1 So Solid perception

TEST: One body owns the frame: either we see through its eyes (POV, eyelid/mask/windscreen framing) or we see it held at the hub with everything else arranged around it — and the image would lose its organising centre if that body were removed. COUNTERFEIT: A generic handheld 'found-footage' camera that happens to belong to a character but keeps swinging to whatever is loudest looks like POV yet builds no privileged perceiver — it is closer to liquid or gaseous perception. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 55% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

2 Lq Liquid perception

TEST: The centre moves: in a continuous reframing the shot passes from one character or environment to another, each central only until the next captures the screen. COUNTERFEIT: A showy Steadicam 'oner' that follows one hero through a nightclub is often called fluid but is Solid perception in motion — the centre never passes on. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 55% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

3 Ga Gaseous perception

TEST: Nothing is privileged: through slow/fast motion, superimposition, fragmentation or micro-shooting the image treats a human figure as one image like any other among landscapes, matter and machines. COUNTERFEIT: An ordinary time-lapse establishing shot of a city skyline used to say 'next morning, New York' looks gaseous but functions as a Milieu establishing shot in a centred narrative. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 60% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

4 Ic Icon

TEST: The face is not a feature of a person in a space but the whole image: a close-up in which expression (fixed wonder or traversing micro-movements) holds an intensity that has not yet become action. COUNTERFEIT: A close-up of a character speaking dialogue in a shot/reverse-shot exchange is framed like an Icon but functions as action-image coverage: the face transmits information, not an intensity cut from its situation. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 75% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

5 Dv Dividual

TEST: The feeling belongs to the gathering: the crowd, pack or series of faces is individualised as one affect while each person in it is de-individualised. COUNTERFEIT: An extras-filled background behind a protagonist looks collective but is only set dressing — the crowd has no affect of its own and the shot is Solid perception or an Icon. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 60% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

6 As Any-space-whatever

TEST: Affect with no face: an emptied, disconnected or amorphous space (fog, rain, shadow, coloured void, ruin, haze) that expresses a quality itself rather than locating an action. COUNTERFEIT: A beautiful empty landscape used as a transition or location card ('Two weeks later — Montana') looks like an any-space-whatever but is a determinate place establishing a Milieu. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 50% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

7 Sy Symptom

TEST: The body acts from a drive too strong for it: a visible primordial act (devouring, rutting, seizing, cruelty) in which the human behaves as a human animal, not as an agent with a goal. COUNTERFEIT: A soldier firing in a battle scene is violent but not a Symptom — the act is situational, purposive action (action-image), not an impulse overwhelming the body. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 45% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

8 Fe Fetish

TEST: A partial object is held apart and charged — relic or vult — so that the image makes us feel stored primal force in it, waiting for a body to discharge it. COUNTERFEIT: An insert close-up of a plot MacGuffin (a briefcase, a key) looks fetishistic but only carries information for the action; it has no primal charge. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 35% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

9 Or Originary world

TEST: Beneath a recognisable place rumbles an archetypal one: the forest, desert, swamp or house is shown as a determinate but timeless ground of drives and decay, not as a historical setting. COUNTERFEIT: A picturesque forest in a hiking scene is just a location; without entropy, cruelty or primal pull on bodies it is Milieu, not the originary world. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 35% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

10 Il Index of lack

TEST: Something is visibly missing from the situation (an ellipsis) and the character's action fills it in one unequivocal disclosure that then redirects what they do. COUNTERFEIT: A cut that simply hides information and shows it later (a withheld shot) looks like an index of lack but is only editing ellipsis unless a character's action is the means of disclosure and the disclosure reorients their action. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 15% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

11 Ie Index of equivocity

TEST: An action discloses a situation that stays double: a slight difference in the same act refers it to two distant situations at once — 'this and that' — and the film sustains the undecidability. COUNTERFEIT: A red-herring shot in a mystery (a suspicious glance that is later explained away) looks equivocal but is an Index of lack with a delay. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 10% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

12 Ve Vector

TEST: Many characters each disclose a partial, equivocal situation, and only their interlocking over the film draws the broken, unpredictable but necessary line of one world. COUNTERFEIT: A hyperlink ensemble film whose storylines merely coincide (a car crash links strangers) looks like a vector, but if the strands disclose no common situation it is closer to Liquid perception. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 5% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

13 Mi Milieu

TEST: The situation is given before anyone acts: an establishing or extreme wide shot lays out a determined geo-historical and social space, and the people in it exemplify it rather than change it. COUNTERFEIT: An aerial drone shot of a city used as a scenic transition looks like an establishing Milieu shot but, if nothing in the film is derived from that situation, it is just location, or even Gaseous perception if manipulated. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 45% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

14 Bi Binomial

TEST: Two opposed lines of force, embodied in characters, face each other: the image is organised as a duel (violent, romantic, political) pointing toward a decisive confrontation. COUNTERFEIT: A shot/reverse-shot conversation between two people framed symmetrically looks duel-like, but without opposed lines of force and a trajectory to a decisive clash it is ordinary dialogue coverage. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 35% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

15 Im Imprint

TEST: A complex situation has entered one body: the character carries it as visible, contained pressure, often fixed on an emotional object that links them to the world, before (or as) it bursts into action. COUNTERFEIT: A brooding close-up of an angry teenager looks like an imprint, but if no milieu has been shown pressing in and no action follows it is only an Icon. SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 20% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)