## 31 Mk Mark
TEST: Can you point to at least three occurrences of the same image or motif that the characters or viewer come to read as one habitual series with a meaning to be deciphered?
COUNTERFEIT: A montage of three similar establishing shots of a city is repetition without inference: nobody treats the series as a clue, so it is style, not a mark.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 15% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 32 Dm Demark
TEST: Does the shot show a known term of an established series appearing out of place or contradicting that series, so that the aberration itself shocks thought?
COUNTERFEIT: A sudden jump scare breaks expectations but belongs to no series the film has built; it is a shock to the body, not a demark to thought.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 10% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 33 Sb Symbol
TEST: Is a single concrete object held on screen as the knot where several separate threads of the film's relations meet, so that it carries an idea, belief or concept rather than a use or a desire?
COUNTERFEIT: A close-up of a wedding ring that a character pawns is a prop in action (a means), not a symbol, unless the film has made it carry several distinct relations.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 30% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 34a Op Opsign
TEST: With the sound off, is the image something to be seen and nothing more: no one's goal organises it, what moves in it resolves nothing, and the look is not converted into action?
COUNTERFEIT: A long static establishing shot of an empty street before a chase is a pause, not an opsign, because the next shot cashes it into action.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 55% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 34b Sn Sonsign
TEST: With the image covered, does a sound hold the scene as a situation in itself, not score, not plot-driving dialogue, not a cue someone answers?
COUNTERFEIT: A loud siren over a fire-engine chase is diegetic sound but not a sonsign: it drives the action and the image carries the situation.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 50% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 35 Mf Mirrors face to face
TEST: Does one body or thing appear in the same shot as several reflections or doubles at once (facing, angled or distorting mirrors, glass), so that actual and virtual can no longer be told apart?
COUNTERFEIT: A character checking their make-up in one bathroom mirror is a single reflection serving continuity, not a crystal: nothing is multiplied or made indiscernible.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 75% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 36 Lo Limpid and opaque
TEST: During the shot or scene, does one face of the image clear (becomes visible or real) while the other clouds (becomes obscure or virtual), so that the two sides keep changing places?
COUNTERFEIT: A cross-dissolve from one scene to the next moves from one actual to another actual and does not exchange an image with its own virtual.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 40% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 37 Se Seed and environment
TEST: Is there a small enclosed image (a snow globe, model, miniature stage, a drop, a crystal) that contains in germ the world that surrounds it or will grow from it, with seed and environment reversible?
COUNTERFEIT: A model railway on a shelf in the background is décor unless the film makes the world outside behave as its expansion.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 45% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 38 Pp Peaks of the present
TEST: Does the narration give several different presents at once (a present of the past, a present of the present, a present of the future) in the same event, without flashback framing to rank them?
COUNTERFEIT: Cross-cutting between two characters in different places at the same clock time is simultaneity of space, not of heterogeneous presents.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 20% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 39 Sp Sheets of the past
TEST: Does the film move between regions of the past that coexist and ricochet non-chronologically (layered periods in one space, without a present-day narrator motivating each return)?
COUNTERFEIT: A period costume drama set entirely in 1812 is simply set in the past; it has one chronological layer, not coexisting sheets.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 15% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 40 Pf Powers of the false
TEST: Does the film expose its own claim to truth, with testimony, performance or versions that pass into one another so that no image can be held as the true one?
COUNTERFEIT: A twist ending that reveals the narrator lied reinstates a true version; that is a demark or reversal, not the powers of the false.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 20% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 41 Ba Bodies of attitude
TEST: Is the body shown waiting, tired, slumped or posing, in its everydayness, with the posture itself as the content and no act prepared or completed?
COUNTERFEIT: A soldier resting against a wall between battles is a pause in the action-image: the rest is recovery for the next act.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 50% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 42 Bg Bodies of gest
TEST: Are postures chained into a visible, repeated or staged gesture that performs a social act (ritual, bureaucratic routine, demonstration) and is shown as performance, not as efficient action?
COUNTERFEIT: A cop's efficient arrest routine in a thriller is action; it becomes gest only if the film stages it as ritualised performance for us to examine.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 35% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 43 Br Cinema of the brain
TEST: Is the set or world laid out as a map of thought (abstract floor plans, chalk-drawn spaces, landscapes as mental states), so that the screen reads as a brain rather than a place to act in?
COUNTERFEIT: A stylised expressionist set in a horror film serves mood and action; it is décor for a plot, not the plot's brain.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 45% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)

## 44 Le Lectosigns
TEST: Does grasping the film require you to relink its images, narration and narrative yourself, because none of them links 'naturally' and no single key object resolves it?
COUNTERFEIT: A puzzle film with a final reveal requires attention but then reads itself for you; once the twist resolves it, it is a movement-image of thought, not a lectosign.
SINGLE-SHOT CEILING: 10% (how much of the sign one isolated shot can carry; the rest must come from the sequence)