...actually, I feel like i should chime in here because Joe said "Zoom 
in" first, and then "establishing shot", and he is right on both counts, 
only that narratologically "establishing  shot" is the general category, 
including also bird's eye, pan(orama) shot etc.  The really wild thing 
is that what Twain uses here - and what Belasco adapted for the theatre 
-- is really a cameratic technique before any camera could do something 
like it. Like with a number of other developments, the technology here 
followed the writer's imagination.

best  wishes,
w

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Hochbruck
Department of English /
Centre for Security and Society
Albert Ludwigs University
15 Rempart St.
D- 79098 Freiburg

Am 25.08.2016 08:18, schrieb Joe Alvarez:
> Establishing shot, that's probably the closest one yet. The description from=
>   Life on the Mississippi reminds me of the opening--establishing shot--of Al=
> fred Hitchcock's Psycho.
>
> Joe Alvarez
> 900 Havel Court
> Charlotte, NC 28211-4253
> Telephone: 704.364.2844
> FAX: 704.364.9348
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>> On Aug 25, 2016, at 1:47 AM, Peter Salwen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> =20
>> What you called the"birds-eye view" might also be called an establishing
>> shot
>> Not by Twain, though.
>> =20
>> On Aug 25, 2016 1:27 AM, "Joe Alvarez" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> =20
>> How about "zoom in"? That is what is happening in your description.
>> =20
>> Joe Alvarez
>> 900 Havel Court
>> Charlotte, NC 28211-4253
>> Telephone: 704.364.2844
>> FAX: 704.364.9348
>> =20
>> Sent from my iPad
>> =20
>>> On Aug 24, 2016, at 8:33 PM, Wesley Britton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> =3D20
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>>> I have a question about one passage in Life on the Mississippi. I suspect=
>> i=3D
>> t
>>> will be very familiar to many of you.
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>>> It's the passage where we first get a birds-eye view of a place along the=
>>> river before Twain narrows his focus to one town, then one street, then
>> on=3D
>> e
>>> house, then a sleeping man on a porch.
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>>> Back in grad school, a professor used a term to define this technique of
>>> moving from the general to the specific, but I can't figure out now what
>>> term he meant.
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>>> Any ideas?
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>>> Dr. Wesley Britton
>>> =3D20
>>> Author, Beta-Earth Chronicles
>>> =3D20
>>> www.drwesleybritton.com
>>> =3D20
>>> =3D20