Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Film students who can no longer sit through films

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 248 posts

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#181

Post by bronlund »

bccdee wrote: post #173
bronlund wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Not too long ago, reading books was also considered evil. Yeah, well, they were wrong and I'm right. > You sound like those people who think Battleship Potemkin is the greatest movie of all time. 100% critic & 86% user approval on Rotten Tomatoes, 97/100 on Metacritic. Universally acclaimed, massively influential. Have you considered that Battleship Potemkin might just be a good movie? Have you tried watching it?

I have watched it multiple times, and I do understand that in order to understand what is great art, you have to be familiar with art history.

That being said, blaming the kids for a failed education system, is pointing the finger in the wrong direction. It is not their attention which is the problem, but the out-dated methods they use trying to grab it. Being bitter and blaming everything, but themselves, is just showing how irrelevant they have all become.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#182

Post by bccdee »

technothrasher wrote: post #162
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…

> interminably long suspense sequences that are literally just someone walking through a dark environment while spooky music plays. The few film studies classes I took in high school and college taught me so much about the hows and whys of film, that I can't possibly now watch a sequence like that and think "just someone walking through a dark environment". So much going on in those scenes that you'll miss if you're…

That's why I'm "pro-boredom," in a sense. If you let yourself dismiss a scene when you're not enjoying it, you may never discover what's enjoyable about it. Putting in the work of paying attention pays dividends. Of course, sometimes it yields nothing, but that's why you need to get good at it. If paying attention to something boring feels like pulling teeth, you'll never do it, and you'll miss a lot of great stuff.

And it's not like you're "wasting your time" by properly paying attention to ten minutes of atmospheric scene-setting in a two-hour movie. You've set aside two hours already. Make the most of them.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#183

Post by philipallstar »

semilin wrote: post #35

If you really care about something, screen addiction does not interfere. A friend of mine has a terrible Instagram addiction, yet has developed for himself a certain degree of cinephilia lately -- we've watched long movies together in theaters and not once has he been on his phone during the screenings. When one has faith that sustained attention might hold more value than that gained by interruption, they tend to pr…

I don't know your friend's situation, but students who've been raised on screens may struggle a lot more to concentrate even on things they like than people who came across screens in adult life.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#184

Post by WalterBright »

nephihaha wrote: post #103
WalterBright wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you know about "Save The Cat!" it becomes boring to watch a movie that follows the formula. I noticed even back in the 80s that too many movies ended in the "chase through the darkened warehouse". The movie will be doing fine, until somehow the hero and villain wind up in a dark, abandoned warehouse, ship, factory, whatever. Then they have a long, drawn out fight. Then the bad guy gets killed. Movie over? Nope.…

"Game of Thrones" was interesting because it did not follow any formula I could discern" Introduction of character. Dialogue. Gratuitous sex scene. Machiavellian discussion. Reference to earlier episode. Cliffhanger.

You forgot: kill off the main character in the first episode!

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#185

Post by philipallstar »

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…

> 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.

Star Wars, Enter the Dragon, Game of Death, Mad Max, and many Bond films are fun counterexamples.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#186

Post by philipallstar »

drewda wrote: post #153

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...

This isn't valid criticism. Treat the article as just its own thing, regardless of who published it.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#187

Post by pseudalopex »

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…

> The article doesn't actually give any evidence attention spans are shortened.

Observations are evidence. Evidence is not proof.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#188

Post by toast0 »

WCSTombs wrote: post #150
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…

I like a lot of long films, but at nearly 4 hours, Lawrence of Arabia is a marathon of a film. I've not seen it, I did order a copy recently, but it was cancelled; and I missed the Fathom screening for some reason or another, but I'll see it eventually; I like long movies and movies involving sand, so it seems like an easy win.

I would think a film studies class might not want to spend so much time on a single film, so maybe several scenes would be more appropriate.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#189

Post by devilbunny »

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…

In fairness, Lawrence's own book on which the movie is based, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, is a disjointed, rambling, and usually boring book. The high points are really good, but you slog through a lot to get there.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#190

Post by crazygringo »

bccdee wrote: post #180
crazygringo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Suffering is painful and uncomfortable. The pain and discomfort are what make it suffering. It's not a question of moral virtue. There's no moral virtue in cooking with spices, either. Watching a movie at 2x may make it worse, but it's not immoral. > That's unhelpful black-and-white thinking. Unhelpful to what? What's the goal here? Simply getting to the end of the movie? They put middles in movies for a reason—they'…

Why are you even trying to argue this? You're repeatedly saying things like:

> Why sit through a warped & incomplete version of a mediocre movie when you could just turn it off & watch the complete version of something consistently good?

That's nonsense. You don't know if a movie is mediocre or consistently good until you watch it. Or it might be mostly very good with some not-so-good parts, in which it's better to watch it but watch the obviously not-so-good parts at 2x speed.

> But if you find yourself doing this consistently, how can you be sure that the problem isn't on your end?

The fact that I've written screenplays, learned acting, done script analysis on literally hundreds of scenes from movies and television shows in educational contexts, lit scenes, shot scenes with actors, and edited them together?

I'm fast forwarding because I have a halfway decent knowledge of some of the craft and I don't feel like wasting my time with segments that exist purely for emotional heightening but little else. Empty calories, if you will.

There's no problem with my expectations, I assure you. I suggest you look in the mirror and ask why you feel so compelled to insist, judgmentally, that your way of watching movies is the right way, and speculate that a different way is somehow a sign of a problematic attention span. You're trying to insist you know some superior way of watching movies. Consider that, just maybe, you don't know as much as you think you do.

Post reply on HN