It is worth noting that some film scholars disagree, but Cutter argues that different patterns of shots found in today’s films go better with natural fluctuations in human attention because each new shot forces the audience to refocus on the film. You fluctuate in and out, and there’s a natural pattern to this.” According to Cutter, “People flake out every few seconds. It is human nature for someone’s attention to waver, no matter how hard we try to focus. That isn’t the case today.Īttention spans may have something to do with shorter shots and the different patterns as well. You may notice that in older films, directors added at least 1.5 seconds to each crowd scene, so the audience has time to look around and see who was in the shot. Today, the average length is only 2.5 seconds. In an interview with “ Wired ,” Cutting said that the average length of a shot in 1930 was 12 seconds. He has been looking at shot duration over the past few years and has found that the average duration of a shot is consistently shorter now than it was a decade ago. Cutting examines how the brain’s processes relate to film components such as editing, frame rates, projection, and scene and narrative structure.
James Cutting, a psychologist at Cornell University, was a panelist for the Oscars’ “ Movies in Your Brain - The Science of Cinematic Perception ” discussion in 2014, and has been studying perceptual and cognitive processing. Below, we’ve gone more in depth to four of the biggest changes in filmmaking. While some changes to filmmaking technology and the craft of filmmaking might be obvious, there are other things that are not so apparent. Here are some other films that have been remade … can you spot the changes in filmmaking technology? Notice how lifelike the CGI King Kong looks in comparison to the stop-motion King Kong in the original film. Just compare the original “King Kong,” made in 1933, to the Peter Jackson remake from 2005.
Have you even noticed how much films are always seemingly evolving? Over the past few decades, film technology has made major advancements.