This paper addresses the challenge of bridging the semantic gap
   between the rich meaning users desire when they query to locate and
   browse media and the shallowness of media descriptions that can be
   computed in today's content management systems. To facilitate
   high-level semantics-based content annotation and interpretation, we
   tackle the problem of automatic decomposition of motion pictures into
   meaningful story units, namely scenes.  Since a scene is a complicated 
and subjective
   concept, we first propose guidelines from film production to determine
   when a scene change occurs. We then investigate different rules and
   conventions followed as part of Film Grammar that would guide and
   shape an algorithmic solution for determining a scene. Two different
   techniques using intershot analysis are proposed as solutions in this
   paper. Further, we present different  refinement mechanisms such as film 
punctuation detection founded on  film grammar to further improve the 
results.  The refinement techniques demonstrate
   significant improvements in overall performance.