starr Jordan, 331.
Story-telling,
purpose and aim of, 1-11;
interests in rhythmic period, 12-18;

interests in imaginative period, 20-30;
interests in heroic period, 32-41;
interests in romantic period, 42-50;
building the story, 52-57;
telling the story, 58-68;
and appreciation of literature, 69-82;
to awaken an appreciation of music, 83-93;
and appreciation of art, 95-106;
and dramatization, 107-117;
Bible stories, 118-131;
teaching of ethics, 132-140;
to intensify interest in history, 143-167;
to intensify interest in geography, 168-177;
and nature study, 178-190;
in teaching domestic science and manual training, 192-197;
general statement as to value of, 198-201.
Story-writing, course in, recommended for the professional
story-teller, 52.
Straparola, publisher of first collection of fairy tales, 26.
Supernatural beliefs,
primitive man’s, as revealed in fairy tales, 25-27;
effect of physical features of different regions upon, and so
upon fairy tales, 27.
Surprise element in stories, 55-57.
Suspense,
element of, 6, 55;
increase in, by use of pauses, 64-65.
Swedish legend, “The Emperor’s Vision,” 306.
“Sweet and Low,” suggested method of interesting children in,
73-74.
Swiss legends retold, 274, 311.
Syrian legend, “The Shepherd Who Turned Back,” 311.

Talking machines, use of, for introducing children to music, 86,
89.
Tell, William, stories of, suitable for children in heroic period, 39.
Thuringian folk tales,
gathered and preserved by the Grimms, 27;
retold, 204, 209, 212, 218, 226, 227.
Totemistic theory, Lang’s, 3, 25.
“Ugly Duckling,”
unsuitable for children who have never been in country, 15;
surprise element in climax of, 56.
Van Dyck, Anthony, familiarizing little children with paintings by,
101.
Van Dyke, Henry,
on avoidance of moralizing in story-telling, 67;
works of, a help to the Bible story-teller, 123.
Vedas, theory of origin of fairy stories in the, 25.
“Venice, The Pigeons of,” story of, 263.
Vincent, Jacques, fascination of stories by, 50.
Vocational training, use of story-telling in, 192-197.
Welsh folk tale, “The Greedy Cobbler,” 251.
“Why Grizzly Bear Goes on All Fours,” Shasta legend, 299.
“Why the Japanese Love the Stork,” Japanese legend, 296.
“Wilhelmina’s Wooden Shoes,” story of, 283.
“Wonderful Builders, The,” story of, 188-190.
Wonder tales, period when child enjoys, 20.

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