It’s fascinating how you can simulate the progression of time simply through the format in which you convey it. Comics are very different from video, but some things still hold true no matter the medium. For example, lengthening or shortening a shot can give the illusion of slower or faster time, just by increasing or decreasing the focus or even simply changing the dimensions of that focus.
As someone who enjoys creative writing, this is a practice conveyed in the written form too. In order to simulate pacing or progression of time, you can enhance or detract focus on something. If I spend two paragraphs talking about the ticking of a clock within the span of a minute, that minute will feel a lot longer than if I only wrote “a minute passed”.
The reason for this is that by affecting the pacing at which our audience perceives a narrative, we are able to control their perspective on the passage of time within that narrative itself. McCloud discusses numerous ways to achieve that effect – adjusting the dimensions of a panel, adjusting the gutter, arranging the placement of dialogue or lack thereof, the actions and detail of a sequence, and the detail at which that sequence is articulated. And although a film doesn’t have things like panels and gutters, we do have frames, shots, sound design, and other such audio-visual effects at our disposal to emphasize the level of focus and attention brought to a specific moment in time.