Tweet
You might have heard of the Kuleshov Effect - the way that you can induce viewers to bring their own interpretation to two shots viewed together. Here's an example from a Hitchcock documentary: a shot of a woman with a baby, and then of Hitchcock smiling. Interpretation: he's a kindly old uncle. Here's another shot of a woman with a baby, and then Hitchcock smiling again. Interpretation: "He's a dirty old man!" Hitchcock says gleefully. It's the same shot of the same smile again. But we've seen something different in the gap between the two shots.'Blood in the Gutter' is the title of the third chapter in Scott McCloud's The Invisible Art" his comic book about comic books. The 'gutter' is the space between comic panels - like the space between Kuleshov's shots. McCloud points out that an awful lot happens in that space - often as much as happens in the actual panels. But the artist doesn't have to draw it. They imply it, and then they leave it up to you to make it happen, behind your eyes rather than in front of them.
Games have more open spaces than either film or comics. Players come to things at their own pace and in their own order. Even in a linear theme-park-ride FPS, you're going to have a very different experience if you're running low on health or ammo. In more open, mechanics-driven games, scripted experience exists as chunks suspended in the larger game space, like floating islands on a prog rock album cover. The space between the islands is our equivalent of Scott McCloud's gutter. That space is where our imaginations can get to work.
Read more…
More...