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August 27, 2007
Open Source Attention Deficit Disorder Measurement
There are stories making the rounds about people becoming nauseated while watching the popular new movie The Bourne Ultimatum. Not because they movie is so bad, but because the shot lengths are so short, averaging (apparently) something like two seconds. In some people that sort of thing -- alongside fast camera moves -- seemingly induces vomiting. Fascinating.That, however, got me thinking. Many people, myself included, think movie shot lengths are getting shorter and edits closer together. It is, to one way of thinking, a reflection of our collective attention deficit disorder, our inability to stay focused on any one thing for a more than a couple of seconds. (Still with me? I'm kidding.)
So, is it true? Have shots gotten shorter over the years? Until recently that wasn't something on which you could readily find data, but now you can at least begin to, courtesy of a growing database of public movie shot-length data at Cinemetrics. Granted, there are lots of issues, including very scarce data points some years, and that people measure only movies of interest, not every movie. Nevertheless, it is intriguing impressionistic stuff, a kind of open source measure of our growing collective attention deficit disorder.
Here, for example, is my first-cut (no pun intended) filter of the data, bringing it to U.S. only, and then measuring average shot length by year. To bring this up to date, I even added the alleged two-second average shot length for The Bourne Ultimatum.
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Having worked in the animation industry, I can say that shots are ABSOLUTELY getting shorter. 5 seconds used to be typical. 2-3 became standard before I got out.
The early history of the movies was dominated by the influence of theater -- one view with the occasional cut when the curtain or lights went down. Today's big influence is the music video.
Shorter shots means quicker cuts, quicker cuts emphasize pace.
Even nominally "slow" features still use fast cuts to emphasize certain segments of the story...
It's not the shot length that's the big issue in "Ultimatum", it's the shaky camera. Even shots taken from a fixed position are still shaking all over the place. It really detracted from the movie.
I wonder if the effect allowed them to save some money on the stunts, since no one could see mistakes anyway.
I'm not sure if it is a statistical artifact, but there appears to be an interesting periodicity in the 1950-1990 timeframe. Shot length had been decreasing, then soared circa 1955 from 10-15s to +25s.
Similar drops followed by local maxima seem to occur about 1970 and 1984.
The reason I am intrigued is that there IS a significant action-reaction to film-making over time. Technological drivers do act as secular forces...but within that longer term trend we will see a spate of fast-cut movies (or action flicks, animation, musicals, buddy movies, 3-D, indies) that give way to their opposite...and back again. Under the continuous impulse to attract jaded viewers, it is the alternation between techniques that keeps us interested...
Duncan -- Sadly, while that be true, this is fairly small sample stuff, so I'm reluctant to draw too many explicit conclusions about periodicity.
Confounding variables - Shot length, directing style, steadicams vs. handhelds?
Note also that it probably varies by genre - action movies use short shots and gap cutting to speed up the action (sometimes too fast, like Nolan in Batman Begins), and less precision is needed in directing and acting, which makes things cheaper and easier.
I would wager it's mostly economic and not mostly cultural.
The movie really made me and my wife nauseous. Then again we saw it just after a different movie, sneaked in just before it started and sat in the first couple of rows.
I have thought this about other movies AND some TV in the recent year, and haven't seen the ultimatum yet.
The short cuts of the action sequences mirrored those of the second movie as well. I remember thinking to myself that at the end, who ever is standing must have won for I couldnt tell you by watching the fight. The shaky cam, in a conference room, fixed position to me was more annoying. If I want shaky shots, ill grab my digital 8 and make a home movie!
In the movie business, they used to say "you can fix it in post." Now many action movies are more or less made in post. When editing involved sharp knives, shots were longer. This decrease in average shot length probably tracks nicely with the decreasng cost and increasing snazziness of editing. Thanks Avid, Mac etc. Since 2 seconds is getting down there, it's interesting to wonder how much further this trend can run? Split screen views are getting more common too. Passive viewing is getting pretty ennervating.