31 Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology– June/July 2009 – Volume 35, Number 5 Special Section Reconstructing Bellour: AutomatingtheSemioticAnalysisofFilm by Richard L. Anderson and Brian C. O’Connor Richard L. Anderson and Brian C. O’Connor are with the Visual Thinking Laboratory in the College of Information, Library Science, & Technologies at the University of North Texas. Richard can be reached at rich.anderson<at>gmail.com>. Brian’s email is boconnor<at>lis.admin.unt.edu I n 1981, film theorist Bertrand Augst asked (personal communication), “Why can’t we use a computer to measure and speak of filmic structure in the same way we can for verbal text?”Augst’s question arose in a conversation on the difficulties for film studies that arise from the “literary metaphor.” This is not to say there is no discourse mechanism at work in films; it is that attempts at one-to-one correspondence between the frame and the word or the shot and the sentence or similar impositions of the verbal form onto the image form failed. Films are not textual documents. Films do not have a rigidly defined grammatical structure. Images are not words. Shots are not sentences [1, p.224]. Films are generally viewed at a set rate of presentation and linearity. The technology used in the production and viewing of film has changed considerably since Augst posed his original question; however, there has been little change or advancement in film theory as a result of better and more efficient technology [2]. The Structure of Moving Image Documents It has been common in both film description and film analysis to use the “shot” as the base or minimum unit. However, there is no definition of shot that specifies any specific set of parameters for any particular attribute – no specific number of frames or type of content. Bonitzer [3] refers to definitions of shot as “endlessly bifurcated.” Similarly, the terms close up (CU), medium shot (MS) and long shot (LS) are used in film production textbooks and film analyses; however, there is no specification of how much frame real estate is occupied by some object or portion of object in the frame to be a CU rather than MS, for example. For our purposes, we use the frame and measurable attributes of the frame in order to speak specifically and to avoid the difficulties presented by “endless bifurcation.” The signal or the information of a film is presented in small units – frames – that are in themselves self-contained signals. In many instances they are even used as messages – for example, an individual frame may become a movie poster. However, the film and other time varying signal sets such as music and dance are signal sets of their given sort precisely because of their temporality.We see or hear the signal set (document) as a set of changes over time. It could be said that one can stare at a painting or sculpture for a few seconds or an hour from differing viewpoints, thus making the viewing a time-varying experience of the signal set. It could probably be argued that artists of various sorts construct signal sets that demand attention for a long time in order to see all the intended variations in the signal set. It can even be argued (and we have so argued) that the digital environment gives viewers reader-like control over temporality and depth of penetration into films. However, it remains the case that the majority of film produced for commercial consumption assumes playback at a standard rate and linearity. Much of what is taught in film schools and much of what has transpired in film analysis relates to variation in the temporal aspect of the film. Eisenstein [4] andVertov [5] and some others spoke eloquently of time and its relation to structure. Structural commentary from reviewers tends to be less precise. For example, LaSalle [6] describes The Legend of Zorro asa “130-minute adventure movie that overstays its welcome by about 80 minutes,” CONTENTS NEXT PAGE > NEXT ARTICLE > <PREVIOUS PAGE Visual Representation, Search and Retrieval: Ways of Seeing