Almost all films tweak time, either expanding or constricting time.
In The Sound of Music, we hear a church bell while Maria is on the hill. Later, when we see the nuns in the chapel we hear the same exact bell, only this time it sounds much closer. We just experienced a TIME EXPANSION, although we didn't know it until we heard the bell. The director, Robert Wise, could have used PARALLEL EDITING (sometimes called CROSS CUTTING) to show both actions happening at once -- We see Maria for a bit, then cut to the nuns, then back to Maria, etc.
Children's movies are almost always chronological, without flashbacks. Time jumping tends to confuse the wee ones. But those movies often compress time, making leaps forward. In The Lion King, we actually see Simba grow from a cub to an adolescent as he crosses a log. We see this because a sudden change in Simba's appearance would confuse the little ones; they would wonder who this other lion is.
Many movies are told in flashback, with a present narrator (seen on screen) telling a story. Think Titanic or Amadeus. Forrest Gump does this to great effect, with our protagonist beginning on a park bench telling a stranger his story, then flashing back to see it. It bounces back and forth several times into various episodes of his life (hence the term EPISODIC). Notice with all of these films that the narration (the part in flashback) is still chronological. Forrest Gump doesn't begin by telling us about his college years; he starts on the first day of school as a child.
This type of storytelling, where we constantly jump back and forth between time (and sometimes between reality and storytelling as in Big Fish and The Princess Bride) is called ELLIPTICAL STORYTELLING. It works for films of any length or genre, except for children's films.
Rarely, films intentionally do not expand or constrict time. Most of the film Dog Day Afternoon takes place during a 2-hour bank robbery gone wrong. We are with the character, and in our seats, for the same two hours. These films are called REAL TIME. Other notable real time movies are Hitchcock's Rope, High Noon, and Twelve Angry Men. NOTE: There is a movie called Russian Ark which we will look at later. It is all shot in one long take, and the narrator is with us in real time. But since the movie literally walks us through history (room to room in a museum where actors portray eras of Russian history), I can't really call it diegetically real time.
In The Sound of Music, we hear a church bell while Maria is on the hill. Later, when we see the nuns in the chapel we hear the same exact bell, only this time it sounds much closer. We just experienced a TIME EXPANSION, although we didn't know it until we heard the bell. The director, Robert Wise, could have used PARALLEL EDITING (sometimes called CROSS CUTTING) to show both actions happening at once -- We see Maria for a bit, then cut to the nuns, then back to Maria, etc.
Children's movies are almost always chronological, without flashbacks. Time jumping tends to confuse the wee ones. But those movies often compress time, making leaps forward. In The Lion King, we actually see Simba grow from a cub to an adolescent as he crosses a log. We see this because a sudden change in Simba's appearance would confuse the little ones; they would wonder who this other lion is.
Many movies are told in flashback, with a present narrator (seen on screen) telling a story. Think Titanic or Amadeus. Forrest Gump does this to great effect, with our protagonist beginning on a park bench telling a stranger his story, then flashing back to see it. It bounces back and forth several times into various episodes of his life (hence the term EPISODIC). Notice with all of these films that the narration (the part in flashback) is still chronological. Forrest Gump doesn't begin by telling us about his college years; he starts on the first day of school as a child.
This type of storytelling, where we constantly jump back and forth between time (and sometimes between reality and storytelling as in Big Fish and The Princess Bride) is called ELLIPTICAL STORYTELLING. It works for films of any length or genre, except for children's films.
Rarely, films intentionally do not expand or constrict time. Most of the film Dog Day Afternoon takes place during a 2-hour bank robbery gone wrong. We are with the character, and in our seats, for the same two hours. These films are called REAL TIME. Other notable real time movies are Hitchcock's Rope, High Noon, and Twelve Angry Men. NOTE: There is a movie called Russian Ark which we will look at later. It is all shot in one long take, and the narrator is with us in real time. But since the movie literally walks us through history (room to room in a museum where actors portray eras of Russian history), I can't really call it diegetically real time.