07.03.2016

“our perception of reality is an act of faith based on mere fragments”

Scott McCloud’s ‘Blood in the Gutter’ discusses some important ideas on editing and, most importantly, the audience. Visual storytelling can be hard to achieve when one assumes the audience has no prior knowledge of anything ever, but this is never the case. As Scott McCloud wrote, “our perception of reality is an act of faith based on mere fragments”.

As humans we have this incredible ability to assume that something just is. This means that we do not have to show an entire character’s body in frame for the audience to know that it is there, nor do we have to be explicit in storytelling for the audience to understand what is happening on screen.

Subtlety is everything. Have a little faith in the audience to have a little faith in their fragments. They will almost always understand.