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Moving images production teams’ skills in directing the visual perception of viewers have been confirmed lately through eye-tracking methodology. One interest lies in explaining the use of different techniques by the production team for its realization of visual intentions. These intentions are however many in most moving images. This paper undertakes the development of a method for grasping the film or video editors’ intentions with the editing of moving images, and has been carried out as an exploratory study. The method suggested considers conventions of the trade, observational study with running screen-dump and proximate interviews with editors on specific edits, as well as the testing of moving image sequences where the intention of each edit point is known. The test is conducted on viewers, with the use of eye-tracking techniques. The findings are that the method should be useful in distinguishing between when the editors’ grip on the audience is firm, and when it is rather vague. But the method also suggests new aspects of understanding the viewers’ gazes when watching moving images.

This article investigates the role of perception in film editing, considered as audiovisual design work. The study is an observation of a film editor editing a documentary film sequence, where the perceptual phenomena at stake at edit points are scrutinized, with reference to perception theory. The results show that the film editor’s design goal is to achieve perceptual precision for each edit, either for continuity or for discontinuity, accordingly. The more perceptual phenomena per edit, the more time and the more processing the editor has to spend on the edit until satisfied with the result. This knowledge is of importance to inexperienced film editors in order to make the editing process faster and more precise and thus shorten production time. In the wider design context, other design activities are indicated to find inspiration for future research in this study, regarding perceptual phenomena and gaze framing during design processes.

This article presents an audio-visual methodology, VOSMET, designed to address activities of the craft of film editing, with a focus on the use of perception, and its implications. The methodology employs 13 different visual aspects and five different audio aspects, starting with video-recording observations of an editor, and ending with the analysis of eye-tracking data from film viewers. Craft research needs methodologies that address craft activities and cognitive approaches. Design practices share a similar need for reaching deeper understanding. It is neither established how film editors achieve perceptual precision in continuity editing in practice. The VOSMET methodology simultaneously captures bodily actions, utterances, software events, and keystrokes, along with the audiovisual material under processing, and uses graphics to distinguish between what takes place. The methodology also contributes by grasping what a film editor attends to, how this attention functions, as well as how perceptual factors are handled by the film editor. Finally, the methodology can evaluate editorial intentions against film viewer perceptions.

Production of moving images is turning completely digital. This leads to new possibilities and new constraints for creativity within film and TV production chains.

This paper describes professionals’ current comprehension of the consequences of the shift from celluloid to digital technologies, within the Swedish Moving Image Industry. New technologies bring new workflows, new design processes and new constraints.

We aim to illuminate factors that affect design creativity in digital moving image production, by addressing questions about production related responses to the digital turn as well as the affects of such responses on creativity.

Inspired by Ingar Brinck’s creativity theories (1999, 2007) we view aesthetic problem solving as a cognitive process and suggest creative spaces to be the critical phenomenon to manage. We also use organization theories, particularly the work of Katherine Miller (2011) to explain why creativity ought to be a primary management concern.

The empirical material used is semi-structured interviews with management personnel in Swedish moving image production companies. Outcomes include that the variety of digital formats available today is hard for crafts people to overview. This has brought costly workflow constraints that largely limit creativity.

We suggest a pre-production file format check-list as a tool to support design management.

This paper deals with the need for design management support within the Audiovisual Industry, due to the increasing variety of video file formats and codecs available to professionals. The amount of video file formats and codecs are referred to as ‘the file format jungle’ by moving image professionals, and needs to be navigated by managerial staff that are not electronic engineers or technicians, but responsible for audio-visual design work within film and TV production.

We have evaluated a prototype for a design management support tool that compares file formats and codecs for different production tools, with the help of Swedish moving image industry producers. The core principals of the support tool prototype are found to cohere with the needs for design management support within film and TV production, and the tool is therefore an option for commercial development.

Industrial film and television production (FTP) includes many elements of creative work on sounds and images that are best addressed as audiovisual design. Two paradigmatic understandings of design, “design-as-problem-solving” and “design-as-meaning-creation”, have a bearing on these elements. The issues dealt with during FTP work processes, as well as the problems to be solved and the characteristics of the work processes used, resemble issues, problems, and process characteristics within design work. From the perspective of audiovisual communication, both the design and production aspects of a process are considered to make an important impact on a message. In FTP, these aspects are blurred. This paper discusses the benefits of approaching FTP as creation of audiovisual communication, in which design is an integrated part of that process. The benefits of considering FTP as audiovisual design are proposed from a design research perspective.

The film editor’s task in refining film edits by frame-by-frame matching is an important undertaking in perceptual precision. This article investigates whether the failure of a few frames jeopardizes the perceived continuity of a film. Thirty-three Swedish students were eye-tracked while watching two versions of the same documentary film sequence; one version was completed to continuity satisfaction by a film editor, while the other had some frames altered toward discontinuity. Gaze hits in Areas-of-Interest appointed by the film editor, saccade frequency, and pupil dilation after edit points were measured. No significant difference was found for hits in Areas-of-Interest, whereas saccade frequency and relative pupil size increased after edits in the altered version of the film sequence. Results indicate that the altered film sequence constrained viewers with possible cognitive effects, implying that frame-by-frame matching of film edits achieved by film editors is crucial to film continuity.