Abstract
If the cinema differs from still photography in its ability to create the impression of motion, how is this effect achieved? — a simple question to which hoards of film books give a simple answer, ‘persistence of vision’.
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Notes
L. F. Johnson, Film, Space, Time (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), p. 3.
James Monaco, How to Read a Film (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 73.
Positive after-images are usually followed, perceptually, by negative afterimages. These reverse brightness and colour relations: that is to say, bright becomes dark, colours become their complement (for example red shifts to blue-green). Such a phenomenon is only rarely observed in film: it is clearly not central to the perception of movement. For a treatment of these and other phenomena, see Clarence H. Graham (ed.), Vision and Visual Perception (New York and London: John Wiley and Sons, 1965).
Graham, op. cit., pp. 69–70. See also Lloyd Kaufman, Sight and Mind: An Introduction to Visual Perception (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), for an explanation of visual flicker utilising linear systems analysis.
Leo Ganz, ‘Vision’, in B. Scharf (ed.), Experimental Sensory Psychology (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1975), p. 240.
Don V. Kloeptel (ed.), Motion-Picture Projection and Theater Presentation Manual (New York: Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, 1969), p. 28.
J. O. Robinson, The Psychology of Visual Illusion (London: Hutchinson, 1972).
E. Sigman and I. Rock, ‘Stroboscopic movement based on perceptual intelligence’, Perception vol. 3 no. 1 (1974), p. 9.
M. Wertheimer, ‘Experimentelle Studien uber das Sehen von Bewegung’, Zeitschrift fur Psychologie 61 (1912), pp. 161–265.
J. W. Kling and Lorrin A. Riggs (eds), Experimental Psychology (2 vols), 3rd edn (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), vol. I, p. 527.
A summary of Wertheimer’s experiment can be found in Kaufman, op. cit., pp. 393–4. The debate between structural and Gestalt theories is treated in Julian Hochberg, Perception (New York: Prentice Hall, 1964).
Other effects can be achieved, though in most films they are considered an annoyance. Certain image sequences involving overly large gaps between the successive locations of the stimulus can produce apparently discrete or saltatory (abrupt or jumpy) movement of the object. Sometimes rapid movements in a shot or jump cuts produce this effect as a result of crossing a perceptual threshold (partly dependent upon the visual angle subtended by the successive stimulus locations at the spectator’s eye). For further treatment, see Edward Levonian, ‘Perceptual threshold of discrete movement in motion pictures’, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 71 (April 1962), pp. 278–81. Some film-makers have deliberately explored questions of apparent movement. Ray Gun Virus by Paul Sharits, for example, produces gamma movement of the entire frame, one aspect of its investigation of the flicker phenomenon, while David Rimmer’s Surfacing on the Thames sets out to eliminate the possibility of beta movement by an elaborate process of freeze frame printing and lap dissolves.
W. Neuhaus, ‘Experimentelle Untersuchung der Scheinbewegung’, Arch. ges. Psychol. 75 (1930), pp. 315–458, summarised in Graham, op. cit., p. 582.
J. Beck, A. Eisner and C. Silverstein, ‘Position uncertainty and the perception of apparent movement’, Perception and Psychophysics vol. 21 no. 1 (1977), p. 33.
J. Beck and A. Steven, ‘An after effect to discrete stimuli producing apparent movement and succession’, Perception and Psychophysics vol. 12 no. 6 (1972), p. 482.
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© 1980 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited and Teresa de Lauretis and Stephen Heath
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Nichols, B., Lederman, S.J. (1980). Flicker and Motion in Film. In: de Lauretis, T., Heath, S. (eds) The Cinematic Apparatus. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-16401-1_8
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