Reading Media 4

The reading of Scott Mcloud’s ‘Blood in the Gutter’ addresses and helps us think through conceptual issues at the core of an edit, such as the space between panels/shots; meaning and closure…….

‘Participation is a powerful force in any medium, filmmakers long ago realised the importance of allowing viewers to use their imaginations’. In comics it is the gaps between the panels that allow the readers to use their imagination in order to make assumptions. I really enjoyed how ‘blood in the gutter’ started off with the child believing that the world was created entirely for them and when they weren’t paying attention to something it disappeared. Obviously as adults we know that it doesn’t disappear, the world continues to tick on and our knowledge of the world is created through presumptions, assumptions and our imagination, just like the meaning with associated with the gaps in the comics, the ‘cuts’.

I also think ‘Blood in the Gutter’ is a fantastic title for the comic, I’m guessing it comes from the comic that used as an analogy to show how the amount of frames in a story determine the tone and style of that story. In this comic we continually observe the parts, the individual frames which we associated with the previous and future frames and by doing feeling in the gaps (closure) we form a story and coherent ‘whole’ piece of work with additional meaning. ‘Closure in comics is very intimate’ The audience participates and fills in the gaps, we commit the crimes. I thought this was a really statement, in the first frame we see the axe and in the next we ‘see’ the screaming, yet it is our minds that commit the crime.

Moment to moment, action to action, subject to subject, scene to scene, aspect to aspect (sets a wandering eye on different aspects of a place, idea, mood and finally the non-sequiter which offers no logical end to the cut, no resolution. I think when writing about these cuts I will just pick my favourite, I would really like to see more aspect to aspect, the cuts seem broad enough leave a lot to the imagination of the reader, but also narrow enough that the creator can infer a lot of meaning! I also drew a natural liking to the non-sequiter cuts, they were really cool. I might try a non-sequiter cut in project brief 3.

Is it possible for any sequence of frames to have no correlation or will the audience always deduce things? By having panels/images together we are forcing the viewer to except as one whole, coherent thing. I feel as though frames, regardless of how disparate they are will always be associated together and seen (an interpreted) as one thing, when presented in a film or comic.

Types 2-4 show things happening in a coherent, concise, efficient way which is why I think they are the most popular, to hold the readers, coherency is key!

Another thing I found interesting was with Asian comics, aspect to aspect was used far more frequently than in the west, which I thought was really cool. Because of the more frequent aspect to aspect cuts the viewer must put together the scattered fragments to create a whole moment and meaning. I also thought the use of silences and gaps (seen more predominantly in Asian comics) was also really cool, it leaves more to the imagination and can create mystery and suspense.