The Frame of Attention

The process of editing, and the technology that enables it, are central to our understanding of how mind and media relate. Many film historians have observed a causal link between the practice of editing and the development of the filmmaker’s technique. The broad scope of editing strategies within fiction and non-fiction filmmaking can be interpreted from a wide range of standpoints but the ‘fundamental psychological justification for editing as a method of representing the physical world around us lies’ according to Ernest Lindgren ‘in the fact that it reproduces the mental process in which one image follows another as our attention is drawn to this point and to that in our surroundings. In so far as the film is photographic and reproduces movement, it can give us a life-like semblance of what we see; in so far as it employs editing, it can reproduce the manner in which we normally see it’ (Lindgren, 1963). That is, we often experience life as a series of events, or a continually unfolding stream of sensory information, details of which may be brought into focus by the intensity, duration and direction of our attention. Hence the comparison that is often made between edits and real world shifts in attention (Munsterberg 1916, Metz 1975, Baudry 1968) By re-organizing a stream of audiovisual events into an original sequence the editing process reveals to us aspects of cognition that are invisible but wholly dependant on sensible experience. This requires sensitivity on the part of the editor to the quality and flow of attention felt in response to the rushes and assembled sequences of audiovisual material with which they are working.