Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Can we only really pay attention for 3.5 seconds?

After reading Postman's article on television, I didn't realize how short most shots were in film and TV and I think it's something we never really notice because we have become to accustomed to it. We talked about this in class and I started to think about my favorite movies or movies that I had just recently watched to see if they followed this trend, and it made me think of one of my favorite directors, Wes Anderson.

Wes Anderson is known for having a very distinct directing style and "aesthetic" in all of his films. One of his most prominent styles is long takes/tracking shots. When it was mentioned that each shot only lasts for about 3.5 seconds until moving on to another shot, Anderson's long tracking shots came to mind. I asked myself, "Does Wes Anderson's purposely long takes mean something? Is he trying to go against the status quo? Does this make his films more boring to a general audience?" Then I realized that he "cheats" his way through this long shots by having constant action happen throughout the take to always keep the viewer's eye on the screen.

One of my favorite examples of this is a "parody" commercial of his directing style featuring Mr. Anderson himself. This is essentially one long tracking shot.

I think these long takes has become known as just a directing style that Anderson has chosen, but in the end I still think that certain techniques were used to maintain the audience's attention. Even those who appear different and more unique are still falling back on certain choices that have to be used to make sure that viewers aren't lost or lose interest. 

I'm not a film student and I wouldn't consider myself an expert in film at all, but these are just some things I noticed from watching a lot of the same movies from the same director. 

5 comments:

  1. What is interesting about the 3.5 seconds in most shots in film is that it seems to be transferring over to live entertainment. Last year I went to the DSU awards show and the guest artists, "DaKaBoom" had a similar pace. I remember watching their show and it felt like every 5 seconds they would change songs or make a witty remark about their partner while in the middle of a song. What is most interesting is that fast paced singing drives me crazy, while in film it does not bother me at all.

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  2. A long take, when done right, can be absolutely brilliant in a film. That's why directors as talented as Wes Anderson are so good at it. As you pointed out, the key to a long take is to have so much going on that the audience doesn't get bored. I'd even argue that takes like this are even more entertaining than 4-second frames, because you can watch the same long take a million times over and still find something new, interesting, and often hilarious happening that you didn't notice before. There is one long take I still love watching that is in Joe Wright's Pride & Prejudice that goes through all the different rooms full of people at the Netherfield ball. I never get bored of it! I also absolutely love all of Wes Anderson's long takes, especially in The Grand Budapest Hotel. They will never stop being brilliant to me. So, even though I think that longer takes can be more captivating than short ones, it still says something about how we need constant action to keep our attention on a scene. Is that a bad thing caused by media? I simply think it's our human nature and that new technology just happens to cater to that better.

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    1. I agree with you, long takes are fascinating. I believe they take a lot more skill as a film maker and actors, and that is why we don't see more of them. They are difficult to pull off.

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  3. I really enjoyed watching that clip! Even though it was one really long clip, it was able to stay busy and entertaining! I took multimedia classes all of high school and took a long time studying film and music. And it's true. Nobody really thinks about how short the clips are until you are in front of the screen editing it. And the same principals apply in music. When composing music you try to change keys or tempos every 5 seconds. It is just proven that the most productive music and video is fast paced and changing. Did this happen because people have short attention spans, or did people get short attention spans because of this? It is a catch 22. But I don't think we are ever going to get out of it. I think that eventually the clips are going to have to be shorter and shorter to maintain our attention.

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  4. I am not a film expert by no means either, but I am taking a intro to film and something I noticed is that I think one of the reasons shots are so short is because it is a way of how they edit things. And film makers are artists, why would they stick to just one shot for long periods of time.

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