The length of a story

Started by the-pi-guy, Jul 28, 2023, 01:42 PM

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the-pi-guy

Jul 28, 2023, 01:42 PM Last Edit: Jul 28, 2023, 02:18 PM by the-pi-guy
This is a silly thread, and someone doesn't think it's worth making a thread about. But where's the fun in that!? 

This is a topic I've thought a lot about, but not really in a constructive way. I haven't come to any amazing conclusions or anything like that.

There are story lengths of all kinds.

There are short narratives that last seconds, although plenty more are in the few minute range. There are TV episodes that last as little as 7 minutes (and I'm sure there are shorter ones than that somewhere), and there are some that last upwards of 80 minutes.

There are 11 hour movies. There's apparently an 85 hour movie.

Plenty of games have main line stories that last in the dozens of hours, and that is surely more common than it is in the movie industry.

There's all kinds of variety in lengths of story.

Here is Legend's inspiring post, that made me want to talk about it.

Not worth a full thread, but post Disney I've been thinking a lot about telling a story in just a few minutes. The guardians of the galaxy ride has lots of story before you board but even the ride itself is a proper story. (very simple, but still a story that has stuck with me)

And then I read this post: Reddit - Dive into anything

It's a true shame that so many modern people think of stories as disposable. They think a 2 hour movie has exactly 2 hours of story so that's all it's worth, while games/shows have 10's of hours of story so they're worth much more.

Where did this come from? The og Alien film for example would suck as a longer story. You could have an episode focusing on the company, an episode focusing on Ellen Ripley's backstory, an entire flashback of the alien's origins, etc., but then you're telling those stories instead of Alien's story. It's a massive downgrade that only offers more superficial "content." Same thing for 2001 a Space Odyssey. You could fill in a lot of the details but then you'd be telling a different story.



It seems like every gamer has moved on from liking Assassin's Creed like bloated messes, so when will people realize the same is happening with stories? Hijack for example is 7 episodes just about a plane hijacking? They could show the story in real time with no cuts and it'd be over faster.

edt: take a shot every time someone in that thread says something along the lines of "more time for character development."
There are some kinds of stories that seem to be great in just 7 or 8 minutes.

Bluey consistently makes good, heartfelt stories in just 7 minutes.




I care about story, but I also feel like I care more about characters themselves more than most people. Which probably isn't true, but it's a feeling that I've had.
An example anyways, there are some characters that didn't get killed in a TV series that I watched, and a lot of people were bothered by that. They thought it was important for the story to show consequences. Whereas for me, I don't completely that. If a character is a good character, I want to see them stick around, and I want to explore that character.

With that in mind, I don't think that longer stories are better or anything. It's just more about what you do with that time. There are great stories that take 7 minutes to tell, and there are great stories that take 11 hours to tell. Both have their place. The former might even be better in a lot of cases, because there's less bloat.

At the same time, there's a part of me that likes the idea of longer stories or probably better yet more stories with a character. To get more time to explore.


I personally think Bluey does an amazing job at making 7 minute stories that feel complete, and manage to feel longer than that.
Whereas Amphibia has 11 minute episodes that feel rushed, whereas the 23+ minute episodes I think are fantastic.

kitler53

all i'll say is this,..

for a little while there netflix seemed like they stopped caring about lenght metrics.  i'll point specifically to their "limited series" like Maniac (https://www.netflix.com/title/80124522) that had episode length spanning from 27 min to 47 min.   but every episode felt like it was the exact right length for the story they wanted to tell.   i thought it was an amazing new era of TV where fitting into that 30/60/120 window wasn't something that needed to influence the script and the scripts where better for it.

At the same time we also saw series of various episode length.   


i've been very disappointed that netflix seems to have gone back to very strict length requirements for put episode length and episode count.  i'm also disappointed that the count seems to be 8 or 10 as that is too few for many shows.


i guess i'll also say i care more about characters than story too.  i may be the only person in the world that thinks the fly episode was the best episode of breaking bad (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_(Breaking_Bad)).  i just love how that episode pauses the action focus in on walt's mental state.   really power stuff imo.   

my preferred format is shows like that.   TV where the characters are paramount and the story is told but spread out over a long series giving a lot of time to build up each character and makes sure the action that does happen feels like the decision that character would make in that situation.   GoT (books) did a great job at this as well.   too many things (the mario movie comes to mind as does the back half of the GoT HBO series) sacrifice their characters to lurch the story into whatever it is they wanted to show action wise.  ...but how the characters got there fells unnatural and unjustified and thus unsatisfying.



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the-pi-guy

I guess some better things to talk about:

Does anyone have any examples of a show/movie that just feels like it makes particularly good or particularly bad use of its time?

Do you feel like you prefer TV shows or movies?

Legend

I guess some better things to talk about:

Does anyone have any examples of a show/movie that just feels like it makes particularly good or particularly bad use of its time?

Do you feel like you prefer TV shows or movies?
I definitely prefer movies. I can't think of any movies I wish were shows and I can only think of a few serious shows like Foundation and GOT that I'm glad are not movies.

Rings of power wasted so much time. House of Dragon was pretty good.