Film students who can no longer sit through films • Hacker News Board

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#151

Post by ryandrake » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #99

steve1977 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it a loss of attention span, or is the 2-hour feature film simply an outdated format for the current generation? Why would you think it's an outdated format for the current generation if not for their loss of attention span?

Because they can focus on different movies. Americans few decades ago found internarional movies boring, did not focused, but could focus on American movies.

I don't think people can focus on any movies anymore, period.

I used to host movie night for the friend group, because I was the one with a decent home theater setup, but we stopped because people just can't get through movies anymore. Same with family. We'd always put on a movie at night when family were over for a visit, but we don't anymore. Within 5 minutes of the movie starting, everyone's on their phones or getting up to do other things. Why even bother hosting?

I even let the guest(s) choose the movie so they're not subjected to all that boring "character development" and "establishing shots" in movies I go for, and they still can't make it more than 5-10 minutes. My teenage kid can't even make it through movies with zero quiet parts, designed specifically for that age group. Not into it at all--she puts YouTube on at 2x-2.5x speed and "watches" two videos at a time while playing video games.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#152

Post by esafak » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

My solution would be to filter them out: why are they occupying the seats of students who actually like and watch movies? Film school is wasted on the TikTok crowd.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#153

Post by drewda » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

From the same magazine that also recently published a piece headlined "The Elite College Students Who Can't Read Books"

I do have a print subscription to The Atlantic and appreciate some of their coverage, but it's embarrassing how much they're always on the lookout for upper-middle-class panics to milk...

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#154

Post by djeastm » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #33

Counterpoint from the article: > A handful of professors told me they hadn’t noticed any change. Some students have always found old movies to be slow, Lynn Spigel, a professor of screen cultures at Northwestern University, told me. “But the ones who are really dedicated to learning film always were into it, and they still are.” The article doesn't actually give any evidence attention spans are shortened. Many of the…

>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.

Did you always do this or did you start doing this in the past, say, 10 years or so?

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#155

Post by bccdee » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:21 PM UTC

socalgal2 wrote: post #122

crazygringo wrote: post #33

Counterpoint from the article: > A handful of professors told me they hadn’t noticed any change. Some students have always found old movies to be slow, Lynn Spigel, a professor of screen cultures at Northwestern University, told me. “But the ones who are really dedicated to learning film always were into it, and they still are.” The article doesn't actually give any evidence attention spans are shortened. Many of the…

Agreed. There are lots of movies that are hard to watch. A modern one for many people is "The Green Knight". I made it to the end but personally the movie didn't do anything for me and I don't agree with the praise. I generally don't skip forward but I did on several parts of Pluribus. There were several segments that were clearly just filler and after the first episode or so where they stuck out it just got tiring.…

> I generally don't skip forward but I did on several parts of Pluribus. There were several segments that were clearly just filler

When I read the post you're replying to, my first thought was, "sure, some movies are boring. But I bet they're talking about stuff like Pluribus, not actual boring movies."

Pluribus has no filler. Sure: the plot moves slowly, the cinematography is artsy and sedate, and it's all very character-driven. So what? It's beautiful. You may as well go to an art gallery and say the story moves too slow. Look at the stuff on the screen. Take it in. You don't have to like it, but maybe don't assume that Vince Gilligan is wasting your time with filler to make a quick buck. Consider that you might be holding it wrong.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#156

Post by viccis » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #33

Counterpoint from the article: > A handful of professors told me they hadn’t noticed any change. Some students have always found old movies to be slow, Lynn Spigel, a professor of screen cultures at Northwestern University, told me. “But the ones who are really dedicated to learning film always were into it, and they still are.” The article doesn't actually give any evidence attention spans are shortened. Many of the…

>I love movies. But I also make liberal use of 2x speed

"I love pizza. But I also slather it in hot sauce to disguise the flavor"

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#157

Post by bccdee » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

endominus wrote: post #53

Why did the author feel the need to throw in a spoiler for the end of The Conversation in the last paragraph of the article? That seems contradictory to the point of everything else she wrote and disrespectful to both the audience and the film.

The Conversation came out in 1974, 52 years ago. By any reasonable metric, the statute of limitations on spoilers has long ago elapsed. If we can't even mention that Rosebud is a sled without some sort of spoiler banner, I think we're letting our preciousness about spoilers get in the way of actually discussing film.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#158

Post by Tade0 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:29 PM UTC

bluescrn wrote: post #144

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 contro…

Also no forty minutes of ads before the actual movie.

That was my friends' recent experience and it was just ridiculous. They were late and still had to watch ads.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#159

Post by bronlund » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:30 PM UTC

bccdee wrote: post #143

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.

Not too long ago, reading books was also considered evil. It was argued that they were addictive and antisocial.

You sound like those people who think Battleship Potemkin is the greatest movie of all time.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#160

Post by crazygringo » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 9:40 PM UTC

bccdee wrote: post #148

crazygringo wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Broadly speaking, if it's worth watching the end of a movie, it's probably worth watching the whole thing.

That's what I'm 100% disagreeing with. It might actually be worth fast-forwarding through some dark suspenseful parts with no dialog or meaningful action.

> "Suffering through boredom" was how you phrased it.

Right. It's boring. Boring isn't pain or discomfort. It's boredom, its own category. Why suffer that? Just speed it up and improve your experience.

There's no moral virtue in forcing yourself to watch every single shot at 1x speed, or deciding that if it isn't worth watching fully at 1x it isn't worth watching at all. That's unhelpful black-and-white thinking.