Triangle

Broad issues
Have attention spans shortened in recent years?
Have those shortened attention spans affected cinema?
What audiences are hollywood films aimed at?
Studies that overap
Studies into general attention spans having shortened. (Post MTV, post WWW)
Amount of cuts have increased in films over the years.
Target audiences of  hollywood cinema. Has it changed?

Presentation

Working Title

How have shortened attention spans affected Hollywood and me, personally, as a film maker?

Three Key Questions

How have shortened attention spans affected Hollywood?

How have films evolved in terms of content?

How have shortened attention spans affected me personally as a film maker?

Key Texts

The Solaris Effect

TV Living: television, culture, and everyday life. - David Gauntlett

Media Studies 2.0 - David Gauntlett

Case Studies

Solaris (Film)

Stalker (Film)

Lawrence Of Arabia (Film)

The Avengers (Film)

Spider-man (Film)

Cloverfield (Film)

Things to look in to

Editing
Have shots shortened over the years in Hollywood to keep the audiences interest?
Dialogue
Is there less dialogue and more action in recent films?
Characters
Are audiences more interested in action than the dialogue and characters.
Narration
Have storylines been dumbed down in order for audiences to understand plots quicker?

Have shortened attention spans affected media, or has the media affected attention spans?

Film trailers
Food at the cinema

Is cinema more about entertainment than intellectual engagement with the content on screen

Digital film making - have CGI and special effects become prioritised over gripping narrative and story.

Are adult movies becoming more similar to children movies to keep the attention of it's audience?

Look into ADHD?

Literature Review

‘The Good the Bad and the Multiplex - What’s Wrong With Modern Movies?’  – By Mark Kermode (Book)

This book specifically talks about modern day multiplexes.

‘The Shallows’ – By Nicholas Carr (Book)

This book looks at how the internet may have affected users’ brains and how it may have reshaped the way people think. He suggests that the internet has affected the way people think as books did in terms of focusing on one thing for an extended period of time and “Shielded you from distraction”. He argues that the internet has done the opposite. As the internet is a multimedia system, it combines different platforms such as text, audio, videos etc. It has the ability to notify us on new information, which allows it to distract us from what we’re doing to check the most recent updates on which ever site it’s notifying us about.

‘Digital Filmmaking: The Changing Art and Craft of Making Motion Pictures – By Thomas A. Ohanian (Book)

Resources

http://socialtimes.com/attention-spans-have-dropped-from-12-minutes-to-5-seconds-how-social-media-is-ruining-our-minds-infographic_b86479

http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WqYKJan7z3QC&oi=fnd&pg=PP7&dq=cinema+and+attention+spans&ots=it6KkV2eq7&sig=DmOz32-eXut2iuiEr_N1dbBpg3w#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6074.html

http://sensesofcinema.com/?s=long+take+cinema

http://www.film-philosophy.com/index.php/f-p

http://ame2.asu.edu/faculty/hs/pubs/icassp2k-final.pdf

http://anthropology.usf.edu/faculty/personal/publications/bird%20godwin%20film%20in%20classroom.pdf

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/01/barry-norman-filmgoers-fruit-flies

http://mubi.com/topics/shot-length-and-attention-spans

http://www.fastcocreate.com/3017108/you-need-to-see-this-17-minute-film-set-entirely-on-a-teens-computer-screen

http://phys.org/news185781475.html

http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~jec7/pubs/cuttingetalpsychsci10.pdf

http://www.cinemetrics.lv/cutting_on_salt.php

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Youtube%20Attention%20Span

http://www.insurance.lloydstsb.com/personal/general/mediacentre/homehazards_pr.asp

Internet - http://www.simplifydigital.co.uk/faqs/fibre-optic-broadband-deals-providers-and-availability/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt_NwowMTcg
http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=AsZ1R3l96FEC&oi=fnd&pg=PP9&dq=the+shallows+nicholas+carr&ots=34bdbaFp-s&sig=1UrujLYNE90UIU_lRfZCfRRH_rw#v=onepage&q=the%20shallows%20nicholas%20carr&f=false

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/3522781/Stress-of-modern-life-cuts-attention-spans-to-five-minutes.html

http://www.thewire.com/technology/2013/08/internets-attention-span-video-quickly-shrinking/68114/

http://www.cinemetrics.lv/

http://videopia.org/index.php/read/articles-mainmenu-229/366-film-analysis-average-shot-length.html

http://filmmakermagazine.com/58685-spanned-attentions/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt_NwowMTcg

http://wgbhnews.org/post/our-multitasking-romance

http://www.intelligencesquared.com/events/eric-schmidt-new-digital-age/

http://nofilmschool.com/2012/11/attention-deficit-audiences-new-media-filmmaking/

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xGbxw6wihQ4C&pg=PA23&lpg=PA23&dq=how+has+film+making+changed+over+time&source=bl&ots=kcwo4I-3zq&sig=mF1VDSM_Ltdmpsdn5ahGM7hFGJA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X4vcUu7mBOjS0QXJ2IGQAQ&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=changed&f=false

http://biblioteka.teatr-obraz.ru/files/file/English_cinema/The_Solaris_Effect.pdf