I took a bunch of film classes in college and what they’re not mentioning is that sometimes the films bring assigned are crazy boring. I once had to watch an hour of footage shot from a camera in an outdoor elevator as it went up and down. One hour. The professor said it was the perfect summation of everything he’d been discussing over the term. I swear I’m not joking.
Film students who can no longer sit through films
51–60 of 248 posts
Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films
#52If 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…
That was my thinking too. Not everyone has been or will be interested in (slow) movies, but historically those people wouldn't be studying film. It's not exactly a lucrative field.
Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films
#53Why 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.
Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films
#54Counterpoint 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…
You're not the first person I've seen say that they do that with movies and I just can't put myself in your shoes. If there's nothing to pay attention to during those sequences then the whole movie isn't worth it, if I felt like juggling the fast forward for a movie I would just turn it off. It's like cropping the intentional negative space around a painting or skipping over dramatic silence in a musical piece. Tension and mood are built during those slow sequences. Can you give an example of a movie you enjoyed but had to skip sections of that way?
Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films
#55This is so tragic. How are these folks going to lead the world when they cannot pay attention to anything?
Not sure if you're being sarcastic. A lot of the people currently running the world seem to have poor attention spans as well. Others have great attention spans, and I wish they'd pay attention to something different.
I'm not scared of the kids today running the world differently. Maybe it'll suck but I don't think the way it's running now is any great shakes, either.
Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films
#56Is 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 information density a meaningful metric for movies?
I'm reminded of Kubrick's long pauses, or the space scenes in 2001, which are there to set the tone or give the viewer time to consider the situation, not to deliver information.
Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films
#57Counterpoint 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…
> 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.
Do you do this for movies you're watching on your own for enjoyment or that you're required to watch for some reason? I'm not particularly interested in film, and have adhd, but can't think of a time where I've ever done this, so it's hard for me to read your comment and think that while you may not struggle with attention per se, such a level of discomfort and impatience is like not being able to walk around without earbuds in, or go for a hike without a Bluetooth speaker or phone
Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films
#58On a tangent, maybe we can save reading by doing more flash fiction?
Short stories. At my high school (from which I graduated a few years ago) practically no one read anything assigned. Yet I observed in a short story class I took that at least the majority of students consistently read the stories, and this led to insightful discussions. High value ideas that are quick to absorb but slow to understand are a better avenue to appreciating long-form literature.
Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films
#59If you’re really studying film, there is a lot to pay attention to in every scene. If you’re just watching films to be entertained, then yes, older movies have a slower pace and can sometimes be boring.
I think a film student would often be asking themselves why it was shot that way and what they might do differently.
Re: Film students who can no longer sit through films
#60Counterpoint 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…
If people are feeling entitled to a certain pace of spectacle and action as they write off everything in between as virtueless boredom, that's more damaging to the culture than a certain percentage simply no longer watching movies. That's how we get Netflix dumbing down their movies for everyone. There's nuance and value to a scene you may not immediately and consciously notice. And on a more meta level, pacing contributes to the overall experience of a movie even if there's not necessarily important subtext to a given scene that doesn't have action or explicit plot development.