UNDERSTANDING MOVIES

[Music] and as part of a conting program of surveillance and intelligence you will proceed to the designated area the objective is the safe indicated in your initial briefing empty entire contents of the safe as it is necessary to establish burglary as the motive warning ivan rojak a dangerous counteragent is aware of your presence in the area if you encounter him or in any way suspect that you or your intentions have been discovered immediately abort mission for your own protection withdraw to security area three [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] down [Music] [Applause] [Music] wow so [Applause] [Music] [Music] good [Music] [Music] [Applause] there is a good chance we have all seen dramatic stories like this before some of us many times at the beginning of mystery shows on television or in movie theaters so it is quite familiar and we can all understand what's happening in fact some of us are so at home with this little episode that we have come to accept it as almost natural in a way almost real just how real are movies how natural are they how much do we really understand about how our agent gets about and what is happening to us in the process you find that in terms of your own natural sense of proportion and time almost everything in this film is unnatural and a physical impossibility time as we know it and time in the movies are not the same let's take a look at some of the ways in which movies deal with time our agent gets into his car and takes off he travels to another section of town climbs a fire escape breaks open a window climbs in and closes it searches for and finds a safe as you see by the clock all of that took 44 seconds of movie time but in our time for our reality it might have taken 20 or more minutes for the drive to the factory area at least five minutes to locate and climb the fire escape another five minutes to investigate and break in and let's say four minutes to search for and locate the safe movies compress or squeeze time in 44 seconds the movie has accomplished what in reality would have taken half an hour or more here's another example of compression of time [Music] [Applause] let's look at it again and examine it a little more carefully we see one picture and sound go away as another picture and another sound move in to take its place [Music] a lot of unreality can happen in less than a second movies can also expand time or slow things down even stop time so we can examine a particle of time hundreds of times longer than normal here is another example of expansion of time let's run it again and stop time so we can get a look at what he's thinking here is how we saw it in the picture here we expand distance as well as time our agent is falling in slow motion four times slower than normal to make his fall seem even longer we see the same thing three times from different places here are a few other unnatural things movies do to us they make us see things larger and closer than humanly possible and hear things louder than normal [Music] in life we select the sound we want to hear out of all the noises around us in movies all the noise is eliminated except the sounds someone else selects for us to hear sometimes we hear sounds we don't normally hear without special equipment that is in the unreality of the movie we the audience perform physical impossibilities we are propelled about at great speeds moved instantly from here to there if you think our friend is moving fast how about us here we are standing on the sidewalk watching him run down the street when suddenly we find ourselves down the block with our eyeballs sitting on the ground watching him run right at us look out saved we have been instantly placed out of harm three stories up but oops here we go again now we become the man we jump into his skin and run along with him we really travel as we sit here as a matter of fact in this short drama we could have traveled over 100 miles at varying speeds taking hours or even days all in less than four minutes if you want to look at it that way in our search for reality or non-reality in film we have examined some of the bits and pieces that deal with our own sense of time and proportion but who is to say that these elements these bits and pieces were arranged correctly in the first place rearranged they might present a different kind of reality [Music] [Music] so [Music] because movies so greatly affect our lives what we buy how we vote the causes we support how we relate to other people and our lifestyles in general it is important to understand movies the next time you see a motion picture keep in mind your own sense of time space and proportion you