science

Hyperlink cinema

Hyperlink cinema is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Hyperlink cinema rather than just read about it. In short: Hyperlink cinema is a style of filmmaking characterized by complex or multilinear narrative structures with multiple characters under one unifying theme. In spite of the name, these films are not actual hypermedia and do not have actual hyperlinks, but are multilinear in a more metaphorical sense.

Key takeaways

Hyperlink cinema belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Hyperlink cinema to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Hyperlink cinema from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hyperlink cinema is a style of filmmaking characterized by complex or multilinear narrative structures with multiple characters under one unifying theme. In spite of the name, these films are not actual hypermedia and do not have actual hyperlinks, but are multilinear in a more metaphorical sense.

History The term was coined by author Alissa Quart, who used the term in her review of the film Happy Endings (2005) for the film journal Film Comment in 2005. Film critic Roger Ebert popularized the term when reviewing the film Syriana in 2005. In describing Happy Endings, Quart considers captions acting as footnotes and split screen as elements of hyperlink cinema and notes the influence of the World Wide Web and multitasking. Playing with time and characters' personal history, plot twists, interwoven storylines between multiple characters, jumping between the beginning and end (flashback and flashforward) are also elements. Ebert further described hyperlink cinema as films where the characters or action reside in separate stories, but a connection or influence between those disparate stories is slowly revealed to the audience; illustrated in Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu's films Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), and Babel (2006). Quart suggests that director Robert Altman created the structure for the genre and demonstrated its usefulness for combining interlocking stories in his films Nashville (1975) and Short Cuts (1993). However, his work was predated by several films, including Satyajit Ray's Kanchenjunga (1962), Federico Fellini's Amarcord (1973), and Ritwik Ghatak's Titash Ekti Nadir Naam (1973), all of which use a narrative structure based on multiple characters. Quart also mentions the television series 24 and discusses Alan Rudolph's film Welcome to L.A. (1976) as an early prototype. Crash (2004) is an example of the genre, as are Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000), Fernando Meirelles's City of God (2002), Stephen Gaghan's Syriana (2005) and Rodrigo Garcia's Nine Lives (2005). The style is also used in video games. French video game company Quantic Dream has produced games, such as Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human, with hyperlink cinema style storytelling, and the style has also influenced role-playing games such as Suikoden III (2001) and Octopath Traveler (2018).

Analysis The hyperlink cinema narrative and story structure can be compared to social science's spatial analysis. As described by Edward Soja and Costis Hadjimichalis spatial analysis examines the "'horizontal experience' of human life, the spatial dimension of individual behavior and social relations, as opposed to the 'vertical experience' of history, tradition, and biography." English critic John Berger notes for the novel that "it is scarcely any longer possible to tell a straight story sequentially unfolding in time" for "we are too aware of what is continually traversing the story line laterally." An academic analysis of hyperlink cinema appeared in the journal Critical Studies in Media Communication, and referred to the films as Global Network Films. Narine's study examines the films Traffic (2000), Amores perros (2000), 21 Grams (2003), Beyond Borders (2003), Crash (2004; released 2005), Syriana (2005), Babel (2006) and others, citing network theorist Manuel Castells and philosophers Michel Foucault and Slavoj Žižek. The study suggests that the films are network narratives that map the network society and the new connections citizens experience in the age of globalization. Alberto Toscano and Jeff Kinkle have argued that one popular form of hyperlink cinema constitutes a contemporary form of it-narrative, an 18th- and 19th-century genre of fiction written from the imagined perspective of objects as they move between owners and social environments. In these films, they argue, "the narrative link is the characters' relation to the film's product of choice, whether it be guns, cocaine, oil, or Nile perch."

Notable examples

Films

Video games Suikoden III (2001) Indigo Prophecy (2005) Heavy Rain (2010) Resident Evil 6 (2012) Until Dawn (2015) Octopath Traveler (2018) Detroit: Become Human (2018)

Directors associated with hyperlink cinema Paul Thomas Anderson Satyajit Ray Alejandro González Iñárritu Quentin Tarantino Goutam Ghose Tarun Majumdar Garry Marshall Robert Altman The Wachowskis Tom Tykwer Yılmaz Güney Steven Soderbergh Richard Linklater Paul Haggis

See also Anthology film Composite film Ensemble cast Nonlinear (arts)

References

External links Jason Kottke's explanation of the origin of the term

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Hyperlink cinema

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Hyperlink cinema claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Hyperlink cinema before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Hyperlink cinema ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Hyperlink cinema

In research: Hyperlink cinema appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Hyperlink cinema in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Hyperlink cinema is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1930s in film, 1960s in film, 1970s in film, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Hyperlink cinema outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Hyperlink cinema in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Hyperlink cinema means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Hyperlink cinema out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Hyperlink cinema in simple terms?

Why does Hyperlink cinema matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Hyperlink cinema?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Hyperlink cinema.