Sequential Art and Visual Narrative

In today's lecture, in support of our Interactive Narrative project, we were introduced to the "Kuleshov Effect".

The Kuleshov effect is how a viewers perception of what is happening is influenced by the context of the images. In the original Kuleshov experiment, Kuleshov presented a clip to viewers of a an actors expression to three different scenes.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/zUZCPPGeJ1c

It started with a shot of him followed but a shot of food and then a shot of his response.
It continued on to a shot of a child dead/sleeping and then again a shot of his response.
Finally, it showed a shot of a woman sitting in revealing clothing and then a shot of his response.

Those in the study remarked on how amazing the actors abilities were for him to be able to change his expression so slightly and portray different emotions but in fact, the exact same clip of the man was played over again. It was not him changing his expression.

For the first scenario, we assume him to be ravished because of the sight of food.
In the second, we assume him to be a tender man or sad because of the sleeping/dead child.
In the last, we assume him to be lustful because of the provocative woman.


We were also introduce to how sequential presentation influences the viewer.

The two images below are from two separate Miffy books.

Miffy the Artist - The Miffy Group

Miff at School - The Miffy Group

When we see the images on their own, we have a simple narrative of:
Miffy is viewing a painting.
Miffy is drawing.

But when we see them side by side, our minds develop the narrative.


In this image our minds tell us that Miffy is drawing something and then later is having her work displayed on a wall.



Where as in this image our minds are telling us that Miffy saw an painting on a wall and was inspired to do her own drawing.

It was expressed that without all the information our minds automatically fill in the blanks and create their own narratives/understanding of an event so it is important, when we are planning out our comics etc. to make sure we lead our viewers correctly so that they do not lose track and become confused or bored. Angles, positions and content within each panel all play role in achieving this.

Along with this our tutor also discussed semiotics (communicating through pose, signs, expressions etc), lighting, compositions and angles.