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Film students who can no longer sit through films

theatlantic.com

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Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#141

Post by surgical_fire »

prhn wrote: post #119

I don't dispute the shortening of attentions spans, which seems to be directly related to new forms of entertainment young people consume. However. Films across the generations are very different in terms of how they lay out a narrative. Watch any film before 1980 and you'll start to see a pattern that the pacing and evolution of the narrative is generally very, very slow. Art is highly contextualized by the period i…

I imagine a film student watching the baptism scene of Michael Corleone and thinking it is boring.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#142

Post by acuozzo »

prhn wrote: post #119

I don't dispute the shortening of attentions spans, which seems to be directly related to new forms of entertainment young people consume. However. Films across the generations are very different in terms of how they lay out a narrative. Watch any film before 1980 and you'll start to see a pattern that the pacing and evolution of the narrative is generally very, very slow. Art is highly contextualized by the period i…

> And really, really boring and slow a lot of the time.

It's not boring on a giant display with the original 6-track mix playing just a tad too loud all around you. I've seen it in 70mm at the AFI in Silver Spring, MD; candy for the eyes and ears.

It would likely be boring if played at a quiet volume on a small display. This is because movies are, in part, spectacle. Cirque du Soleil would likely be boring too if viewed very, very far away.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#143

Post by bccdee »

bronlund wrote: post #29

There is no attention-span crisis, it’s just that the younger generation find a lot of stuff utterly boring. If they do something they love, they have no issue focusing for hours and hours.

Being easily bored is the same thing as having a poor attention span. Of course they have no issue spending time on the things they love. If they struggle to focus on something, they probably will find themselves unable to enjoy it very much. I don't think any of the film students who spend the whole movie on their phones go home afterward to read Moby Dick.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#144

Post by bluescrn »

rwc wrote: post #14

"Many students are resisting the idea of in-person screenings altogether. Given the ease of streaming assignments from their dorm rooms, they see gathering in a campus theater as an imposition." Students telegraphing to the film world that a coming generation of consumers simply won't be going to the theatre. The article is framed as a tragedy about the students, but it's actually a tragedy about the professors and i…

The reality is that the home movie experience is now better.

Seeing a film on the big screen was still a great experience back in the 80s and early 90s when the home experience was VHS and a smallish CRT with mono audio.

It started to change when DVD arrived, but then we reached the era of affordable large LCD TVs, blu-rays, and then streaming. And now a lot of people have a 'big screen' at home. With a volume control and pause button. Better drinks (including alcohol) and snacks without paying the premium price, without having to drive anywhere. And no kids throwing popcorn around, or other people talking during the movie or other phones going off during quiet moments...

(That and the decline of movies. Maybe I'm just getting old and miserable, but there's been very little that's got me excited in recent years. Maybe I'll get out to a cinema for Project Hail Mary, loved the book and the trailers look promising)

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#146

Post by acessoproibido »

blindriver wrote: post #128
prhn wrote: post #119

I don't dispute the shortening of attentions spans, which seems to be directly related to new forms of entertainment young people consume. However. Films across the generations are very different in terms of how they lay out a narrative. Watch any film before 1980 and you'll start to see a pattern that the pacing and evolution of the narrative is generally very, very slow. Art is highly contextualized by the period i…

No you're wrong. It's not about the era. Matt Damon talked about this on the Joe Rogan podcast recently. He was asked by Netflix to create a big action sequence in the first 5 mins so that people on their phones would get hooked into watching the entire movie. He was also asked to mention the plot of the movie several times throughout the movie because people on their phones will tend to miss plot details and it help…

No he's right, there is definitely a difference in pacing for films throughout the decades.

Much of the content that Netflix produces however is not made to be shown in a cinema like setting - its something that people put on while doing something else, like TV so whatever Damon was saying on a podcast makes sense in the context, its however not indicative of a whole generation of movies - there are still plenty of films being made that require full attention for an extended period of time, many of which are also on Netflix. One could argue that there was never a time in history where more excellent, deep and complex content was being made.

One other part is also that traditional TV (which arguably also never required full attention) has been replaced by new mediums. Personally I never owned a TV in my life.

The whole argument "phone bad" is a bit lazy IMO and doesn't at all take in account the nuance that would be required for a serious discussion.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#147

Post by 99_00 »

The ability to focus is not decreasing.

When studies are published talking about “attention span” decreasing they mean the amount of time people spend paying attention to one thing. They don’t mean people’s capacity for attention is decreasing.

I’m a bit surprised to see this myth is still around, but looking at the source maybe I shouldn’t be

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#148

Post by bccdee »

crazygringo wrote: post #132
bccdee wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love movies. But I also make liberal use of 2x speed and +5s during interminably long suspense sequences that are literally just someone walking through a dark environment while spooky music plays. It's not that I suffer from a short attention span No, I'm sorry, I do think this is an attention span issue. You say there's no virtue in suffering through boredom, but a few minutes of scene-setting should not feel p…

Your analysis is extremely simplistic. > Yes, some movies are boring, but those are bad movies. Actually, in real life, otherwise good movies can have some less-good parts, and otherwise bad movies can have some individual scenes that are great. Life, and art, isn't black-and-white. > If the middle isn't enjoyable, the end probably won't be either You've clearly never taken taken a screenwriting course, or analyzed t…

A saggy middle is relative. It's one thing for the middle of a movie to be the least compelling part; it's another for the middle to be so dull that you have to skip it entirely. If a movie's longer than 90 minutes, then they had room to cut stuff, and they chose not to.

> Your analysis is extremely simplistic.

It's extremely general, is what. That's by necessity; we're not talking about any particular movie. Broadly speaking, if it's worth watching the end of a movie, it's probably worth watching the whole thing.

> Nobody ever said anything about it being painful or uncomfortable

"Suffering through boredom" was how you phrased it.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#150

Post by WCSTombs »

prhn wrote: post #119

I don't dispute the shortening of attentions spans, which seems to be directly related to new forms of entertainment young people consume. However. Films across the generations are very different in terms of how they lay out a narrative. Watch any film before 1980 and you'll start to see a pattern that the pacing and evolution of the narrative is generally very, very slow. Art is highly contextualized by the period i…

> If I were a film professor today, hell even 20 years ago, I would not expect a modern film student to sit through that whole thing.

Sorry, but this to me sounds completely insane. We're not even talking about the general population here, but people who are ostensibly serious about the art and craft of film making. And the bar is being set at literally just watching the movie, and not even some obscure marathon of a film that takes a degree to be appreciated, but a major mass-released picture that has already been enjoyed by countless people.

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