(A brief theoretical framework of screenplay writing, from the perspective of ‘time’. )
A Screenplay
A Juxtaposition in ‘Time’
The essence of cinema stems from some basic elements inherent to it – the visuals that it projects, the sound that it emits and the ‘juxtaposition’ of these two elements – in its varied forms – during a specific period of ‘real time’ that the cinema plays on screen and through the sound speakers. ‘Juxtaposition’ can be termed as the act of placing elements side by side, so that it allows a comparison of the things placed as such or probably gives scope for the evocation of new interpretations by the virtue of such ‘juxtapositions’. These interpretations could go well beyond the specificity of the individual elements that are being ‘juxtaposed’ together.
In cinema, such ‘juxtapositions’ happens over temporality – as in, specific movies run for specific periods of ‘real time’ during which prerecorded visual and sound images are played back mechanically for an audience. Secondly, when the recorded elements are placed side by side on the ‘time’ scale, it can be said that a narration of ‘events’ is taking place. Consider these ‘events’ – a man comes besides a table fan and switches it on, to air himself. Now, ‘juxtapose’ this ‘event’ with another – a thin plastic bag flutters on the ground. The act of the man switching on the fan and the act of the plastic bag fluttering individually have a fixed passage of ‘time’. Combined together, it could signify another passage of ‘time’ in which the ‘event’ of the man switching on the fan and the plastic bag fluttering has taken place.
Juxtaposition
Events and movements as ‘Time’
Such narration of ‘events’ that are ‘juxtaposed’ together would normally have a quantifiable amount of a passage of ‘time’ within it; in most movies this passage of ‘time’ is an estimated one. A period of ‘time’ is said to be so when ‘time’ itself begins at one point and ends at another. There are two givens to the temporality of any narration of ‘events’ (or juxtapositions of events) – that it has to have a starting point as well as an ending point, in ‘time’. Within the length of a fixed ‘real time’ that the movie runs for its audience, a narration of recorded events occurs wherein there is a passage of ‘time’ which is manifested by the physical ‘movements’ of its facets – ie. mainly of characters and of elements.
A character might ‘move’ from one place to another or might stay put and just shift a hand; or simply breathe and bat an eyelid. These are ‘movements’ that can well be termed as ‘events’. By his or her very existence or ‘being’ time gets activated. There is hardly an element in this earth that does not move. The light falling on a well known monument which has been existing stationery for over hundred years would change in the course of the day, a peel of plaster might fall down from the still wall and even when everything is seemingly static, time elapses the moment the recording equipment is switched on and off.
A movie therefore has a series of ‘events’ or occurrences that are narrated within a specific ‘real time’ that the movie runs for; and these narrated ‘events’ themselves have their own specific ‘time’ travel. The ‘events’ may be as dramatic as someone murdering another, or as mundane as a man sleeping on Eiffel tower for eight hours, clouds passing by or it might be just a fly buzzing around some spilled tea on a broken wooden bench. These are ‘events’ that have ‘movements’ that have an element of ‘time’ to them, as defined by the materiality of their visuals and sound.
Nature of ‘Time’
So whenever an ‘event’ or a ‘movement’ takes place, ‘time’ passes. That is, the ‘event’ begins and then it ends – in real life and in movies. ‘Time’ and ‘movement’ are therefore intertwined, in real life as well as in movies. If there is ‘movement’, it has to be in terms of a set ‘time’ and if there is ‘time’, invariably there is ‘movement’. The essence of cinema can also be termed as the ‘time’ the narrative travels through the ‘movements’ of its elements – hence probably the coinage of the term ‘Movies’ to describe cinema.
Cinema as a manifestation of ‘Time’
In effect a movie would have, by definition, a duration of a narrated ‘time’ that manifests itself in the ‘events’ which are delivered to the audience through ‘movements’ that are recorded in visuals and sounds. The construction of such a narrated ‘time’ (or ‘events’) can be termed as the process of movie making. Pre-designing of such a construction on a piece of paper or otherwise, before the actual recording of such ‘time’ and ‘events’ in audio-visuals terms, can be safely be termed as the planning stage of making a movie. By and large, the ideation of these events in the realm of their inherent ‘time’ and the penning down of a specific arrangement of the ‘occurrence’ of these ‘events’ can loosely be termed as ‘movie writing’. In other words, the writing of a series of ‘juxtapositions’ of ‘events’ that are wrapped in a ‘time’ span inherent in them so that they can be narrated over a given period of ‘real time’, through audio visual manifestations, can be termed as writing for cinema.
Shades of ‘Time’ – Screen Time, Story Time and Plot Time
Before Sunrise
As such, ‘Time’ in cinema is of varied kinds. First, there is the ‘Screen time’. ‘Screen Time’ is the amount of ‘real time’ that the movie runs on screen or simply, the length of the movie. It might be five minutes, it might be two hours or eight hours. It is the duration within which a movie narrates its ‘events’. Then, there is ‘Plot time’. A ‘plot’ is a sequence of events that are actually seen in a movie and therefore the one that happens during the span of the fictional world seen and heard in the movie. In Richard Linklater’s ‘Before Sunrise’ made in 1995, the plot time starts from one evening, runs the whole night and ends in the morning. Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rope’, made in 1948 runs for 80 minutes on screen and is supposed have a sequence of ‘events’ (plot) for just above 80 minutes. The 1968-released film, ‘2001-A Space Odyssey’ directed by Stanley Kubrick runs for 142 minutes but has a plot that spans for millions of years!
And then, there is the ‘Story time’. The ‘plot time’ of the movie might happen for three years, but there might be references in the plot to a time that goes beyond. These events are not seen on the screen and therefore are not in the plot of the movie. But they are surely there in the story, maybe by references. The ‘plot time’ in ‘Psycho’ – a 1960 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock – is the duration between the time a lady steals money from her office, runs away to stay in a motel where she gets killed by the motel owner, to later when her sister lands at the very motel to investigate and then solves the case with the help of a detective. Judging by the ‘events’ that have occurred in the film, maybe the ‘plot time’ could be estimated to be about 10-12 days. But the ‘story time’ is much more than these 10-12 days, as the actions of the motel owner has a direct relationship to his mother who was killed ten years back – an ‘event’ that is not shown in the plot and therefore in the film. Although the ‘plot time’ is about 10-12 days, the ‘story time’ is therefore about ten years or so. Normally, a story has a longer span of time than a plot.
‘Time’ in Ancient Art Aesthetics
Aristotle in his work Poetics (335 BCE) defines a ‘story’ as actions in the real world and ‘plot’ as units that are selected from these actions and put in predetermined arrangement – an arrangement that he calls ‘Mythos’. E.M. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel (1927) defines ‘story’ as a chronological sequence of events and ‘plot’ as the logical structure that connects these events. The Natya Shastra (roughly between 200 BCE and 200 CE, Bharata Muni) prescribes that only events involving major characters that happen within a span of a day should occur on stage. If the events that occur go beyond a day or in case subsidiary events that occur between the ones shown on stage and not having a gap of over a year should be accommodated, it should be done so in the prelude to the scene and only through the secondary characters. So, clearly there is a selection of events that is recommended here that is related to ‘time’.
Perceived ‘Plot Time’
An Incident at Owl Creek
In some movies, there might be a real ‘plot time’ and a perceived ‘plot time’. The 1962 short film “An Incident at Owl Creek’ made by Robert Enrico, has a prisoner being hanged in deep forests on a rickety bridge. The noose around his neck cuts at the last minute enabling him to escape, braving the firing soldiers. After about 20 minutes of ‘screen time’, just when the man is about to reunite with his family, we see him being hanged again – this time to his death, making us realize that the entire escape ‘plot’ was just in his imagination. The ‘screen time’ of the film is 28 minutes and the perceived ‘plot time’ is roughly about say 4-5 hours – which is the amount of time the man takes to escape and come to his house. Since the entire thing is happening in the mind of the protagonist, the actual ‘plot time’ – so to say – is the time the soldiers take to bring the man to the center of the small rickety bridge to hang him dead. The ‘story time’ would be much larger, which might include the times when the man was happily residing with his family, to the time he gets caught, put into trial and convicted to death – these events are not shown on screen and therefore they do not become a part of the ‘plot time’ – perceived or real. But they are in the story of the film, albeit hidden.
The ‘Time’ in between the plot
So, the ‘Plot’ of a movie consists of the selection of events that exist chronologically in the story – and placed in a certain manner. The ‘time’ this plot dwells in – called the ‘Plot time’ – is the direct sum of the combined ‘time’ the events in the plot take to come to a conclusion; and the in between time. The ‘time’ that occurs in between the plot occurrences seen on the screen too can be considered in the ‘plot time’. For example, let us consider a man waiting in a dim, candle lit room. To show the passage of time, we use two shots – one when the man is waiting as the candle is freshly lit and then two, when the candle is almost burnt out. The ‘plot time’ in this occasion may be say 20-30 minutes – the time taken for the candle to burn itself, depending on its length. The two shots used for this purpose might just be say 30 seconds in real time duration. These 30 seconds can be considered as the ‘screen time’ of this ‘plot event’ that has its own ‘plot time’ of 30 minutes.
‘Screen Time’ and ‘Shot Time’
The ‘Screen time’ of a movie or its total length is the sum of the combined ‘shot time’ of the movie. ‘Shot time’ is that part of the duration of the movie which starts with the switching on of the recording unit till it is switched off. Simplistically, a ‘shot’ could be termed as a basic unit of a movie – as one piece of interrelated visual and sound unit that seemingly runs for an uninterrupted period of time. I deliberately use the word ‘seemingly’ because visually the shot can be further deconstructed into single frames; and sounds too could have numerous sub-elements to them; hence theoretically and even practically, there can be interruption even within a shot.
But be that as it may, the ‘Shot time’ can be a few seconds or a few minutes in length. While Alexander Sokurov’s 2002 movie ‘Russian Ark’ consists of only one shot – with visual and sound – of 80 minutes making the ‘Screen time’ equal to the ‘Plot time’, the impressionistic documentary film ‘San Francisco’ made by Antony Stern in 1968 have some shots that were about one twenty fourth of a second.
In most cases, the flow of ‘time’ is continuous within a shot. So, the ‘Screen time’ of the shot becomes its ‘Shot time’ as well as its ‘Plot time’. If a man crosses a road, it takes that much time for him to cross that road; so length of your shot would be that much. On other occasions there could be a mismatch between the three, offering us immense creative possibilities. For example, when the shot starts we see the last bit of the sun set beyond the window and in the foreground a man lights a five inch candle and sits away from it. The room is lit by the flicker of the candle light, as the glow of the natural sunlight vanishes into the darkness of the room. Without interruption after a few seconds, the camera leaves the waiting man to come back to the candle, we see that only half an inch of it is left, there is pitch darkness outside the window punctuated by the occasional dim street lamp – the suggestion is that that much ‘Plot time’ has passed that shrinks a five inch candle to half an inch – maybe 30 minutes or so. The ‘Screen time’ of the shot might be say five minutes, but the ‘Plot time’ is 30 minutes.
Frequency, Rhythm and ‘Time’
Pickpocket
When you are talking of ‘events’ that are depicted in a fixed span on time, you are also dealing with the ‘frequency’ of these events. ‘Frequency’ can be termed at the rate of at which something occurs over a period of ‘time’. In a minute one person’s heart might beat 70 times, in certain others it might be 90. Similarly, ten events can be constructed in a five minute span or alternatively, 20. The average period of time the ‘events’ take to get completed in the later case is half of what it takes in the former. It would appear that ‘time’ is running fast, but the unit of measurement for the heartbeats is the same – a minute. It is just the ‘frequency’ of the ‘events’ that is changing.
And when there is ‘frequency’ involved, a sense of ‘rhythm’ automatically sets in. One way to determine ‘rhythm’ in cinema is by varying the length of its shots in the editing. Another way to do so, is to look at the ‘rhythm’ of the ‘events’ that are occurring in the movie. Going by the number of ‘events’ a Robert Bresson film like ‘Pickpocket’ (1959) has, we can easily say that the ‘frequency’ / ‘rhythm’ is on the upper side. Bresson is otherwise mistakenly branded as a ‘slow’ film maker and a whole bunch of cinephiles are out to create a new genre of cinema called the ‘slow cinema’ willfully or ignorantly disregarding that ‘time’ is what it is – neither slow or fast!
There is a third way to control the ‘rhythm’ of the movie, it involves looking at the elements within an ‘event’. An ‘event’ can also be considered a collection of what are called ‘beats’ or ‘micro events’. A ‘beat’ can be described as the small unit of an ‘event’ happening in a screenplay. If a man lights a candle, goes away from it to the sofa and sits on it, the whole event has three ‘beats’ – lighting the candle, going towards the sofa and sitting on it. Being present to the ‘beats’ of a scene gives one an immense sense of control on what would be projected on the screen. A group of ‘beats’ can be clubbed together to form a section or a ‘scene’. That itself can be a ‘beat’. A group of ‘scenes’ can join together to be a ‘sequence’. A group of ‘sequence’ can be clubbed together to form an ‘act’. A group of ‘acts’ can make a movie.
The edifice of ‘Time’ while writing a screenplay
So, in essence screenplay writing is all about looking into ‘time’, the ‘events’ and ‘movements’ therein and the ‘beats’ within the events – both at the micro and the macro level. This could be one of the theoretical edifices that is colored with the element of ‘time’ upon which a screenplay writer builds his / her work.
End of Part 1.
by Ramchandra PN 04/08/2020
Click here to read Part 2
Movie Murmurs 
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