Comprehending Time #11

Comprehending Time

Blog Post #11

In movies, very rarely do we seen screen stories taken in real time. In feature films whole lives can be dealt within 90 minutes, with a 60 minute TV documentary it can take around 8 months. There are many conventions to denote time passing, from the time/date information typed up on each new scene of 'The X-Files' to the aeroplane passing over a map of a continent in 'Raiders of the lost ark'.

Flashback from 'The Vampire Diaries'
In Katerina

Other devices to manipulate time includes:

• Flashbacks - For example in 'The Vampire Diaries' there is various flashbacks to 1492, showing Katherine's back story with Klaus and Elijah and how she became a vampire.                                             

Dream Sequences occur in
'Inception' quite significantly

Dream Sequences:

Dream sequences is a technique used in storytelling. It is mainly used to set a brief interlude from the main story. The film 'Inception' (2010) consists of dream sequences as they are tiered in a dream within a dream, this is also referred to false awakening; which is a false vivid and convincing dream about awakening from sleep.



Flash forwards:



Two corpses outside W.W's driveway

Flash forward is a scene that takes the narrative forward in time from the current point in time. Flash-forwards are often used to represent events expected, projected, or imagined to occur in the future; for example Breaking Bad uses flash-forward throughout its second season showing a mystery regarding debris and corpses outside Walter Whites driveway, which revealed to be the result of two planes crashing overhead.

Other time manipulation in films include:

• Repetition
• Pre-figuring of events that have not yet taken place
• Reverse motion
• Freeze frame
• Ambiguous time