Indeed, in view of the limitations of the medium, especially
during its imitative phase, it could not support scripts based on
literary works that exceeded film's own complexity.
Cinematography had also to deal with the limited span of its
viewers' attention, their lack of any previous exposure to moving
images, and the conditions for viewing a film. When, later on,
filmmakers compressed entire books into 90 to 120 minutes, we
entered a phase of human experience characterized by
substituting written with non- or para-linguistic means.
The generations since the beginning of cinematography learned the
new filmic convention while still involved in practical
experiences characteristic of literacy. Conventions of film, as
a medium with its own characteristics, started to be experienced
relatively recently, in the broader context of a human praxis in
the process of freeing itself from the constraints of literacy.
Films are an appropriate medium for integration of the visual,
the aural, and motion. People can record on film some of their
most intricate experiences, and afterwards submit the record to
fast, slow, entire, or partial evaluation. The experience of
filming is an experience with space and time in their
interrelationship. But as opposed to the space and time
projected in language, and uniformly shared by a literate
community, space and time on film can be varied, and made
extremely personal.
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