[ant6n]

Well I saw the movie, and Marty did make it back to 1985. The problem is that the analysis assumes that every second in the film corresponds to a second in real life. That's not true, the shots overlap in real life but are shown after one another in a sequence to make showing what happened (possibly at the same time) more practical. This overlapping is often used in dramatic representations of real events in movies.

One hint is when the author notes that acceleration happens much more quickly during the few short shots when the speedometer is visible, i.e. the acceleration is much quicker compared to the assumed linear acceleration in-between those shots.

It would be an interesting project to analyse the sequence of shots and figure out which ones overlapped by how much, to make the time/distances/accelerations work out. [Edit: copyediting]

[ddcarnage]

OP here.

You're probably right it's not all real time. I figured it wasn't completely unreasonable to treat it as such because when you watch it, most of it does feel RT and we pretty much see everything that happens in an uninterrupted way.

But for the sake of argument, even if the analysis is skewed a bit, it does suggests they were missing a lot of tracks. So if some of the sequence can be considered RT and some of it not, for them to reach the 88 mph in under 3 miles, probably a lot of it would need to be non-RT, which didn't feel right to me based on the way it's presented in the movie.

Totally agree it would be awesome to be able to figure out what overlaps. Thanks for the comment!

[ant6n]

;) A classic example that exaggerates the different passing of time of movie vs real time happens in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: https://youtu.be/DPXG4pdPj4w?t=20s

[soylentcola]

Went to school for video/film production and time compression was the subject of a couple of fun projects. In TV and movies, you rarely see things in "real time" unless it's specifically done for an effect (like the gimmick of "24" or to create some level of tension).

Normally, you compress time to a greater or lesser degree because you just don't need to see every single action that someone takes in the course of a given hour or event. Like you point out in the Python clip, you wouldn't normally shoot the entirety of a guy running across a long field. You'd show him start running, cut to a closer shot with him making progress, cut to the person/place he's running toward for reaction or to re-establish the destination, and then cut back to the guy as he's getting there.

When you drag these kinds of things out, it can be a good gag because it's almost like a bad storyteller who includes every irrelevant detail. It makes us uncomfortable and throws off timing. In a more tense scene, time is often screwy because maybe you want to drag things out and show all of the characters' reactions to create anxiety and the feeling that "they'll never make it".

Anyway, thanks for the reminder about the Python bit. Always makes me smile :)

[justinator]

This is also something used in fight scenes, where a person will say, throw a punch, then the camera angle shifts, and the person will be seen to throw the punch again - "The Asian Cut" [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1PCtIaM_GQ

[FrankenPC]

I love the little touches. Guard: "hey..."

[aidenn0]

It's more than just non-overlapping scenes. Most movies play very loose with time, drawing it out to make it seem more dramatic. See also: any movie with a bomb counting down to zero.