This article explores why audiences naturally accept scenes in movies in which characters compress time and space, explains how cinematic conventions form and change, and how these conventions expand the expressive power and artistry of cinema.
When we watch a movie, we don’t wonder why a character gets into a car and then gets off at his destination in the very next scene. Nor do we object to the scene in which he casually and very easily finds a place to park in a crowded city center. In fact, no audience member would want to spend free time in a car with him. In this way, we are willing to accept cinematic omissions that exclude non-essential parts of the story. It’s a characteristic of cinema, and an important technique for maximizing the viewer’s senses.
Movies often tell stories by freely crossing the boundaries of time and space. For example, a scene in which a protagonist leaves the house and arrives at the office straight away forces the viewer to imagine the time in between, which allows the movie to focus on the core of the event without distraction. The audience also naturally accepts the sense of presence and emotion created by the camera movements, such as setting up extreme events for dramatic development, inserting mournful music that doesn’t exist in the real world when lovers are breaking up, and so on. The audience accepts these unrealistic elements as realistic, and this is part of the appeal of movies.
When we say that a movie is realistic, we mean that we agree to see it as real in response to the way it is presented. Movies are not the same as real life. We don’t want movies to replicate the complexity of reality, and movies don’t strive to do so. Movies sometimes simplify or exaggerate reality in order to elicit a stronger emotional response. In this process, omissions and exaggerations become natural, and we take them for granted.
This tacit agreement between audience and director is called cinematic convention. Cinematic conventions have been established since the beginning of cinema history, and they help audiences and directors communicate. Through the repeated act of watching movies, audiences learn cinematic conventions, and directors use them to provide familiarity to their audiences. These conventions apply not only to the way a movie compresses and expands time and space, but also to various cinematic elements such as dialog between characters, sound, and lighting.
It’s not easy to ignore established conventions or challenge them, but the French nouvelle vague directors pioneered cinema’s modernity by subverting classic film conventions. They loosened up the plot by interjecting unnecessary events, or disrupted the causal order of events by shuffling the temporal sequence without clues or foreshadowing. They subverted the classical conventions of cinema in order to achieve a self-satisfied and original aesthetic. These attempts shocked the film industry at the time, and audiences gradually became accustomed to new forms that broke away from the traditional cinematic framework.
Partial bending of conventions also occurs in commercial films from time to time. This differs from the nouvelle vague’s breaking of conventions in that it is intended to generate entertainment pleasure for the sake of sales. For example, in recent action movies, directors have shown that just when you think the villain’s death has resolved the conflict, they bring him back to life to escalate the conflict once again. The first time audiences encounter such a convention twist, they may be jarred, but once they get used to it, they relax and look forward to the return of the villain. In this way, cinematic conventions are not simply repeated rules, but are constantly changing and reinventing themselves in a constant interaction between director and audience.
As a result, cinematic conventions cannot be seen as fixed norms, but rather as something that changes over time. Audiences learn new conventions, and directors use them to expand the expressive power of their films. In the end, cinematic conventions are dynamic concepts that are constantly being reconfigured as cinema evolves, and in the process, movies continue to tell new stories. These changes and challenges are one of the key factors that make movies more than just entertainment, but an art form.
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