What we call the motion picture as distinguished from the still picture might better be
called the progressive picture as distinguished from the arrested picture. It is not
characterized by "motion" so much as by change of structure in the optic array. And
the ordinary picture is not so much "still" as it is stopped.

The progressive picture yields something closer to natural visual perception than
does the arrested picture. The nameless transformations that constitute it and that are
so hard to describe are actually easier to perceive than the familiar frozen forms of the
painting or photograph.

It provides a changing optic array of limited scope to a point of observation in
front of the picture, an array that makes information available to a viewer at the point
of observation. This delimited array is analogous to the temporary field of view of a
human observer in a natural environment surrounding the observer.

The information in the display can specify the turning of one's head, the act of
approaching or withdrawing, and the adopting of a new point of observation, although
one is all the time aware of holding still and looking at a screen from a fixed position
in a room. This is over and above the information in the display for an awareness of
events and the places at which the events are happening, along with an awareness of
the objects, persons, or creatures of the imagination to which the events are happening.
The invariants to specify the places, objects, and persons emerge more clearly in the
transforming array than they would in a frozen array.

The art of film-editing should be guided by knowledge of how events and the
progress of events are naturally perceived. The composing of a film is not analogous to
the composing of a painting. The sequential nesting of subordinate events into super-
ordinate events is crucial. The transitions should be psychologically meaningful, and
the sequential order of happenings should be intelligible. But the picture theory of
vision and the stimulus sequence theory of perception are very poor guides to movie-
making. The theory of ecological perception, of perception while moving around and
looking around the environment, is better. The various kinds of filmic transition--
zoom, dolly, pan, cut, fade, wipe, dissolve, and split-screen shot--could usefully be
evaluated in the light of ecological optics instead of the snapshot optics that is currently
accepted.

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