One of the limitations of the DVT for the study of cinema is its focus on analysing frames primarily as still images. Save for shot boundary detec tion, there are no other methods in the toolkit explicitly concerned with how images are organised in time. But as we know from several decades of film theory, the order, frequency, and rhythm of moving images are fundamental to how they are enjoyed and understood.

Temporal structure in film is usually broken down analytically into sequences, scenes, and shots. These are units with which filmmakers and film editors design an intelligible whole from a pool of possible parts, most often recorded in various locations at separate times and in a different order. Casablanca (1942) is set in the eponymous north African city but was filmed at the Warner Bros studio lot in California (Francisco, 1980, p. 139). In Mary, Queen of Scots (2018), the characters played by Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan are shown to sustain a rivalry for over seven years, but they shot their only scene together during a single day of overlap in their respective schedules (Blyth, 2019). In Dunkirk (2017), events occurring on air, sea, and land, during an hour, a day, and a week, are presented simultaneously by cross-cutting between the timelines (Debruge, 2017). Space- time elision and manipulation are fundamental aspects of filmmaking and spectatorship, from production to pleasure to analysis.

Film production tends to be a capital-intensive enterprise, organised as an assembly line in which highly specialised and interconnected professionals converge. In this line, cinematographers are responsible for shooting all the individual pieces, designing their appearance and ensuring consistency through lightning, cameras and lenses; they control the photographic aspect of the shots.