The Global Search for Education: Mastering Time: Erin Jimura on Creating Suspense and Tackling Deadlines

Posted By C. M. Rubin on Jun 8, 2024

This month, audiences can screen Time on the Planet Classroom Network. The film is curated for the Planet Classroom Network by KIDS FIRST! Film Festival.

Time, directed by Erin Jimuro, is a suspenseful short film that encapsulates the anxiety of submitting a work assignment from scratch against a looming deadline.

The film brilliantly captures the intense emotions of procrastinators racing against time through crisp cinematography and a tightly paced storyline, delivering a thrilling and relatable viewing experience.

The Global Search for Education is pleased to welcome Erin Jimura.

Erin, what inspired you to focus on the intense emotions surrounding looming deadlines as the central theme of the film? Did any personal experiences or observations of procrastination help shape your film’s story and characters?

My inspiration to work on the concept of time was mainly a conversation I had with my family about daylight saving time. It was while we were fixing our clocks in the house the morning after it changed. I then combined that with the idea of how time feels like it moves either faster or slower depending on the situation. Deadlines are definitely important, and I did have times when I left assignments to the last minute. The short portrays what was going on inside my head at that time.

How did you use specific cinematic techniques to create and sustain suspense throughout the film?

The suspense in the film comes from the rising music, composition, timing of shots, and color grading. The colors in the film are not “bubbly and peaceful” but rather more unsettling yet calm. I think a lot of close-up shots one after another, on top of the music, created and maintained the suspense throughout the short.

In the middle of the film, there is a playful effect with the clock. What did you want to convey to the audience about the scene?

The effect with the clock was intended for the audience to see that sometimes you feel like you have time, but at the same time, you don’t have any time. Your internal clock is never moving at the same pace; during happy times, it moves faster, and during procrastination, it feels like time moves slower. That’s a basic understanding, but how the audience sees it is really open to interpretation.

How did you manage to create a suspenseful short film that conveyed the story well without any dialogue or narration?

I shot the entire short during quarantine when we couldn’t meet up with others. Audio is very technical and difficult, especially without any gear, so I focused more on the music and sound effects to convey the emotions to the audience. Suspense is built up through music that goes from slow to fast and high, along with the duration of each clip getting shorter and faster. A film is 50/50 visual and audio, so I tried my best to perfect the 50% of the audio proportion.

Thank you, Erin!