In the book How to Read a Film authors James Monaco and David Lindroth explain that, “As a medium, film needs to be considered as a phenomenon very much like language. It has no codified grammar, it has no enumerated vocabulary, it doesn’t even have very specific rules of usage, so it is very clearly not a language system like written or spoken English; but it nevertheless does perform many of the same functions of communication as language does.”[1]
While film may not have grammar or vocabulary it does have a system of signs and codes. For example, a simple combination of shots can create can construct meaning. Take the following sequence of shots for example: a blank expression on a person’s face, an appetizing slice of warm apple pie topped with ice cream, and then back to the person’s face. While nothing in this sequence literally expresses hunger or desire the combination and sequence of the images conveys that meaning to the audience.
It is the examination of these signs and codes used in film and cinema that gives life to the artistic career of the wife and husband duo Jennifer and Kevin McCoy.
[1] James Monaco and David Lindroth, How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, and Multimedia (Oxford University Press, 2000), 64
