RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

justify the intention of the book - that of a handbook of montage. Lalič does not limit his thinking only to video-mixing elements and problems directly connected with them. When he incorporates mixing into the integral process of television creativity, he tries to see the process itself in the frame of a wider view of the nature of television communication. This way of presenting the material, coupled with the description of some of the dilemmas encountered in an appreciation of television communication, gives the concrete evidence more general meaning, Rightfully selecting formulations of theoretical premises relevant to the basic concept and subject of consideration, he does not assume a decisive critical stance toward them ог distance himself to the exteht such a position permits. This does not mean facile rejection, nor does it mean a superficial approach. Lalič deals with wider postulates in the measure the book’s structure allows. Nevertheless, choosing tacit restraint in criticism would indiscernibly lead, if we were to try to develop the offered concepts further, to a path of straight-line eclecticism in the face of authorities with different conceptual starting points. The division of television presentations into those involving audience contact with events in progress (direct transmission) and filming for later transmission, is behind Lalič’s idea of two fundamental dimensions and even categories of video-mixing deriving from such a division. Like many others, Lalič finds authentic television expression above all in direct transmission, but he shows in a number of ways that drawing such an overall difference is not simple or definitive: his warning about the conditional nature of the authenticity of such transmission in view of the actual quality of direct experience by the senses and the physical presence; the limitations of transmission in representation and meaning as well as the many-layered creativity of montage of transmissions (for later screening) with explicitly cultural and aesthetic properties.

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