UCLA Visual Narrative workshop 20-22nd June 2012

I'll be presenting my research on film cognition and eye movements as part of UCLA's workshop on Visual Narrative, June 20-22nd 2012. The workshop will present a wonderful array of approaches to understanding the nature of narrative in visual media including film, TV, comic books and on-line visual media. Other presenters include Elisabeth Camp (Philosophy, U. of Pensylvania), Dorit Abusch (Linguistics, Cornell), Elsi Kaiser (Linguistics, USC), Matthew Stone (Computer Science, Rutgers), and George Wilson (Philosophy, USC).

Register now at the workshop website:

http://gjgreenberg.bol.ucla.edu/visnar/

Real|Reel article

Chloe Penman (@ideaswithlegs) has written a summary of a presentation I gave at Bristol Vision Institute back in January and posted it on the on-line journal, Real|Reel here.

Chloe does a better job at succinctly summarising some of the key aspects of my Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity (AToCC) than I think I could. She also uses some great video demonstrations of some of the key editing techniques (Match-Action, Jump Cuts, 180 Degree Rule) to elegantly expand her points.

If you are interested in reading about AToCC in more detail or related areas of film cognition please check out my recent publications:

• Smith, T. J., Levin, D. T. & Cutting, J. (2012) A Window on Reality: Perceiving Edited Moving Images. Current Directions in Psychological Science.21: 101-106 doi:10.1177/0963721412436809 (print version) (preprint)
• Smith, T. J. (2012) The Attentional Theory of Continuity Editing,Projections: The Journal for Movies and the Mind. 6(1)
• Smith, T. J. (2012) Extending AToCC: a reply, Projections: The Journal for Movies and the Mind. 6(1)

Rear Window Timelapse

Absolutely brilliant reworking of Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) by Jeff Desom so that all the sequences viewed out of the window by Jimmy Stewart's character are morphed together into one continuous time lapse viewpoint using Adobe Aftereffects. It also highlights an interesting mismatch between how we think we perceive the locations depicted in a scene and how they actually appear when spatial relationships are reconstructed. I've studied Rear Window in detail several times and I had no idea that the conservatory in the right of the scene was so close to Jimmy Stewart's apartment.