Probably the most popular way to show the passing of a good amount of time in a short amount of screen time is with the montage, made popular with Sylvester Stallone's first Rocky film. It has become a bit of a cliche, so much so that the makers of the South Park animation made a song mocking it in their most recent film Team America: World Police:
LYRICS:
Show a lot of things happening at once,
Remind everyone of what's going on
And with every shot you show a little improvement.
To show it all would take too long.
That's called a montage.
The idea is to show a character improving skills in a short amount of time. The sequence is usually cut to music that reinforces the mood, usually driving, inspirational, upbeat music climaxing with the final achievement of the goal. In Rocky, the boxer reaches the top of the stairs and spins with his arms in the air, victor…
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