Our lecture today related to the reading ‘Blood in the Gutter’, a study of the gaps between comic panels, and how it allows readers to generate their own meanings and sequences.

https://lms.rmit.edu.au/…/Scott%20McCloud%20Blood%20in%20th…

It really raised an interesting revelation for me, where whilst I once viewed editing as something that must simply tell the story, I now see it as something that can challenge the audience, and create an entirely abstract meaning where physically there is none.

Take this cut from 2001: A Space Odyssey for example. 

When we view this entirely physically, it is simply an image of a bone followed by a spaceship, it has no meaning for us and can be seen as entirely unrelated.

Yet it was pointed out by our third speaker Liam Ward, that audiences can be challenged to create entirely new meanings.

When we see these 2 images, we can actually imagine ourselves what has happened in between. I for one see it as director Stanley Kubrick’s reflection of how far humanity has advanced, where we have once gone from Apes throwing bones to an advanced species.

Yet it can also be seen as detrimental to humanity, where an audience member could interpret it as Kubrick’s cynicism, where he wants to remind us that no matter how far we may believe we advance, we will never lose the connection to our common ancestors, and never lose who we are wholly, and that is animals.

The raising of the word “interpret” has influenced me to have a much larger interest in editing now, where I’m interested to create a gap that can challenge an audience and allow them to come up with their own explanations. Similar to what Scott Mcloud points out in the reading, the “gutter” in between two images or frames, is a lot more powerful then we may instinctively believe.