Farid Yahaghi

Supervised by: Cheryl Simon

2017 M04 24

RealiTy, MovIng IMagE

In Search for the Flow of Time in Cinema

Abstract

Film is said to be the most accessible medium to represent the presence of reality within

its nature. Since the emergence of cinema in the late 19th century, film as a seductive

medium, has not only dominated over the previous achievements in moving images, but it has

also broadened and evolved over the years. The evolution of the mass media is to an extent

that it is now seemingly replacing the believability of the reality of actual events with their

instant exhaustive representations. However, within the back and forth demands between art

and technology, both challenging and inspiring each other in today’s post-medium condition,

producing an image of reality as the state of the existence of actual things is seemingly a

never ending hopeless attempt as it always fails to capture the whole reality. The reason

behind this notion in the case of the film itself is that it, in spite of its apparent realness,

represents a portion of time as the duration of events and movements. The issue is not only

due to the inevitable temporality of moving images (which constrains them to have no choice

other than showing a portion of the reality), but also because of the fact that the fundamental

structure of the film itself is based on a not-real/false quality of our visual perception. This

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research is after questioning the creditability of cinema to illustrate the reality. The

methodology is to study the representational quality of the passage of time through static and

moving images, its history and its evolution. Here, the subjectivity of time and the way

cinema has always been dealing with is a key topic. The theories around the subject will be

addressed and by applying them to various durational works, old and new, other hypothesis

will be formed. At the end, the research will suggest a possible framework in which the

aforementioned critical aspect of cinema could meet some treatments.

Keywords: Time perception, Subjective time, real time, movement, moving images, cinema,

stop motion.

A brief look at the starting point of the formation of cinema, which was simultaneously

in progress along with other achievements (like telecommunication) in modernism era, reveals

the similarity of film with other products of modernism. The invention of modern clocks in

favour of serving the public as an indicator of time, a general understanding of time, was

based on the idea of dividing it to countable finite numbers (hours, minutes and seconds): the

segmented passage of time. In this sense, the modern reading of time was accompanied with

measurability and valuation. This rationalized time, as Mary Ann Doane notes is, “no longer

a medium in which the human subject is situated (it is no longer lived or experienced in quite

the same way), time is externalized and must be consulted (the phenomenon of the pocket

watch)” (7). Long before that period, the matter of time was more of a private and personal

understanding: the labour time was not yet defined accurately. The passage of time was seen

through movements of natural phenomena like sunlight, shadows, sand clocks or similar

devices rather than changes in numbers. In that sense, there was a direct dialogue between

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time and actual movement. They were reflecting each other. Hence, the passage of time was

understood through the perception of changes, between physical states. Moreover, as the

notion of time was not globally conventionalized yet, it remained as a subjective personal

issue. Nevertheless, the representation of time/movement was still a big question, which then,

gradually found a satisfactory answer through the normalization of modern timing along

with the emregence of cinema. Following the same pattern of chopping time to discrete units,

film was established to be “divided into isolated and static frames - instants of time, in effect -

which when projected produce the illusion of continuous time and movement.” (Doane 9). It

is in this way that each second of standardized filmic representation of reality is allocated to

24 frames. Lesser than this rate (for example 12fps) would decrease the flux of the

representation to the eye and of course, higher frame rate of shooting makes it smoother and

enhances its realness. This was in fact a smart trick to make benefit of the human eyes

deficiany to perceive the slight difference between two images at particular speed. The idea,

which had already been popularized in optical toys like thaumatrope, long before the advent

of cinema, was in fact based on the theory of the persistence of vision. The theory "assumes

that the retinal impression provoked by one frame of film persists and blends with the next

frame so that the slightly different images merge to produce the illusion of motion" (70). Here,

the matter of "illusion" is an important note. The represented time/movement in cinema is

assumingly not real, though the realness of moving image is much enough to be considered as

a mimic of reality.

Moreover, there is a strong claim against the modern definition of time which makes the

whole discussion controversial. The theory that time is a flux and not a sum of discrete units

is linked with the theory that human consciousness is a stream and not a conglomeration of

separate faculties or idea. The term 'stream of thought' which was first appeared in an essay

by William James in 1884 explains that "each mental event is linked with those before and

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after, near and remote, which act like a surrounding 'halo' or 'fring' " (qtd. In Kern 24). In this

sense, time (and perhaps its representation) are seen the same. Based on this notion and also

the aforementioned illusionary quality of time in cinema, it could be argued that according to

the structure of film, there is a lack of represention of the stream or haloness of time/

movement in cinema. Another proof for this deficiency is the ongoing attempts in moving

image technology to heighten the frame rate shooting and the refrash rate in digital display in

order to create a more 'seamless' looking image. The point is, human vision, despite its

mentioned limited capabiltiy, is still ahead of cinema in this regard. Scientific facts have

shown that the human visual system and brain can interpret up to 1000 frames per second,

while the fastest refrash rate that a display can support is still 240Hz (240 frames per second).

However, the minimum frame rate that can provide an adequate illusion of movement is 12

images per second. Moving images with lower than this rate could be percieved as individuals.

Nonetheless, 24 fps has been standardized as the most sufficient rate to produce the illusion of

movement. Therefore, there is always a small amount of lost time in film which passes in

complete darkness. In another word, "the cinema presents us with simulacrum of

time" (Doane 173). Now, the question is, regardless of different frame rate effects, is cinema

sufficient enough to represent the fluid nature of time? In another word, does the structure of

film, which, as been told, is based on breaking down time/movement to frames, has the

capacity to capture the flowing quality of time, while preserving the illusion of movement?

Another note which supports the fundumentals of this question is the study of Zeno's

paradoxes regarding his deial of the actuality of movement in space. According to one of his

paradoxes, it is impossible to move from A to B since before attaining to the end, halfway of

the distance must be reached and, before that, the halfway mark of the halfway, and so on, in

perpetuity. The theory has been faulted several times by mathematicians and different

theorists like Bergson. He argues that "Since movement is qualitative rather than quantitative,

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its divisibility is unthinkable" (Doane 174). Hence, the movement slips through the interval

(between the frames). Not only this negation reassures the illusionary quality of movement in

cinema, but it also implies that any attempt to represent the passage of time would be an

illusion. All things considered, it seems that there is a sort of satisfying sufficiency lying behind

the perception of life within moving images. Using the phrases like "adequate amount of

time" in film terminology reveals that time is always considered as a quantitative divisible

element in cinema and the qualitative aspects of it does hardly have a place in this realm.

With this in mind, the understanding of 'time perception' would shed light to our

discussion from another angle. There are some strong arguments addressing the conception

of time as, indeed, being an illusory experience. In this sense, by disregarding the temporal

measurement of an event, a "discrepancy between appearance and reality would

happen" (Power 11). This differentiation is, in fact, the essence of the philosophy of time. A

bipolar point of view that always deals with the confrontation of actual time and subjective

time. These two points are defined with several, more or less similar terms. The 'external

time' (when?), public time, objective time, clock time or prospective time mostly refers to the

modern quantitative conceptualization of time and the 'internal time' (how?), private time,

psychological time or retrospective time are attributed to individual experienced time which is

qualitative. While the former notions are based on the mechanical fixed aspect of time, the

second ones point to the uncertain noncompulsory perception of time. The latter aspect is

more compelling to our question as it apparently involves the idea of time as a flow.

According to William James (1890) on the question of retrospective timing:

In general, a time filled with varied and interesting experiences seems short in passing,

but long as we look back. On the other hand, a tract of time empty of experiences

seems long in passing, but in retrospect short (qtd. In Weardon 118).

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 The term 'storage size', which was first used by Ornstein (1969), would give a clear

explanation to the above note. "In the storage of a given interval, either increasing the

number of stored events or the complexity of those events will increase the size of storage,

and as storage size increases the experience of duration lengthens" (119). While practically

this note seems to be true in its nature, the representational capacity to illustrate it in cinema

is still a big question. This is, in fact, due to the temporality of cinema as its durational time

(in one shot and without any special effect) is always matched with the real time. Although,

the above quote may also be true for a cinematic experience (A shot filled with varied actions

seems short in passing, but long as we look back), it becomes challenging for cinema when

momentary streams of thought is ought to be represented. How much time, for instance, a

person is feeling at the very moment of making a decision? Perhaps a great deal of thoughts

and images would cross his/her mind, and processing them would 'seemingly' take more time

than the actual duration. All these could be as short as an interval between two frames - that

invisible black moment. Herein Charles Sanders Peirce notes that, "any unit of time, no

matter how small, will always be an interval, composed of smaller units of time. Thoughts,

therfore, always take place within an interval in which they are enabled by the presence of

other thoughts" (qtd. In Doane 90). Of course, the language of cinema has found equivalent

ways like slow motion effect or parallel editing to expand those intervals. Yet, by applying

those methods, the viewer would still be obliged to watch a specific finite amount of frames to

percieve the streams of thought through the interval. Thus, cinema itself, seems to always be

in conflict with representing the flow of subjective time.

Despite the fact that film is the most accessible medium for studying the representation

of time, considering the temporal quality of static images and the attempts which have been

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done to add movement to photography would be beneficial. Cinema is anyhow, made from

immobile frames, thus it is essential to have a more detailed look to the fundumental

component of the film. Roland Barthes analyzes the photograph as a conjunction of the

'here' and 'then'. "The insistent referentiality of the photograph is linked, for Barthes, with the

spetator's knowledge that the object had been there, in front of the camera, and that the

image carries its trace" (103). This claim along with Bergsons' theory of memory associates

the photography to pastness: An illustration of something that happened in the past. But

when it comes to film, the spectator always experience the movement as in the present tense

(even if it duplicates a past movement). The moving images are, for the spectator, 'here' and

'now'. The main difference here is that filmic representation produces the experience of

presence for the spectator, while photography does not ask the viewer to have a specific

temporal experience. The before and the after of the subjected moment in photography can

not be seen before the spectators' eye. Therefor, the photograph remains as a representation

of an instant past. Regardless of the appropriation of tenses, there are some capabalities of

capturing movement in photography. In 1882, a few years before the invention of cinema, the

French physician E.J. Marey began to study movement with a technique he called

chronophotography - literally, the photography of time. It was "a method which anyalyzes

motions by means of a series of instantaneous photographs taken at very short and equal

intervals of time" (Kern 21). The difference between this method and the famous Eadweard

Muybridges' works on animal locomotion, which happened earlier on 1877, was that in

chronophotography the process was done with one camera instead of several and the final

result was a single photography. Although, the mechanics of cinema was also based on this

type of discrediting the movement, the futurist photographer, Anton Bragaglia, claimed that

cinematography and chronophotography shatter movement with cold and mechanical

arbitrariness, so they are incapable of achieving the intensity of photodynamism's analysis of

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movement. He believed that this technique, which involved leaving the shutter open long

enough to record the blurred image of an object in motion, represents the "inner, sensorial,

cerebral and psychic emotions that we feel when an action leaves its superb, unbroken

trace" (qtd. In Doane 87). Above all, it seems that whether or not photography benefit from a

motion technique, it always remains timeless. What is intended here by 'timeless' is mostly

referred to the real time which is the actual experienced time. The duration of movements in

photodynamism photographies, for example, is not specified. Therefor, as movement does not

exist without time, it could be said that the represented time in photography is qualitative,

subjective and psychological. This is, in fact, a quality that some filmmakers like Pasolini or

Tarkovsky were aware of, and they took long seeminly immobile shots in order to fulfill that

sense. Even recent mainstream filmmakers like Guy Ritchie have applied this technique in a

bolder way, by embedding freez frames as one shot within a sequence.

Conclusion

There are, accordingly, two major characteristics in still image, which to some extent,

invoke subjective private time: Its relation to past memories and its openness to non temporal

reading - the death of clock time. Back to our main question, we could argue that perhaps

merging moving and still images could lead us to a more comprehensive representation of

time. On one hand, to experience the actual passage of time, and on the other hand, to

represent its perceptual quality. One suggestion is to manipulate this integration through

expanded cinema because, as it was mentioned earlier, the traditional medium of film does

not have the potential to fill the gap between the frames, while within a multidisciplinary

approach it is possible to go beyond. Moreover, the stop motion animation technique, in

which, no actual movement is recorded, yet the illusion of movement is created with still

frames, could be applicable. It is peculiar that, whereas this technique has a long history

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dating back to the early days of cinema, it has never found such a rightful place in film

theories. Maybe, the reason for this neglect is because of the too much fantasy in the content

of most animation films which has implied a sense of incuriosity over time. Yet, moving an

inanimate object during a long process does produce a conceptual framework in which the

question of time and space would take new dimensions. As the subjective time can be

represented by the category of literary space, it can also function the same. "Subjective

(conceptual) space serves as a means of conveying the inner world of characters" (qtd. In

Nesterik 2832). Having this in mind, firstly, the contrast between the actual period of the

production time (changes of the space through time lapse motion) and the fictional time could

produce concepts, and secondly, the long time between the preparation of each frame could

be documented ('making of' videos for instanse), to create some sort of pastness (or memory)

for each frame. That is the time which is always lost in moving images. The time when

thoughts happen and decisions get made. The moment that is too fast to be represented, but

so essential to be seen. The time that reveals the stream of thoughts flowing from one frame

to the other.

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Bibliography

Doane, Mary Ann. The emergence of cinematic time: modernity, contingency, the archive. Harvard
University Press. 2002.

Kern, Stephen. The culture of time and space. Harvard University Press. 2003.

Nesterik, E. V. "Visual images of subjective perception of time in a literary text". International

journal of environmental & science education. Vol. 11, No. 9, May, 2016.

Power, S. Enda. "Temporal illusions - philosophical considerations". Multidisciplinary aspects of time

and time perception. Springer press. 2010.

Wearden, John. The psychology of time preception. Springer Press. 2016.

Secondary Sources

Arstila, Valtteri. "Further steps in the science of temporal consciousness?". Multidisciplinary aspects
of time and time perception. Springer press. 2010.

Deleuze, Gilles. "Cinema: the time-image". The University of Minnesota Press. 1997.

Rushton, Richard.The reality of film: Theories of filmic reality. Oxford University Press. 2013.

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