107 Minutes with M. Night Shyamalan

Is there a better movie twist than the one in “The Sixth Sense?” In 1999, writer/director M. Night Shyamalan burst onto the scene with his film, which went on the gross $675 million worldwide and was nominated for best picture. 

The brilliant film was chopped and whittled down to M. Night Shyamalan’s vision of mastery. The run time?

107 minutes. 

He then went on to direct two more box office successes in “Unbreakable” and “Signs.” As you can imagine, writing, producing, anda directing a film is a deep immersive process. It’s a herculean effort to make a great piece of art. 

As you can imagine, M. Night Shyamalan was surprised when the run times of these subsequent films were brought to his attention. What were they?

You guessed it… 107 minutes. 

When he discusses this fact in retrospect, he regards it as a subconscious truth about how to tell a great story in a great film and the time that process takes. Without knowing it, his best effort to tell the best story landed on a pattern of sequences that led to shockingly precise run times. 

While it may seem like a big leap, I find a very similar beauty in movement principles. The sport of weightlifting, for example, has more countries represented in the Olympic Games than nearly any other sport. The rules are simple: put the most weight overhead as possible. 

In the snatch, the bar must go from the floor to the overhead position directly. In the second event, (the clean and jerk) the bar can rest on the shoulders. Anyone can accomplish those tasks however they’d like and every athlete from every country over the past 100 years has arrived at the same answer from a technique perspective. 

When we pursue best practices, I find that we find what is universally true. And, that’s beautiful in film, on the platform, and in life.