43
In our analysis, we operate at the level of the individual frame (29.97 frames per second.) We
refer to Bellour’s shot numbers and to his two primary divisions: “A” for Melanie’s trip across the
bay, her time in the house and her return to the boat; “B” for her return trip in the boat.
According to Bellour’s analysis and textual description of the Bodega Bay sequence, then we
should expect to nd the following tacts (verbal responses to the lm) in the physical document:
key frames and key frame sets, alternation, two centers—the “hinge” sequence and a second center.
In summary, Bellour identied the following features in the physical document: key frames
and key frame sets, alternation, two centers—the “hinge” sequence and a second center when Mel-
anie and Mitch see each other. e question is: Can we identify elements in the physical structure
of the lm that could have stimulated his verbal responses (tacts)?
2.4.8 STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF THE BODEGA BAY SEQUENCE
ere are several approaches that could be applied to the structural analysis of a lm. Salt (2003)
advocates an approach based on the notion of the “shot” and the statistical character and distri-
bution of “shots” within a moving image document. O’Connor (1991) and Kearns and O’Connor
(2004) employed an information theoretic approach to the analysis of lm. O’Connor (1991) used
a technique that measured the change of the size and position of objects or, more accurately, pixel
clusters within a lm. Dailianas, Allen, and England (1995) reviewed a number of automated tech-
niques for the automatic segmentation of lms that included the analysis of raw image dierences
between frames, a number of histogram-based techniques and an edge detection-based approach.
In choosing a technique for structural analysis of a lm, the nature of the question one
hopes to answer must be taken into account. An information theory approach such as that taken
by Kearns and O’Connor (2004) measures the structure of an entire lm or message in Shannon
and Weaver’s (1949) terms. Bellour described the Bodega Bay sequence in fairly microscopic detail.
An information theoretic approach would not be granular enough to adequately match Bellour’s
description. It should be noted that Kearns’ concept of “entropic bursts”(2005) might provide a
ner grained information theoretic appropriate for the task at hand. Salt’s (2003) statistical ap-
proach based on the analysis of shots is limited in a number of respects. e previously discussed
conceptual problems with the “shot” as a unit of analysis make Salt’s approach untenable. In addi-
tion, Salt’s analysis examines the statistical character and description of shots over the course of a
complete lm or collection of moving image documents. Like the information theoretic approach,
Salt’s approach is macroscopic. Finally, the phenomena addressed by Salt’s methods are not con-
gruent with elements of the moving image document that Bellour addresses in his analysis. e
segmentation techniques reviewed by Dailianas, Allen, and England (1995) provide the level of
detail necessary for the detection of key frames and frame sets in Bellour’s analysis; however, they
2.4 STORY FOUR: FUNCTIONAL ONTOLOGY
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