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THE GRAMMAR WE NEVER KNEW WE SPOKE

Cinema has always been a language, but it’s one we absorbed unconsciously. A close-up signals intimacy. A Dutch angle suggests unease. The rhythm of cuts can make our hearts race or lull us into contemplation. These aren’t arbitrary choices—they’re the grammar of a visual language that filmmakers have refined over more than a century.

When legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins positions his camera low to make a character appear more powerful, he’s not just making a technical decision—he’s conjugating a verb in the language of cinema. When editor Thelma Schoonmaker cuts between faces in a conversation, she’s building sentences with the syntax of time and space.

Now, for the first time in cinema history, we’re attempting to teach this intuitive language to machines.