Abstract
In this paper, cognitive process model toward the rhetoric of the film based on relationships among the viewer's viewpoint, the film's rhetoric, the story as a constraint, and cognitive effect is proposed. In film cognition, a viewer takes some viewpoints to relate to the rhetoric of the film and its story is reorganized mentally on the basis of cognition of the rhetoric of the film. Affect and so on occur as results of film cognition. Moreover, a new viewpoint is sometimes established by cognitive experience of the rhetoric of the film, understanding the story, the affective effect or the relaxation of the constraint. A film generally uses its rhetoric to tell a story to adjust to viewer's internal constraint to the story understanding. The constraint of requiring a story is in effect when a film is viewed and people often relate to a film only within the terms of this constraint. However, “rhetoric of a film with a purpose of telling a consistent story” is only one possibility and “rhetoric of a film with a purpose other than telling a consistent story,” too, exists. The experimental results based on the model show that to relate to “rhetoric of a film with a purpose other than telling a consistent story,” a viewer must relax his/her constraint of needing to understand a story and set his/her viewpoint giving him/her some associative logic regarding the shots independent of the story.
