Can I change the amount of time that the screen will be dimmed to under one minute?

Not that I’m aware of; but you can set the Hot Corners so your screensaver comes on as soon as you move the mouse to a particular corner… and make your screen saver a dark one, then the screen will still go off in one minute. That’s what I do :)

You can’t. If you run “man pmset” without the quotes in the terminal you will see that the only options are in minutes.

And I tried using seconds(well, .5). It refused and ended up giving me the usage guide.

How about holding down F1 (or Function-F1) until the screen backlight shuts off? That takes about two seconds.

It’s not completely turned off. I want it completely turned off. :-)
From what I’ve heard, I concluded that it isn’t possible. But thanks for the replies everyone.

F1 will completely shut off the backlight. Trust me. I do this all the time. The only downside is remembering to turn the backlight back on in the morning.

@JeffPorten:

Neither F1 nor Fn + F1 turned off the backlight for me… Are you using Leopard and what Mac do you have and what keyboard?

iMac new-alumium-with-glass thing, wireless keyboard with Leopard.
F1 doesn’t work by the way… Neither does fn+F1

Ah, I’m on a MacBook—it’s possible that they set the minimums differently on the desktop models. Question: can you turn the backlight all the way off in the Displays panel in System Preferences?

You can press F14 and F15 to adjust the screen’s brightness a bit…

I’ve figured it out: You can set a screen corner:
http://img257.imageshack.us/my.php?image=afbeelding1vp6.png.

System Preferences > Exposé and Spaces > Active screen corners.

- edit -
I’m so sorry hearkat, you already said it, but I was just so dumb not to listen. Thank you.