The Six Aspects of Time

The six elements of time are duration, speed, intensity, scope, setting and chronology. We have taken this first project as an opportunity to identify a few of them in different movies.

Duration:

To best exemplify duration, I chose to examine "88 Minutes".

88 Minutes (2007):



"88 Minutes" is a movie where the main character, Dr. Jack, is told he has only 88 minutes to live via phone call. Dr. Jack has to solve his own planned murder before its too late. The movie's run time is 111 minutes, leaving room for just over 20 minutes of film time used to depict the 9 years leading up to the phone call and the rest of the day  after his murder is attempted.

The story pretty much ends at the end of the film. The murderer is on death row and the main character survives. The film does little to make the viewer wonder about the story post-movie end.

Intensity:

To demonstrate intensity, I chose to look at "Wanted".

Wanted (2008)



The main character in the movie is Wesley, an average guy who has his life turned upside down when he finds out that he receives a visit from a league of assassins. The movie is very intense, as depicted by the trailer. This is done to present the contrast between his old boring life and his new dangerous (yet somewhat awesome) one. If the actors and actresses had under exaggerated, the movie would lose its direction and no real progress would seem to be made.

The whole theme of the movie relies on the idea that Wesley's life becomes "an action adventure", an idea that would never really even appear if not for the intensity of the film.

Chronology:

To best exemplify chronology, I chose to examine the movie "VANTAGE POINT".

VANTAGE POINT (2007):



"VANTAGE POINT" is a movie about just one event - an assassination on the US President. The whole event happens in an instance, and the events following aren't long. But what makes the movie interesting is that it shows the event from the point of view of 8 different people, one after another, revealing a little more about the situation each time.

By using this nontraditional chronology, the film manipulates the perspective of the viewer in the story. The story changes dramatically as each new characters perspective is revealed, even though often times only one or two more facts are revealed. This style intrigues the user, keeping them shrouded for most of the story. At the end, all of the characters

If the movie was shown with the events in order, it would be about 20 minutes long, and not all that intriguing. The movie uses the chronology to play the user, tricking them as fit.