How Editing Manipulates Time

Editors can manipluate time in many different ways, people can view what happens in the persons week in under 10 minutes. In this part I will talk about the different ways in how editing can manipulate time.

Screen Time is a period of events happening with in a film to make it look like, a day, a week, a month or in some cases a year. For example, if the editor shows one clip then shows another clip and puts on that clip the text "2 Weeks Later", this is screen time.

Subjective Time is the time that the character in the movie feels. For example in real life when we wait for a train it feels long, however when we are waiting for something exciting to happen or anticipating something it goes quick. This can be shown in movies too through the use of camera movement.

Compressed Time is the most common manipulation used by editors. It is achieved by cuts and dissolves, long journeys can be turned into seconds with the use of compressed time. In a dramatic scene, if climbing up a staircase is not the important part of the scene, they may shoot the character starting up the stairs then cut to him entering the room. This is a good example of compressed time.

Long take. As you have probably already guessed, a long take, or long shot is a a lengthy shot of one object which is taken for a long period of time. A long take can give a film an authentic feel seeing as it is not exactly dramatic.

Simultanious time is when things happening in different places can be presented as occuring at the same time by parralell editing, cross cutting, multiple images or a split screen.

Slow motion is really easy to explain and is the most commonly known manipulations. Slow motion is basically a peice of action that takes place and the editor wants to film it at a slower rate to empathise a dramatic moment.

Accelerated motion: Accelerated motion is obviously the oposite of slow motion, when an editor wants to make a peice of action funny, increase the thrill of speed or make a slow action visible
accelerated motion is usually used.