Just Setting Your Movie in the Past or Future Does NOT Meet the Theme Requirement...

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

Just want to make sure we are crystalline on this point. Would hate for anyone to put in months of hard work and not be able to compete if they wanted to.

So ... Just setting your movie in the PAST or FUTURE does not meet the theme requirement anymore than setting your movie in the PRESENT would.

You can of course set your movie in the past or future but the content of the film must explore time as a theme or major element of the story. See the the Official Rules sticky for more on the theme. Time's effect, comparing and contrasting different times, disjointed times, playing with the narrative and it's delivery are all ways that would likely qualify.

If you are in doubt, ask us about your entry before hand and we will tell you if it will meet the theme or not as you describe it.

Here's some films the mods have thrown around as Theme Appropriate in some way:
Memento
Run Lola Run
Dorian Gray
24 type thing
Ticking bomb somehere
That movie where a guy and a girl wrote love letters to each other even though they were in different times
Time Machine
Back to the Future
Time Cop
Donnie DarkoWe may see a lot of time travel movies (last four on the list), hopefully if that's the case, we'll see that genre being pushed and expanded as in Donnie Darko for example would be anything but low hanging fruit. It has time travel as an element but very actively explores the theme of time.

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

more from Neil ...

OK, OK, OK. just to be VERY VERY VERY clear on what making a movie about time means..


SIMPLY SETTING YOUR FILM IN A DIFFERENT TIME PERIOD DOES NOT QUALIFY AS THE FILM ACTUALLY BEING ABOUT TIME.

If you could just do that then why couldnt you just make a film set in this time period .. 2008. and its a film about a teen who's addicted to world of warcraft and facebook or something. ..this is why simply setting your film in ANY time period does not qualify as the film being about time. .. so again.. setting your film IN a certain time doesn not mean the film is ABOUT time. those are two different things.

IN ORDER FOR A FILM TO QUALIFY AS ACTUALLY BEING ABOUT TIME, THE FILM MUST ACTUALLY DEAL WITH THE SUBJECT MATTER OF TIME.

If someone told you the film was supposed to be about boats .. it wouldnt be enough to simply make a horror film about a rabid gerbil that wants to find a way to forget his childhood .. oh and by the way.. it all takes place on a sailboat. ..the film wouldnt be ABOUT the sailboat just because theres a sail boat in it. it would still be ABOUT a rabid gerbil who want to forget his childhood. so dont just set your film IN a time.. make it ABOUT time itself. playing your movie in reverse or slow motion doesnt make the film about time either. fast then slow and reverse and whatever in a film about the same gerbil is still a film about a gerbil. Simply put you can make your film contain whatever material you want, AS LONG AS THE FOCUS IS ACTUALLY ON SOMETHING TIME RELATED< AND IT IS GLARINGLY OBVIOUS THAT TIME IS A MAJOR FOCUS OF STORY IN THE FILM ...NOT JUST A THEME .. AN ACTUAL MAIN ELEMENT IN THE STORY THAT IS AS IF IT IS A CHARACHTER IN AND OF ITSELF. I would suggest thinking about time and what it is and does, and could potentially do, and narrow down till you have one aspect of time you find interesting enought o make a film about, and then build your story around that aspect of time. I woudl suggest NOT just trying to stick something about time into a story about something else. the possibilities are endless:

not enough time
race against time
too much time passed
routine times in a day
comparision of this time to that
imagining another time
learning to tell the time
timing an athlete, or machine
orchestrating an event where timing is critical
once in a life time moment in time
times up
existance of time
the relativety of time / how time is percieved
the persistance of time
no time to spare
..yes .. time travel too

and the lsit could go on and on and on.. the important thing to notice is that all of these films would be ABOUT time.. and as you see. TIME itself is actually written in and a central focus of each of these ideas. and as long as it also makes it through to be a central and integral main focus of the film made from the idea. the film should qualify as being ABOUT time.

so.. film about bananas.
DO NOT just put bananas in the background, set your film on a banana boat, show a banana at the end, have the charachters say "banana" every other line, CC your film yellow, have a main charachter named "banana". or anything else that is simply a gimmick whih places bananas into the film. bananas are not the secret ingredient that have to show up at some point in the short. the film actually has to be entirely about the subject of the bananas themselves. how much you love them.. how much you hate them. how yellow they are. but focus on the bananas. and write a story around that focus..

..on bananas.

[Matty_g]

I can just show a clock for a little bit and be cool though right? :thumbsup:

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

you're already cool playa

[Zak Forsman]

does Hammer Time qualify?

[12quidkidinnit]

Shame about the time limit or THIS (http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b384/12quidkidinnit/New%20Album/NQTSText.jpg) might qualify.

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

What is that? An already made movie? If so it also wouldn't qualify because it has to have been made in the next few months.

If not, if that's a scenario or something, you could definitely do script based on that secnario in 6 minutes despite the far reaching timeline of the story.

[12quidkidinnit]

What is that? An already made movie? If so it also wouldn't qualify because it has to have been made in the next few months.
Not finished yet, just doing the editing now. Should be ready in a few weeks :)

[REHov520]

Sometimes the lowest hanging fruit tastes the sweetest.

[Mark Harris]

I guess my real question is, if I have a cop-chase movie, and I set it in ancient Rome, does that count?

[Matty_g]

That movie where a guy and a girl wrote love letters to each other even though they were in different times

Keep acting like the lake house isn't your favorite movie EVER. I can see right through you JDS.

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

eVAR.

[Jared Meyer]

Kate & Leopold FTW.

[tmnt]

And where do we have to show the wine glass?

[spooky138]

And where do we have to show the wine glass?

At some point 'in time.'

[Tomas Riuka]

Jack, i wanted to ask and clarify...

all the movies you indicated are more or less related to running clock, but what about time control? something which is due to happen at exact time and clock is ticking? i hope this quaifies...

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

hmm ... I think only three of the seven listed are ticking clock / time lock stories

Regarding your film, do you mean everyone in you're story is running around trying to prepare for or make sure something happens at certain time? If so, then yes it would qualify and it would still be a ticking clock story just like Run Lola Run. It doesn't matter if a bomb is set on a timer or a jack-in-the-box is set on a timer. If thing 'X' is happening at a certain time and people are invested in either stopping, making sure it does, or preparing in some way for this occurrence then you have a TIME LOCK story, where the characters may potentially run out of time to solve their problem. The other option would be an OPTION LOCK story, where time is not so much a concern, but the characters may just run out of options to try to solve their problem (most stories).

So if you're story sounds like a TIME LOCK story, then you are OK. If that doesn't sound like your story, then PM me with more details and we'll figure it out from there.

:beer:

[Tomas Riuka]

Jack, u got pm

[Zak Forsman]

someone's been using "Dramatica".

[Tomas Riuka]

it's all good, clarified :)

[Charlie Anderson]

If you want to get specific Memento doesn't actually revolve around time, it revolves around memories. Just because the film is disjunctively cut doesn't mean it's revolved around time. I could cut a short film about rabid gerbils sailing away on a sailboat and jumble the cuts but it still wouldn't be about time. Memento is about a man with a short term memory and it's made to make you feel like you know as much about what is going on as he does. Now if you want to argue the fact that memories are a facet of time then we could argue the fact that "remember when" could be an entry for time fest because they're remembering the past. Time should be a character in the film, much like love was a character in the film with every love fest entry.

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

Memento plays with narrative a lot because the way the main character sees and deals with the world and time is different but that's not the main reason it's on the list.

It's implicit in the phrase "short term" memory. The guy has to solve a mystery using only short term memory, which means he's constantly trying to outrace his own short memory span before he has to start over again.

The "what if" of that movie is what would you do if your life started over each day from scratch. which is very much the same as getting in a time machine before your wife died and waking up much later in the future and finding notes to yourself all over the place to describe what's been going on over the last year, and you had to try and solve a murder mystery within that time each day.

If Memento was told linearly, with an omniscient third person narrative it would still qualify because it would be about a man who has lost a chunk of time and ... because again ... EACH DAY IS A 24 HOUR TIME LOCK or TICKING CLOCK ... if he doesn't unravel his wife's entire murder mystery by the time he goes to sleep he knows he will have to start over again the next day. So the movie is comprised of several vignettes, each comprised of a ticking clock structure. Looking at the story in the Macro, its an option lock because he could keep trying this for an eternity. But each day is a time lock because he's fighting to put the pieces together before he looses his memory again.

So don't be fooled into thinking that the only reason it's on the list is because it's presented non-linearly.

And yes it's about memory, which is linked to time. It's as if a certain period of time never happened for him.

And yes you could make an argument for "Remember When" though perhaps not as strong. In remember when they are centrally concerned with maintaining a connection I think. A connection broken by his disjointed memory, true, and yes they are all kind of longing for things to be like they were, but the active story driver is not putting together puzzle pieces of the past as in Momento but trying to find the person that used to be there and maintaining a connection. In Momento, the PROTAGONIST/MAIN CHARACTER who we see the movie through in a pretty much first person kind of way is actively concerned with connecting the dots through time. In Remember When time is not disjointed at all for the MAIN CHARACTER because she's the main character not the man. And while she longs for a time gone by, she really is looking for glimpses of the man she married behind his illness, not piecing together the past. He's doing that but he's not the main character and we don't see the movie through his eyes the way we do with Momento.

Still having said that, Remember When could arguably qualify for Time Fest due to the fact that his disjointed view of time is the obstacle in their relationship. If that movie were entered in Time Fest however, it would be nice if that idea were played up more some how.

[Charlie Anderson]

heh nicely done Jack :)

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

Heh - thanks,
We'll be looking for reasons to keep movies in vs. looking for reasons to keep movies out. Memento would be a sure thing I think. Remember when would probably require some discussion.

I just threw this sticky up regarding the future so people wouldn't bust their butts on elaborate sets and weeks of VFX only to get told their movie about how a young boy matures due to his relationship with his pet geneklepharb won't be accepted into the fest merely because it's set in the year 3025.

Now if it was a boy from the present who accidentally found himself in the year 3025 and matured because he met a pet geneklepharb there and this growth was dramatized by the boy's heartbreaking but selfless decision to not let the geneklepharb stow away in the time machine with him when returning to the 21st century ... then, after puking, I'd have to say that would qualify :D

[Gohanto]

Now if it was a boy from the present who accidentally found himself in the year 3025 and matured because he met a pet geneklepharb there and this growth was dramatized by the boy's heartbreaking but selfless decision to not let the geneklepharb stow away in the time machine with him when returning to the 21st century ... then, after puking, I'd have to say that would qualify :D

Dang, you stole my idea.:undecided Although I did have an hourglass figure holding an hourglass, so hopefully that'll at least balance out the puking.

[Weston]

I sort of want a geneklepharb now

[FilmBoy77]

And where do we have to show the wine glass?

wasn't that for another fest? i thought all we needed to show was a CLOCK, WATCH, TIMER, or SUN DIAL.

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

Yeah TMNT was being a wisenheimer. He thinks he can get away with it because he's the King of Australia.

[Neil Rowe]

..just remember Filmboy that if you show a sun dial, it should be of the "suns r' us" brand or it probably will not qualify. in the like manner, if you use a watch to satisfy the shot it must be a 1967 seiko. all other time keeping varieties of these types do not keep accurate time, and showing them will automatically place your film into the "discard and laugh at" grouping ..UNLESS there happens to be a slightly fermented RED grape in the shot which has a molecular weight exactly equal to the gravitational pull needed to correct your inadequate time keeping device's synch.

[tmnt]

Yeah TMNT was being a wisenheimer. He thinks he can get away with it because he's the King of Australia.
Silence! But seriously, where do we have to show Rick Astley?

[Tom Marshall]

Silence! But seriously, where do we have to show Rick Astley?

I think if you Rickroll someone and the video is playing in reverse, that should fit the time requirement.

[Zak Forsman]

i would say that to "never gonna give you up", satisfies the thematic requirement of time, with infinitely more heart than you or I could fathom.

[Barry_Green]

Folks, we keep getting questions about "would this idea qualify?" and... y'know, sometimes it seems like people are approaching the "time" theme from the wrong angle. You shouldn't be thinking of time as a "band-aid" or a "requirement" for your film, you should be embracing the concept of time thoroughly. Revel in it. Roll around in it. It's the theme. It's the core. It's not like the "camera" requirement in lovefest, where you could just put a camera anywhere in the background and say "there, I met the requirement." Time is the theme. It's not incidental to the film, it should be at the core of the film.

Even if we give the go-ahead to some of the more limited/questionable ways to satisfy the requirement, remember that the voters will have their say. And those films that embrace and exploit the theme to its fullest will probably do better in the voting.

I'm tempted to say "if you have to even ask whether it meets the theme, then you can probably do better." If you've got a film that so thoroughly definitely meets the theme that you don't even have to ask, that's how you know you're satisfying the theme! :thumbsup:

[Gohanto]

My 2 cents and maybe this is just me, but giving a theme of "time" doesn't generate ideas so much as think about old ideas that could be bent into fitting the theme. That doesn't mean a space alien war movie, but it just means a decent idea I like that doesn't work in isolation using a required "theme" as a foothold to actually being made into a script.


Hence, I believe in a loose interpretation of the theme. (granted you guys do leave the rules loose and are by no means Nazis, but just a thought about why many movies push the limits on breaking the rules)

[meta4]

I've GOT IT!

I just finished my masterpiece! It's taken me all night to write it.

How's this...


A newscaster who doesn't appreciate anyone finds himself covering a lame story on GroundHog Day when all of a sudden, he finds that he's stuck 'reliving' that same "Ground Hog Day" over and over and over, until he gets it right and learns to treat people better and appreciate life and love...

*whew*

This is gonna be one awesome film you guys, I wouldn't even enter y'alls, I mean - I even think I might be able to get Bill Murray to star in mine!

:laugh:

[Dustin R. Rogan]

What if I remade Groundhog day and casted Flava Flav.

Clock in movie....Check.
Time Theme.......Check.
Glass of Red Wine....Check.
Rick Astley........Check (Flav will be remixing the great classic)

have I missed anything?

Rogan

[Barry_Green]

I'd vote for that.

[Mark Harris]

But what if I had two friends who, in order to get cheap rent, have to move into an all-women building. And then they have to dress up like women so they are not discovered.

But set it all in 13th Century China.

Would that qualify?

[Barry_Green]

Only if they were in a hurry.

[Dustin R. Rogan]

because they all ate bad Chinese food...and only 1 toilet in the dorm....

[homer]

That movie where a guy and a girl wrote love letters to each other even though they were in different times


That movie was so bad, its not even worth looking the name up. nice.

I wish i could enter this year, but I don't have enough time, coincidently.
I'm still making the short involving time, but won't be able to enter it.

[Jack Daniel Stanley]

Cool. Make sure you share it with us at some point.