#zettl

An anesthetized patient on the operating table and the aesthetically illiterate television or film viewer have much in common. Both have little control over what is happening to them and both must trust the skills, the good judgment, and, above all, the good intentions of someone else. Thus the surgeon and the media producer carry a heavy responsibility. One penetrates human beings with a scalpel whereas the other uses highly charged, keenly calculated aesthetic energy. This is why you, as a media communicator, must make all your decisions within the context of sound ethics - within a basically moral frame of reference. (12)

The well-known communications scholar Marshall McLuhan proclaimed more than four decades ago that 'the medium is the message.' With this insightful overstatement, he meant that the media occupy an important position not only in the distribution of the message but also in shaping the message. (10)

The basic building block of complexity editing is the montage, a term that literally means 'setting together' or 'assembling', in our case, of various event details. In the context of media aesthetics, montage is the juxtaposition of two or more separate event images that, when shown together, combine into a new and more intense whole - a gestalt. (397)

Complexity editing is used primarily to intensify the emotional content of an event and reveal its intricacy. [...] Your goal in complexity editing is to trigger an empathetic response in the audience. (397)

Continuity editing concerns itself primarily, but not exclusively, with the clarification of an event. (372)

Continuity editing concentrates on structuring on- and off-screen space and on establishing and maintaining the viewer's mental map. (372)

Subjective time is usually categorized into pace, tempo, rate, and rhythm. Pace refers to the perceived speed of the overall event, tempo and rate refer to the perceived duration of the individual event sections, and rhythm refers to the flow within and among event segments. (295)