I was reminded of discussions back in the ’80s in which ‘cinematic’ seemed to be used as a synonym for ‘sophisticated’. (Somerset Holmes was maybe an example.)

And Scott McCloud, of all people, playing the game of casting the Zot! movie. (Not that he thought there’d ever be one.)

I started to wonder whether people really did think of comics in cinematic categories, and I started to doubt that that would be a good idea.

I’m also the sort of person who thinks that ‘audiobooks’ are no more books than counterfeit banknotes are banknotes, so it is probably best just to write me off as a relic of another age.

If your statement prompts the audience to run for a dictionary, chances are good that they will miss your point completely.

(unless your point was to prompt the audience to run for a dictionary )

But “camera angle” is pretty straightforward and accessible for a bit of jargon in the visual arts, so I’m gonna leave it be.

(one could have easily replaced “camera angle” with “perspective”, an older and less film-centric term in visual arts, but then “perspective” can mean many different things, so the more specific and less-easily misinterpreted “camera angle” fits nicely.)

(when I first read your initial question, the word that leapt to mind was “blocking”, but that has not made its way nearly as far into common parlance as “camera angle”, even though it is technically closer to the question at hand, continuity of character placement in the scene.)

(The point of my abuse of parenthetical statements being, never let quibbling over terminology interfere with *communicating the message*.)

(In conversation, I regularly find myself excusing someone else’s verbal gaffe – “Did you mean *X*? It’s okay, you know what you meant, and *I* got what you meant, so let’s move on.”)

I am in many ways an unsophisticated creature, it is true. But that I knew already.

Is it not, though, a form of cultural cringe?

And, belatedly, @matthew brandi: Cinematic terminology is used by comics artists all the time. Even though there’s no actual camera, you’ll often hear them use the word as a shorthand for the viewpoint in a given panel. So now you know.

In panel four she just looks young, soft, … and very, very stupid. If that doesn’t add up to a massive turn-off, what does?

Of course, it may be easy to look stoopid sucking on a straw, but then it is pretty easy to look attractive when up-close, half-smiling, and interested.

Rachel, on the other hand, is starting to look weary and cynical, and that you gotta love.