ABSTRACT
The previous chapter discovered a considerable area of overlap between video and film in their shared aesthetics of sound. This is hardly surprising, since feature films had universally used tape for the recording of sound for well over a decade before the first portable video recorders were introduced in the west. The situation is very different when we turn to the video image, which has qualities and potentials very different from those of the film image. There are again some areas of overlap, but what is taken over – whether it is the filmic system of the look or the television direct address pattern – is radically transformed. Video is such a new and untried medium that it is perhaps presumptuous to attempt to define its aesthetics at this stage. But on the basis of the preceding discussions of video’s historical and social contexts, a few – admittedly tentative – comments can be offered.
