Rethinking Transitions Part 2
In the comments on part one, Tim Godek noted how Neil Cohn had done some work thinking about and abandoning the idea of panel transitions. I went back and reread Neil’s writings (his book Early Writings on Visual Language). While I won’t argue with Neil’s points in the context he makes them, Neil is looking at the basis of comics, visual language, and I think what I am concerned with here is narrative. Neil is excavating the grammar of visual language, I’m more interested in the structure of narrative. More narratological than linguistical, if that means anyting to anyone reading this. I hope in that sense what I write is differentiated from Neil’s work (which I do highly recommend, you can buy his book and download a bunch of essays from the website linked above).
Following up my last post, thinking about panel transitions and the narrative shifts that occur from one to the next, I did a few sketches of simple examples, which I’ve redrawn larger and a little clearer (I hope).
Right now, in thinking of the shifts that can occur from one panel to the next, I’m considering: 1) narrative time 2) narrative space (still working this out) 3) diegetic level (that is, moving from a story to the story in the story, or moving from the story to the framing narrative) 4) shifts that occur outside narrative time or space. Rather than delineating specific transitions, these shifts all exist on a continuum from negative to positive (in time this would be from infinitely back in time to infinitely in the future). For space this is little more ambiguous (farther away to closer?). For diegetic level this would mean moving higher or lower in level (higher by to a framing tale, lower to a imbedded tale).
Anyway, here are some example groupings I can up with as a kind of starter for thinking about this:
Ex. 1
Completely ambiguous. Time is passing (how much?) but nothing is happening? Time is not passing, we are just seeing a repeated image?
Ex. 2
This more clearly indicates some kind of time passing. If even just a moment of pause after speaking (though alternately it could be hours).
Ex. 3
This isn’t that different than the previous one, I guess.
Ex. 4
A shift in narrative space, though in an ambiguous way. Is this a new scene? The same one from a different perspective? The perspective of the man?
Ex. 5
This drawing isn’t as clear as it could be (that’s the same guy from panel one in the windoe in panel two). A shift in space though possibly also time.
Ex. 6
Pardon my poorly drawn cow. Is this a shift in space? time? Or is it a symbolic shift? Equating the man and the cow?
Ex. 7
An even worse cow. In this case the matching of shape/perspective more clearly equates the man and the cow. When reading about film I discovered the “match cut” where some element from one shot is carried over to the next, and this seemed like an interesting way to use montage. Assuming the panels do not continue on with the cow, we could consider this transition outside time/space.
That’s enough for now, I have seven more drawings for the next post…
Tags: comicstheory, transitions
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