VII

		the scene on a video monitor instead of looking at it directly. 20 This behavior has irked some technical people who have been around long enough to know better. At a recent meeting of the American Society of Cinematographers at the University of Southern California, for instance, Victor Kemper voiced many complaints against the new generation of directors who, he said, had grown up sitting too close to their TV sets. These directors as a result feel equally at home sitting just inches away from their little video monitors. Because of that, Kemper added somewhat cryptically, they cannot see the composition of the pictures.21 Members of the audience balked at this: after all, doesn't video assist make it possible for the director to verify the operator's composition? Kemper countered by suggesting that these directors were no longer looking at things "from the periphery of their eyes." He was right of course. Compositio does not relate exclusively to what is inside the frame, it involves primarily a relation between what is captured and the larger context which always exceeds it. This means remaining aware at all times of the entire surroundings beyond the camera's view of them. In contrast, today's directors are often ensconced in front of their monitors, protected left and right by large shades that keep ambient light away from their video screens. So, unlike Robert Bresson who urges himself (and others) to "find, for each shot, a new urgency over and above what I had imagined,"22 these directors function as if nothing else could possibly be gathered from the scene once they have laid out their initial plans. In other words, they give up on possibilities yet unexpressed by the scene at its rehearsal stage. To shoot, for them, becomes merely a question of recording on film what has been planned during the rehearsal: did this show up well, was it done effectively? For Kemper, something gets lost in this approach. To counter the impact of video assist, the filmmakers should get back on track, remaining "ubiquitous in some way one eye in the viewfinder, the other open to the outside so as to become available to what is taking place beyond the borders of the frame."23 Video assist directors instead, with blinders left and right, display only tunnel vision. No longer experiencing the open field of the world, they have let themselves become the first spectators of a premature presentation.

		VI

		Yet another departure remains possible for our understanding of composition. Because a film is made up of shots and involves duration, composition can also entail sequential connections. This is probably what Jean-Luc