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"Temporal order, temporal frequency, and temporal duration [in movies] are all
variable."
(Bordwell)
1. Temporal Order:
Narratives (stories) can be told in a number of ways. The simplest way to tell a story
in a movie is called "direct or sequential narrative," which simply means that the
passage of time and the order of events in the movies is exactly the same as "real"
time. Events start at the beginning and go on the the end without interruption
(ellipsis), extension (hyperbole), repetition, or any change in their normal order.
Theoretically, a direct narrative could be filmed without any "editing" at all, the
camera being turned on at the beginning and turned off at the end. [Do you know any
movies like this?] More common is "interrupted sequence" in which time moves
forward from beginning to end, but pieces of time are LEFT OUT (ellipsis)--because
they are boring or don't "advance the plot". There are obviously other ways to
represent temporal order in movies, by using flashbacks or flash-forwards, that is,
by showing events out of order, or in extreme cases by the wholesale mixing up of
normal temporal order (for, hopefully, legitimate creative purposes), or by telling the
story backwards.
So, temporal order can be--
Arbitrary or out of order (Citizen Kane?, Pulp Fiction, Last Year at Marienbad)
Ass-backwards (Betrayal, Memento, High Fidelity) [an "archaeological
excavation" like Oedipus Rex] Class? Other examples?
Directors must help the audience know when time has passed between two scenes
(temporal ellipsis), and there are a number of ways to do this. Using a "fade out"
followed by a "fade in" is a common method--it gives the audience time to catch its
breath. A long passage of time can be indicated simply by telling the audience: "six
years later" (A Beautiful Mind), or "sixteen years later" (The Natural). In fact, as
sophisticated film goers, we are usually very good at inferring when an ellipsis has
taken place. If an actor starts walking up a flight of stairs (The Godfather), we almost
expect that the director will use an ellipsis (properly called a "jump cut" in this case)
and cut to the actor reaching the top of the stairs; he doesn't want to bore us or waste
film. Nowadays, all pieces of film used in movies are much shorter that they used to
be, and cuts are much more frequent. So much have our expectations changed in this
respect that we often find that "old movies" move so slowly that they are frustrating to
watch. We are also much more open to complex temporal manipulation and
alternating past and present than previous audiences, because, living in the
"postmodern" era, we expect actions and events to be out of context and to connect
with other actions and events that are seemingly unrelated in time or space.
2. Temporal duration:
Screen time (Running Time), Plot time, and Story time are the three kinds of time
duration in movies.
Screen time (also "running time" or "cheek time"), is the time you actually
spend in your seat. Two other common terms are "filmic time" and "real
time."
Plot is "everything visibly and audibly present in the film before us" (the diegesis--Greek
for "recounted story") So, plot time is the period of time covered by the events
you actually see on the screen (several hours to several years, but almost
always longer than screen time).
Story is "the set of ALL events in the narrative, both explicit and implicit." So, story
time is the period covered by all the events that you see or know about. We
often make inferencesabout events not shown, In Citizen Kane, for example, we infer
that Kane grew up as a spoiled brat, but this is not portrayed, and we only hear about the
boarder who gave "worthless" deed to Kane's mother. And what happened to Kane's first
wife and son? In Amadeus we are told many things by Salieri that we are not shown-such as? (Also Hoosiers, North by Northwest.)
Note, therefore, that plot and story are different: they overlap in one respect and
diverge in others. All we the viewer have before us is the plot--which is the arrangement
of material in the film. We create the story in our minds from cues in the plot. Thus, if
you want to give a "synopsis" of a movie you can proceed in two ways: 1) you can
begin with the earliest incidents which the plot cues you to infer (the boarder who gives
the worthless deed to Kane's mother) and summarize the story, or 2) summarize the
the plot starting with the earliest incident you see on the screen (e.g. Kane dies). The very
brief synopses in your TV guide: e.g. "Down-on-his luck drifter finds diamond. . ." are
almost always story synopses. (See "High Concept") Could we diagram some examples
in a "story/plot axis"? (XY axis: story up, plot across)
Montage sequences are used in movies to compress time and advance the plot
quickly.
Examples of story time, plot time, and screen time:
Paranoid (short horror film)
Amadeus--many years, a few hours (with flashbacks), 138 minutes
The Red Violin (I dare you to try! This is a difficult film time-wise.)
3. Temporal frequency:
Scenes may appear more than once, or from multiple points of view--for example, Lola
Rennt, the great Japanese film Rashomon, and its remake with Paul Newman, Hour of the
gun. The Red Violin and Citizen Kane offer a veritable feast of interesting
What IS time, anyway? Objectively, time seems to always move at the same pace,
but the emotional speed of time can vary tremendously (see Shakespeare!), and the
way we experience time in our heads is a function of memory, in which we can repeat
events, or place them in a new order. One of the ways that movies are different from
"real" life is the way that they manipulate time.
http://apertura.hu/2011/tavasz/bolter-grusin