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

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#31

Post by steve1977 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

treelover wrote: post #20

Is it a loss of attention span, or is the 2-hour feature film simply an outdated format for the current generation? The information density of a slow 1970s drama is incredibly low compared to the multi-stream environment they grew up in. They aren't necessarily 'dumber'; their brains are just optimized for high-frequency information processing, whereas cinema is optimized for immersion.

> Is it a loss of attention span, or is the 2-hour feature film simply an outdated format for the current generation?

Why would you think it's an outdated format for the current generation if not for their loss of attention span?

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#32

Post by SkyeCA » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #16

This is so tragic. How are these folks going to lead the world when they cannot pay attention to anything?

Just let AI run the world. It quite literally can't do any worse than our existing leaders.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#33

Post by crazygringo » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

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 movies you study in film school are genuinely excruciatingly slow and boring, unless you're hyper-motivated. Before mobile phones, you didn't have any choice but to sit through it. Now you have a choice. I suspect that film students 30 years ago, despite having a "full attention span", would also have been entertaining themselves on phones if they'd had them.

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, it's that there's nothing to pay attention to. There's no virtue in suffering through boredom.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#34

Post by sho_hn » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

mym1990 wrote: post #19

tartoran wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get off them. Many started to already.

About as useful as telling a heroine addict to get off heroine, except that screen addiction is much more subtle in the harmful effects, but is incredibly corrosive over time. Almost all tech products in the world are pushing for more and more screentime, there is really not much regulation in sight, in the US at least(go Australia!). The best hope is that one day an Ozempic for screen time comes out!

It's a bit more useful, in that the consensus on "phone use bad" is still a lot more shaky than "heroin bad".

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#35

Post by semilin » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

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 prioritize the former.

But the article points out that the students here don't even watch movies themselves -- "students have struggled to name any film" they recently watched. Why are these people even studying film? The inattention is clearly caused by disinterest.

The phenomenon observed here must be caused by a combination of the general loss of discipline (which is the fallback attentive mechanism when interest is absent) and students' disinterest in the field they chose to study. The former has been well known; the latter is worth considering more.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#36

Post by kranner » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

yladiz wrote: post #23

crazygringo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They literally are customers. They pay money in exchange for an education and a degree. You start failing too many students, it becomes a risky place to enroll, enrollment drops, they can't cover their expenses, and they close. Edit: I'm not defending this, just explaining it. It's inevitable under a private education system, unless you literally legislate and enforce grading on a curve within all private institution…

They are paying for the education, but not for the degree, and they’re not paying to get a passing grade even if they do poorly. I wouldn’t necessarily agree that we should just fail the students, clearly something is going on if the professor has to use a curve unexpectedly, but we shouldn’t just accept this as okay simply because they are paying.

Film studies is kind of well known for being a vanity degree for rich people's kids. At least all the film studies students I know from India who're studying in the US are without exception the kids of super-rich businessmen and politicians.

The serious ones are all either already working in the industry or studying at the super-competitive National School of Drama.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#37

Post by PeterStuer » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #28

azinman2 wrote: post #16

This is so tragic. How are these folks going to lead the world when they cannot pay attention to anything?

Did kids pay attention 100 years ago?

If they did not they would lose some digits or limbs working unsafe machinery etc.

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#38

Post by sidewndr46 » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

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…

So Quibi had the right idea, just a decade too early?

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#39

Post by bdcp » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

p1esk wrote: post #28

azinman2 wrote: post #16

This is so tragic. How are these folks going to lead the world when they cannot pay attention to anything?

Did kids pay attention 100 years ago?

Kids no, students yes?

Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films

#40

Post by Der_Einzige » Sat, Jan 31, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

How do I sqaure this circle with that the biggest films in the last two decades have been Avatar, Avatar: The Way of Water, and Avatar: Fire and Ash

2h 42m, 3 hours 12 minutes, and 3 hours 15 minutes.

All 3 are WAY too long and Way of Water in particular felt like it was 4+ hours subjectively.

Yet, they're literally the biggest films EVER by gross.

So seems the general public has longer attention spans than film students. This isn't the first time that lay people are objectively better/smarter than so-called "professionals" in a field.