posted
"Camera" is a writing metaphor, of many. Obvious a camera records images first and foremost. Motion picture cameras anymore record sound, too. None record other sensations, per se, for playback, though with eye and ear are touches, tastes, and smells expressed or implied. The cinema technique "reaction shot" records and portrays visible and audible emotions, an emotional reaction clip; the camera cuts away from a focal view to an auxiliary focal view of an external emotional expression.
The camera ideally captures that sixth sense of emotional feeling regardless. Don't know if whether a camera captures moral sensibilities, probably does from deft scriptwriter-camera person-director hands, maybe the camera features humor, irony, satire, and sarcasm settings, too.
Eye and ear cameras as well record through sight and sound other sensations not considered part of default-routine perceptions: proprioception, awareness of body and limb posture and location and effort exertion within an organism; nociception, pain and injury sensation within an organism; equilibrioception, vestibular organ sense of balance and acceleration, vertigo; thermoception, temperature sensation; mechanoreception, vibration; cardioception, heart activity sensation; chronoreception, time sense; and a host of other discrete human, human analog, and non-human-analog organism sensations. Bats and marine mammals sense dimensional perceptions through echolocation. Several reptile species sense infrared light. Shark and fish species sense living beings' electrical fields.
The camera metaphor includes camera location, field of view, depth of field, focal length, aperture diameter, and shutter speed -- location and type of camera, cinema, still, stationary, handheld, rolls on a trolley, surveillance, spy-eye, fly-on-the-wall, on and over the shoulder, at the mind's third eye, inside the mind, shallow to deep (sensation and thought access from within an internal, inside the mind looks out, perspective).
Figurative neck whiplash from jumpy-abrupt camera view transitions also alludes to the metaphor. "Snapshot," "landscape," "portrait," "still life," and "still" reflect anecdote, vignette, and sketch type narratives; shorts -- well, short prose; feature films, novels.
What capabilities and amenities does your writing camera feature or that you want for it? And the writer's motion picture studio? A stable of lead, auxiliary, and extras actors? Clerical staff, accountants, lawyers, caterers? Directors? Camera persons? Editors? Location scouts? Etc.?
posted
Not sure what you're asking. After reading the post, I thought about how I write, coming to the conclusion I'm a visual writer. I see the scene in all its facets: light, composition, characters, sounds, smell, and the taste of the air. How I then translate all that into prose is based on a previous life as a landscape artist. You don't try for hyper-realism, rather you try for a sense and representation of what is there.
posted
Your writer's camera features visual emphasized, aural, olfactory, gustatory, composition, and editing capabilities. Anything else you'd like? Say, irony? At least practical and dramatic irony? without which prose cannot do.
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