Looking back, Looking forward

There are many similarities between making a movie and making a comic. Both use pictures and dialouge to help express ideas. Movies have the extra helping hand of music and sound, while comics have the possibility of having narration bubbles. Both make use of symbols, and both have to deal with transitions. Ong and Baron both comment on the evolution of writing as a technology, and movies are basically the next evolutionary step of writing. Many people see a large gap between writing and making movies, but I have always felt that they are truely one and the same. Many of the same rules apply to both. You have to keep a pace that the audience can keep up with, while at the same time keeping them entertained enough to keep them reading/watching. To that end, Strunk and White, and also Williams, have many rules that help make writing clear, such as being concise, omitting needless words, etc. All of these can be applied to scenes in film as well.