From our knowledge of everyday life we infer to what is happening there, can so attribute character traits to the people in question, and come to imagine the parts that are not shown in the present scene. This way, even emotions can be evoked or made empathically understandable because emotions themselves are not a universal heritage of our biological past but social constructs, as films, based on language.

Only the interpretation of the situation leads to the meaning of one’s physical arousal. You will not get jealous until you think that someone intends to get something or someone whom you consider yours. Conversely, you only feel envy when you see someone who has something that, in your opinion, you deserve more than he does. Surprisingly, the physical arousal is basically the same in both phenomena.

To learn the emotional alphabet you can just watch and hear which emotions people attribute to what kinds of situations and actors in these situations. Be aware of every small perceivable clue that helps people to orientate in their daily lives because this very orientation is also the base for a common understanding of films.

You can only ‘communicate’ a film when you stick to the system of signifiers used in everyday life, of which your script is a performing part as well. Being this performing part, films, paradoxically, can also be used as an orientation for both writing a script and living a life.

---