the Visual Language and aesthetics of Cinema Film is a medium. ... A medium is based on an agreement, a contract that has developed over a long period during which the speaker and the listener, the picture maker and the viewer, performer and audience, have established a system of meanings: a vocabulary, syntax and grammar of the language being used. For this reason, language emerges slowly, and will continue to evolve for as long as audiences and authors develop new ways of expressing themselves. Alexander Mackendrick (From On Filmmaking, 2004) Filmmaking has its own grammar, just as literature does. Everybody knows what basic coverage should be and just because you have some idiosyncratic ideas that might work even though they're breaking rules, the fact remains that there are rules that are there and that work. ... But of course, following the rules does not guarantee that the film will work. That would be too easy. Ethan Coen (From Moviemakers' Master Class, by L. Tirard, 2002) Chapter 3