Commercial films are comprised of hundreds and into the thousands of individual camera shots that are edited together at cut points. Film makers use a process called continuity editing to indicate when viewers are to perceive continuities and discontinuities across camera shots. Theories of narrative comprehension, such at the Event-Indexing Model, should be able to identify when viewers should perceive these continuities and discontinuities. In my research to study how people process continuity editing, I have participants view feature length, commercially produced films and collect both behavioral judgments of event continuity and fMRI data*. A content analysis of the film to identify different types of cut point between shots that was based on the Event-Indexing Model. Behavioral judgements are correlated with breaks in different types of situational discontinuities as specified by the content analysis. Moreover, it appears that a break in action is necessary for the perception of an event boundary in a film. fMRI data suggests that there are different brain networks involved in processing cut points that depict continuity or a break in continuity of action. As such, there appears to be a biological basis for why continuity editing works.

* The fMRI data were collected in collaboration with Dr. Jeff Zacks. I'm in the process of learning about the neurological basis of event perception and fMRI methodologies. These data are very interesting, but I've got a bit of work to do before I call call myself an expert on this dimension of the research I will report.