ABSTRACT
When you write, you select words from your vocabulary and put them together in a particular way to construct sentences that will inform, entertain, or evoke emotional responses within the reader. When you edit a motion picture, there is a similar process. You have to select shots and string them together in edited scenes to inform, entertain, or evoke emotional responses within the viewer. In order for your written sentences to make sense to readers you must follow the known and accepted rules of grammar for your written language – word order, verb tense, punctuation, phrase and clause construction, etc. There is also a similar visual grammar for the language of motion pictures – it governs how they are shot and how they are edited together.
