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In reply to Mike's scheme - I think we may be entering the realm of philosophical taste, and the conversation beomes redolent of one he and I had about signs in this salon some time (years) ago. But anyway... I think his formula works to a degree, though I can't speak for the Bordwellians, but I am, in general, not so into this sort of distinction unless it's meant as a moment's snapshot into a specific instance - of a process that is so full of flux and indeterminacy that these borders are in actuality very personal, sub-culture specific, occasion specific, context specific,yeah even genre specific (Elipsis in a doc format can work differently than in a drama, and def than in a poetic piece.) In the case of such an analysis of a specific moment, I think this l-p demarcation can make certain arguments seem neater. My problem, and it may be just my taste, is that starting down this road, while it may help sort out certain issues, can easily lead us into hypostatizing ephemera. But then, I think Mike's taste in systems might require a kind of neatness mine don't. For me language, I guess, is a messier,more ad hoc kind of a business and that the analytic and descriptive schemes one applies need to be more process-descriptive than categorical to be useful across the wide wide range of occasions. There is, in both cinema and the word, langue et parole, the narrative and the poetic, the discursive and the idiosyncratic, so many moments of indeterminacy (parole becoming langue, but only for a moment, and only for me and a couple of my friends) that trying to nail them, leads us to create static (like langue et parole) descriptions, which adequately catch the moment, and miss the overall flux. Unfortunately I can easily see my approach seeming like a lot of hocus-pocus style handwaving, unless this entire dynamic perspective gets laid out (and maybe even then). I am glad to launch specific critiques from this perspective, but will be even happier if folks can absorb an entire perspective. (My book "Movement and Meaning in Motion Pictures" will be out sometime next year - Rodopi Press - shameless plug) I think Ross's idea of inference is moving in the right direction, and just needs a fine grain exposition to become a widely useful perspective. Where this approach becomes especially apparent to me is in the use of sound. (Do the cognitivists get into this?) As any editor knows, sound is a much subtler and in many ways more powerful sub-rosa driver of cognition than picture, and as an editor there are many tricks for making otherwise 'eliptical' cuts 'move' and/or become unnoticable - and most of them rely on clever accoustic discontinuities/ and/or ellisions and/or segues on one or another level of the soundtrack, placed within a few frames (More or less, before or after) of the cut, to either distract or focus the viewer. These are tricks for which there are few if any rules, and have a seat of the pants quality to them - one keeps messing around the cut until you get something that works, and the more you do it the more likely you can get it without that much messing around. ( The same is true not just for patching elipses, but also for shading the meaning of a transition (cut) in innumerable ways. (A wise old doc editor I worked with categorized cuts as male and female depending on how much attention he wanted them to call to themselves!) So one of the things this points up is that people theorize about cutting, without trying things out. My view is that this leads us into the problems that Witt. sees philosophers stumbling into all the time: Operating on a language detached from its actions. Dan ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour * * Film-Philosophy salon After hitting 'reply' please always delete the text of the message you are replying to. To leave, send the message: leave film-philosophy to: [log in to unmask] Or visit: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/film-philosophy.html For help email: [log in to unmask], not the salon. * Film-Philosophy journal: http://www.film-philosophy.com Contact: [log in to unmask] **