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

Jack Daniel Stanley

Jack Daniel Stanley

Moderator
Staff member
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 Darko
We 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.
 
more from Neil ...

Neil Rowe said:
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.
Click to expand...
 
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.
 
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...
 
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:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top