This week’s readings focus on how media use time and space in telling stories. What ideas seem most relevant to screenings we’ve done thus far? Are there key differences in these issues between film, television & videogames that are worth noting?
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The most interesting part of the reading for me this week was Ryan, thanouli and juul’s discussion of the relationship between space and time and how it differs between film, television and video games. What I got from the readings was that all three have the same tools available to them; movies, television and video games can all manipulate how they portray space and time. However, how each form of entertainment reconciles this manipulation is where they differ. Film seems to have it the harshest as it has the least amount of actual time to work with. Annie Hall presents an enormous amount if information about Alvy Singer’s life, from the ups and downs of his career to all of his major romantic relationships, even touching on his birth and childhood. Many different editing and filmic techniques must be employed in order for the information to have coherence and fit into the film’s 2 hour running time. Woody Allen utilizes split-screens in the childhood scenes to show Alvy and Annie’s childhood simultaneously while using voiceover during nearly every flashback scene to quickly convey to the audience what is important in the scene. Television, with serialized narratives and tons of screen-time to work with, have it much easier. Flashbacks, Flash-forwards and time lapses still must be reconciled, but can be in a much more normative fashion. Torchwood shows a flashback in it’s first episode (that of Clement on the bus) that is not explained until the next episode with a simple continuation of the same flashback with more being revealed. Videogames, on the other hand, once again get off the hook, as no reconciliation must be made between space and time as space is (usually) the only thing that matters. With no clock involved, some players could take two hours to complete the same Grand Theft Auto mission that takes others 20 minutes. Yet, both gamers will get the same experience in the end.
I fully buy into Bordwell’s argument that constructing a film or TV narrative is an active process, and by extension the process of constructing space is active on the part of the viewer, but I think there is one glaring difference between video games and film/TV and that is the element of control. No matter how active the viewer may be in constructing the space of the film or TV narrative, those media could never replicate the sensation of NAVIGATING the story space. In video games one has OPTIONS not available in film/TV. One can choose to enter a room or not. One is not shown a space; one is meant to discover it on one’s own. And as Andrew points out this element of control applies to Time as well. One can stay in one place–in effect pausing the narrative–or one can take the narrative on full tilt and quickley navigate the story world.
I’m interested in how video games have come to treat time and space in a vastly different way. As Juul notes, “most video games…project a fictional world.” At the same time, the game designer must impose rules upon which the game world — and the player within it — must operate. With perhaps the exception of more abstract video games (though I would argue even Pacman and Tetris operate this way to some degree), the gaming experience becomes not only a process of narration, but a process of inhabitation as well. Of course, there are time limits and virtual geographical boundaries, but the very fact of the player’s interactive role allows us to . The rules, as well as the common inclusion of cinematics and scripted events (this more akin to the film experience), are the only mode of “authorial intervention.” Some games are more restrictive than others: compare the relatively linear narrative of Final Fantasy VII to sandboxes such as Grand Theft Auto (the cultural difference between Western adventure games and JRPGs in this regard is also something else we should discuss). Some games have entirely forgone the overtly authorial narrative route, like The Sims or the recent phenomenon Minecraft, opting instead for an experience of sheer inhabitation and player-produced narratives (within the rule-generated framework provided by the game).
Oops, I didn’t finish a sentence:
Of course, there are time limits and virtual geographical boundaries, but the very fact of the player’s interactive role nonetheless allows us to explore the world within such constraints.
Also, we can apply Bordwell’s Constructivist theories of filmic time and space to explain the viewer’s tendency to generate a narrative alternative to the fabula in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. We are confronted with Farquhar’s hanging which occurs over the span of a few seconds and is anchored at site of the bridge – yet this is interrupted by a lengthy fantasy that traverses what seems to be a great geographical distance. The misleading notion that the cinematic image implies “presentness,” as Thanouli considers in his essay, has the viewer presume that the events occurring are in present tense and actual space. So in this way, we assume this experience of interiorized space and time – often hinted at by repetitive and jump cuts, as well as the anachronistic, non-diagetic music – actually follows the moment he is hung.
A similar experience regarding narration and time happens in The Sixth Sense, when we are presented with text after the scene of Dr. Crowe’s shooting indicating it’s the following fall. Bordwell writes, “If the omitted span contains significant information, the ellipsis can create a suppressive narration that shapes our hypothesis-forming activity.” This is exactly what has been done here. The absence of information leads the viewer to infer the events which have occurred in the narrative gap. To see Crowe apparently healthy then, is to assume he recovered over that period. Big mistake.
Away From Her plays around with temporal order and chronology. I think it has at least one loop–Grant is driving to Marian’s house at the beginning of the movie and, eventually, the movie catches up to him and his reasons for making the visit. However, it’s not as clear cut as the examples given in the reading. The film keeps inserting flashbacks that show Fiona’s illness worsening. Up until a certain point, we can’t be sure if Grant in the car isn’t a flash back. At the beginning our attention is more focused on the Fiona and Grant of the past than on the Grant of the present. Eventually, of course, the split story lines come together and we figure out that the movie is about Grant wanting Aubrey to visit Fiona.
There are also flashbacks within flashbacks. The fuzzier images of young Fiona bring the audience back even farther. They also allow the movie to play with time even more, like when the image of young Fiona is on the screen, and we simultaneously hear Grants voice from what I think I might call the future, because Grant driving is really the present at the beginning of the movie. Could Grant’s recounting of his engagement to Fiona be considered the start of a loop, since eventually the movie returns to the scene where he uses the line diegetically?
What impresses me about these manipulations of time in syuzhet is how seldom I recognize them! We’ve talked about narrative comprehension as occurring in the pre-conscience and I think the fact that these complex manipulations of time can be happening right under my nose without my even being aware of them lends credence to that idea.
As I’m reading Bordwell’s charts in the chapter about Time I see, on the one hand, that these distinctions are logical and significant and yet, on the other hand, I don’t see much use in them, because as I consume any given narrative I construct the fabula without even considering those distinctions. If someone asked me, “Is ‘Away from Her’ discontinuous in any way?” I would say instinctively, “No, of course not.” Because it is only through reflection (as Nora has done) that you recognize the discontinuity and Time-play.
And a comment on Juul’s piece while I’m at it.
At one point, he sites the theory of information reduction which states that improved performance includes gaining the ability to ignore information irrelevant to your task. Watching my friends play video games, this becomes very apparent. They skip over all the cool looking things that I would check out and go straight to whatever it is they need to do. Obviously, my performance is not improving, but what struck me about that was how without close-ups or redundancy with words and actions, or any of the other tricks that movies use to indicate that something is important, experienced gamers focus in on the relevant information all on their own.
I think in most cases it’s definitely true that experienced gamers tend to focus in on relevant information, ignoring all auxiliary info. Juul’s references how experienced Quake III Arena players choose to lower the graphic detail to increase playing speed. She says this emphasizes the rules of the game over the aesthetic of space. Point taken. I would argue that other games, however, such as The Simpsons Game and all its wonders, is really about space, and that an experienced player has two options. The experienced player can ignore the amazing spatial details and go straight towards the objective, or the player can explore the world and absorb all the details. The latter is quite the rewarding experience. Amazing detail is placed in the paintings found in the Museum of Natural Science, each one parodying a great work of art. The same attention to specifics and humor can be found throughout the game. I would suggest for many the primary reason for playing is this increased knowledge of the Simpsons’ narrative world and its setting.
I think that this episode of The West Wing plays so much with time and space (if I might add 2 weeks later :))…
I think it was Bordwell who brought up in one of the Prestige articles about the sound hook (not necessarily the sound “bridge”) which completes itself in the following scene trailing from the previous. Josh recounts his story through dialogue and it is enacted through flashbacks. Some of the dialogue and some of the sounds (such as the sirens and the glass crashing) mesh in between flashbacks of the shootings, Yo-Yo Ma’s performance, and the session with Stanley. I also found it interesting how Josh had flashbacks during the flashbacks. Luckily, it wasn’t Nolan-esque, as there was a linear syuzhet as Josh met with Stanley, discussed the incidents of the fabula past, and got to the core of the incidents in admitting he broke his hand on the glass, leaving the White House that night with Donna.