# visually attending to fictional things **Opening (not a real abstract):** Visually attending to fictional things1 For a volume of essays on perception and imagination, edited by Fabian Dorsch and Fiona MacPherson Reflecting on the way movies are traditionally made, it can seem surprising that fiction films have the power and vividness we experience when we see them. What we are most immediately presented with is a screen image: a moving pattern of light and colour, which is the projection of a photographic recording of the activities of actors on sets and locations. The actors, in their turn, play the part of fictional characters who, by and large, don’t exist. Yet our overwhelming tendency in the face of this layered representational complexity is to say that we saw Robin Hood rescuing Maid Marian; only in special circumstances do we talk of seeing Errol Flynn acting out a rescue with Olivia de Havilland in front of a camera, and