8.5 / 10
One Minute Time Machine is one of the cleanest time travel short films ever made. Seen it many times. The 8.5 rating is what it earns. Devon Avery directing Sean Crouch’s script. Erinn Hayes and Brian Dietzen as the two characters on a park bench. Six minutes of runtime that contains a complete romantic comedy structure. Available free on YouTube where it’s accumulated over twenty million views since release. A demonstration of what tightly constrained short-form filmmaking can accomplish.
Six minutes of this short make me happier than most feature-length romantic comedies manage in two hours. The premise delights me, the fast-cut failures make me laugh, and the reveal turns the film sweet. The only thing holding it under a 9 is the ceiling the format puts on it, and I can’t hold that against Avery.
The Setup
James (Brian Dietzen) sits on a park bench next to Regina (Erinn Hayes). He attempts to start a conversation. Regina rebuffs him politely. He presses the button on a small box sitting on his lap, and time rewinds about one minute. They’re back on the bench with the conversation erased, and he still knows exactly how it went. I’m on his side from the first fumble, which is harder to pull off than it looks.
The device is a one-minute time machine. James uses it repeatedly to perfect his approach. He learns what Regina responds to and what causes her to reject him. He iterates through dozens of conversations, and the film shows them in fast-cut sequence. Some attempts crash and burn. Others produce slight improvements. The arc moves toward an approach that might work.
The film runs six minutes. The setup, the iterations, the reveal, and the resolution all fit. The pacing is the achievement. Every moment delivers narrative content. Nothing is wasted.
The Reveal
The film’s structural twist occurs in the fifth minute. Regina catches James using the device. The catch isn’t because she saw the button press. The catch is because she’s her own device. She’s been doing the same thing he has. She’s been resetting their conversation when his responses didn’t satisfy her.
The reveal recontextualizes everything the audience has seen. James wasn’t the only person testing approaches. Regina was testing him, and the conversations we watched as his iterations were also hers. Both of them have been using time machines to court each other, and neither knew. I adore this turn. It takes a gag that could have played as a guy gaming a woman and makes it mutual, and that’s the moment the film wins me over completely.
The reveal is the film’s argument. Connection between people requires multiple attempts. The successful version is the one that works for both parties. Both parties have been testing the other. The film makes the mutual testing literal through the time travel premise. The structure is metaphor that’s been animated into the plot. The audience receives the metaphor as both story and as commentary on real courtship.
For Writers
How do you fit a complete structure into six minutes? One Minute Time Machine shows how. The film has a setup, an escalation, a reveal, and a resolution. None of the four elements is rushed. The discipline required is enormous. Every line of dialogue serves multiple functions. Every iteration of the conversation provides new information while also being entertaining on its own. The lesson for writers is that short-form work requires more structural rigor than long-form work. Long forms can hide weak structure behind elaboration.
Short forms expose every structural choice. If your six-minute short doesn’t hold together, the failure is visible. If your six-minute short does hold together, you’ve shown something most feature filmmakers can’t show.
The Erinn Hayes Performance
Erinn Hayes plays Regina across approximately twenty different versions of the same conversation. The performance is the foundation of the film. Each version of Regina has to feel distinct enough that the iterations register as different attempts. Each version has to feel consistent enough that the audience accepts she’s the same character. Hayes manages both requirements.
The Regina performance also has to land the reveal.
The audience needs to believe Regina has been doing the same thing James has. Hayes plants seeds of it throughout the early iterations, small reactions that read as natural on first viewing and as deliberate tests once you know. I think her work is the best thing in the short, and it’s what makes going back to spot her experiments so satisfying.
Hayes was best known at the time of filming for her work on Childrens Hospital (2008-2016), where she played Lola Spratt. Her later career has continued in television including Kevin Can Wait (2016-2018) and other productions. The One Minute Time Machine short is one of her most viewed individual performances because of the film’s massive YouTube circulation.
The Brian Dietzen Performance
Brian Dietzen plays James as a man trying to do something most men try to do. That’s talk to a woman in a public space and have the conversation go well. The performance is recognizable. He’s an ordinary man, neither a creep nor particularly skilled, who happens to have access to time travel and is using the access for an ordinary purpose.
The performance carries the comedy through the iterations. Each failed attempt has to be funny without making James seem pathetic. Dietzen plays the failures with a kind of weary self-recognition. He knows the previous version didn’t work. He’s trying a different approach. The audience laughs at the attempts because Dietzen lets the audience see his own awareness of how they’re landing.
Dietzen is best known for his long-running role as Jimmy Palmer on NCIS, which he’s played since 2004. The One Minute Time Machine short is a different tone than his procedural television work. The performance shows a range that his standard casting hasn’t consistently exploited.
The Devon Avery Direction
Devon Avery directed One Minute Time Machine from Sean Crouch’s script as part of a Funny or Die comedy initiative. The film was produced for approximately $15,000.
The production constraint forced economical choices. One bench. Two actors. A simple park location. The time travel mechanism is a small box on James’s lap with one button, and it requires no visual effects beyond the cut.
The direction is precise. Every shot serves a structural purpose. The pacing across the six minutes is tight without being rushed. The film respects the audience enough to leave some setups for the audience to put together instead of explaining everything. The economy is the technique.
Avery has continued working in short-form and commercial filmmaking since One Minute Time Machine.
The short itself wasn’t a launching pad to feature work in the way some short films become. It remains a stand-alone achievement. The film has been studied in screenwriting and film school programs as an example of compressed structure done correctly.
For Writers
In One Minute Time Machine, the time travel premise works as metaphor that’s been animated into plot. The film is about how real courtship works. People test approaches. People adjust based on feedback. People sometimes need multiple attempts before they connect. The time travel makes the testing literal. The audience receives the metaphor as both story and as commentary. The lesson for writers is that high-concept premises work better when they’re doing thematic work in addition to plot work.
If your high concept is just a plot device, your high concept is decoration. If your high concept is also an externalization of a real human experience, your high concept justifies its presence. The science fiction is the metaphor for the actual subject. The actual subject is two people trying to connect.
The YouTube Distribution
YouTube gave One Minute Time Machine its release.
The film has accumulated over twenty million views since 2014. The distribution model is part of the film’s significance. Short films historically depended on festival circuits for visibility. YouTube distribution allowed a six-minute film with no theatrical release to reach an audience larger than most independent features.
The free distribution also affected how the film was consumed.
Viewers could watch it multiple times at no marginal cost. The reveal at the five-minute mark rewards rewatching. The audience that watched the short three or four times to study the iterations made the film a viral object instead of a one-time consumption. The repeat viewing supported the film’s longevity in cultural memory.
The model has been imitated. Later short films have used YouTube distribution to reach audiences directly. Some have succeeded. Most haven’t. One Minute Time Machine remains one of the cleaner examples of what the model can do when the underlying work is strong enough to support the viral spread.
For Writers
A short film can earn extended life through structural design that rewards rewatching, and One Minute Time Machine shows it. The reveal at the five-minute mark makes the first four minutes more interesting on second viewing. The audience returns because the film delivers different information the second time even though no frame has changed. The lesson for writers is that planning for rewatch is different from planning for first watch. If your work delivers everything on first watch, your audience moves on after one viewing.
If your work delivers additional layers on later viewings, your audience comes back.
The economics of streaming and viral distribution favor work that rewards return engagement. That capability, built into the structure, is a deliberate craft choice. Most short films don’t make the choice. One Minute Time Machine does, and the choice produced over twenty million views.
The Ending
Regina reveals her own time machine and stops resetting their conversation. They sit on the bench together. They’ve arrived at a version of the conversation that works for both of them. They smile at each other. The film cuts to black. The runtime is approximately six minutes.
The ending refuses to extend itself. The film could have continued with a date sequence, a relationship montage, or a closing voice-over. None of those extensions would have improved the film. The ending works by ending. The audience receives the connection moment and the film is done. Most filmmakers would have padded. Avery cut.
The discipline of the ending is the film’s signature. The whole film works on the principle that less is more, and the ending takes that principle to completion. I’m grateful Avery resisted the date montage. The audience leaves wanting more, which is the correct way to leave a short, and six minutes is exactly enough.
Craft: A Foundational Short Film Achievement
Craft Note
Of the time travel short films ever made, One Minute Time Machine is one of the cleanest. The Crouch script delivers complete structure in six minutes. The Hayes and Dietzen performances carry the comedy and the romance at the same time. The reveal at the five-minute mark recontextualizes everything that preceded it. The YouTube distribution gave the film a viewer base most feature productions can’t match.
Film schools have used the film in their curricula as an example of compressed structure. The six-minute runtime contains setup, escalation, reveal, and resolution. Each element receives suitable development. None is rushed. None is padded. The work shows what tightly constrained short-form filmmaking can accomplish when the writer and director understand the form’s specific requirements.
The 8.5 rating is what it earns across many viewings. The film doesn’t reach 9 because the format constraints prevent the deeper character work a feature could attempt. The structural achievement is undeniable. The film is essential viewing for anyone interested in time travel cinema, short-form filmmaking, or romantic comedy structure.
Is One Minute Time Machine worth watching?
An 8.5. One Minute Time Machine gives you Devon Avery directing a Sean Crouch script, Erinn Hayes and Brian Dietzen on a park bench, and six minutes of complete structure, free on YouTube. I’d put it in front of anyone who thinks short films are student exercises. It stops short of a 9 only because six minutes can’t hold the deeper character work a feature could attempt, and I’d take this tight little film over a padded feature version any day.
