Chapter Two - The Change In Cinema

The change in films over the course of time is inevitable. Rapid
technological advancement has not only allowed filmmakers to explore new and exciting possibilities in cinema but has also had a considerable impact on how films are made for mass audiences. The quality of graphics almost seems to define where a film stands on the podium of Hollywood cinema. Cutting edge graphics tend to earn you a little more points when it comes to the rating of a film, purely because it’s more visually pleasing and stimulating, even if the storyline is somewhat lacking. One prime example is the film Avatar, which was a film that creator James Cameron said "had to wait for the technology to catch up to create". With advanced CGI dominating the film entirety, it was reliant on sporting the most recent and remarkable special effects which were used to create over half the cast and almost every setting in the film. It's a film created to be visually stunning, with little room for the viewer to use their imagination. Every scene is visually stimulating, with almost magical settings and creatures to which you are constantly being introduced to throughout the film. When you look at the storyline, though, it’s not exactly original. It has been compared to the films Pocahontas and Fern Gully in terms of the story line and character roles, but has earned the respect and approval through its advanced special effects.

The techniques used in creating what cannot be seen in everyday life have certainly changed drastically over the years. Comparing the effects used in King Kong (1933) to those in the remake King Kong (2005) there is an evident and drastic change in techniques and approach to creating the large, fantastical creature. Though impressive at the time of its introduction, the stop motion, as used by the 1933 version of King Kong, seems to be becoming a lost art, overshadowed by the ever increasing  popularity of computer generated images, could seem “inferior”, as the images presented to us aren’t “realistic” or “believable” enough; this raises the question whether the modern day audience would voluntarily pay to see the 1933 version of King Kong in cinemas as they did with the 2005 remake, which took in around $50,130,145  on its opening weekend in just the USA alone. The smooth motions of the CGI Kong are rather more believable than the movements of the stop motion Kong, which arguably leave more room for the viewer to use their imagination when convincing themselves that what they’re seeing on screen is successful enough in portraying a massive wild beast for them to become engaged with the film. Audiences nowadays, I fear, would be a lot harder to satisfy due to the spoils of modern day technology, allowing filmmakers to create virtually anything they want via the medium of computers, to such an extent, in some circumstances, only a trained eye can differentiate between what is real and what is not. It seems to be that the on screen visuals trump even the storylines to films these days. You can decorate even the blandest of narratives with false explosions, mystical sets and allow the characters to do whatever they so choose, whether it’s flying, tossing cars or wiping out an entire rainforest with a sneeze. So long as the images projected onto the cinema screen are exciting, rapid and fresh, it seems as though an audience could walk away feeling satisfied with what they paid for, even though, underneath the shining exterior, they’ve just watched the same superhero movie that they did last year, only this time the protagonist goes by a different name and dresses in different palette of colours.

Though changes in technology are accountable for the change in way movies are made technically, has it had an impact on the storylines and narrative structure we see in today’s Hollywood blockbusters or are the changes due to something else?
Have the narratives and overall construction of films changed over the years to allow audiences with shortened attention spans not to get bored during the duration of a film, the fear of any filmmaker, surely?

            “There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness.”

- Frank Capra

Action sequences are the climax of many films, with an array of quick cuts, surreal circumstances and occurrences that are rarities in the real world for many of us, such as car chases, explosions, gun fights etc. This is what the majority of audiences are really stimulated by and what they expect. But during the build-up to such events, it’s important to keep an audience glued to the screen and not to let their concentration and attention drift from the story unfolding before them.

It’s no secret that the first objective of most Hollywood films it to entertain their audience, through whatever means necessary. It’s about giving the audience what they want.

“Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union.” - Samuel Goldwyn

For the most part, it would seem that creating an “entertaining” film is about giving the audience what they want. Contemporary film is considered a form of escapism, much like reading is considered to be, allowing an audience to slip away into a different land, ushering out any worries or heavy thoughts and surrendering to the world brought before you on a screen. The main aim of Hollywood cinema now seems to be to allow its passive audience to sit and accept what is there are being delivered on screen and most audiences accept that, as Hollywood film profits reflect. But are these films tending to the audience’s needs, as a society of people who need instant gratification, or are these films themselves contributing to the reshaping and rewiring of their audiences brains? 

Chapter One - Attention Spans

Statistics show that the average attention span has decreased over many years, but in more recent years, there’s been a rapid decline in attention spans, with the average sustained attention span falling from 12 minutes to 5 minutes in adolescents in just 10 years, and the focused attention span falling from 12 seconds to 8 seconds in just 3 years. Reports show that the older generations have longer attention spans than the younger, which strongly suggests that the shortening of attention spans is largely due to media consumption, and the increasing convenience due to improving technologies, to receive that media.
It’s been heavily suggested that the internet is to blame for the declining of attention spans over the past years, especially during more recent years with its ever-increasing popularity and accessibility. We can now access the internet almost anywhere by using our computers, laptops, tablets and even mobile phones. Not only can we receive virtually any information we desire on the go, but we can get that information almost instantly.

Nicholas Carr, the author of “The Shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains” suggests that by using the internet we are actually rewiring and changing the way our brains work. A study carried out by a professor of psychiatry, Gary Small, which involved comparing the brains of people who regularly used the internet and people who didn’t, it showed that after just 5 hours of surfing, the internet  significantly changed the way the users were using their brains. “Five hours on the Internet and the naive subjects had already rewired their brains,”

Restrictions on social media sites aren’t uncommon, with Twitter only allowing you to post using 140 characters, Vine allowing the user to create just a 6 second video, Instagram following the video trend with a slightly longer 15 second restriction and YouTube allowing you to upload a video up to 15 minutes by default.

“In an ideal world, I would sit down at my computer, do my work, and that would be that. In this world, I get entangled in surfing and an hour disappears.” – Roger Ebert

“When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.” – Nicholas Carr