Bedford/St. Martin's
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Sequence: Define


Sequence refers to the order in which a series of actions, events, words, or images occurs or is shown. We usually think of it as a term that refers strictly to time—a sequence of events or actions. But in film theory, sequence is used to talk about any animated visual text that cuts from scene to scene or from image to image. The question to ask yourself is not what happened first, but rather in what order are things shown and what does the sequence mean.

We understand history to be a series of prior events occurring one after the other. Historians and documentary filmmakers call this sequentiality.