Title

The Process of [Film] Communication—Ideal Model

Description

We have hypothesized a process that starts with an internalized Feeling-Concern and develops into a more coherent and organized (but sometimes, as in the case of a scriptless film, still internal) Story-Organism, which then controls the choice and organization of the specific Image-Events that are always the external, available film. We have suggested that viewing the film is a mirror image of the making process, that is, that the decoder reverses the process by which the encoder made the film. Should our viewer choose to treat these signs and signals as a message, he will first infer the Story-Organism from the sequenced Image-Events. He will become aware of the belief system of the film-maker from the images he sees on the screen. From this awareness of the message he will, if the communication "works," be able to infer -- to evoke in himself -- the Feeling-Concern.… Let us examine in [the figure] the relationship between the sign system and the participants in its use. The first notion that emerges quite clearly is the difference between the image-event and both the feeling-concern and story-organism.The three terms on the left of the drawing can be thought to belong to the realm of the filmmaker. The three on the right belong to the realm of the viewer. The image-event is the nodal point of the process. It is common to both filmmaker and viewer--to both sender and receiver, creator and re-creator. The image-event is different from the other two terms in that it is part of the process both for the filmmaker and for the viewer.It is also the only unit of this process that is directly observable.The parts of the process that lead to the image-event and those that lead away from it to the inference of meaning on the part of the viewer are internal processes. The strip running down the page (like a strip of film) is our external, objective image-event. The series of concepts across the top of the model describing the process represent our internal world.

Designer

Worth, Sol

Date

1968

Source

"The Development of a Semiotic of Film"

Bibliographic Citation

Worth, Sol and Larry Gross. 1968 "The Development of a Semiotic of Film." In Studying Visual Communication (1981), by Sol Worth. Edited, with an Introduction, by Larry Gross. University of Pennsylvania Press. Figure 1-1. Pages 43-45.

Worth, Sol. 1969. "The Development of a Semiotic of Film." Semiotica, 1:282-321.

is composed of

English Circle

English Square

has attribute

English Arrow

English Dash Line

English Solid Line

use feature

English Brace

depict things of type

English Sequence or Process

Alternative Title

The Process of Communication—Ideal Model

Coverage

communication

film

narrative

semiotics