Reaction times exhibit a spectral patterning known as 1/f, and these patterns can be thought of as reflecting time-varying changes in attention. We investigated the shot structure of Hollywood films to determine if these same patterns are found. We parsed 150 films with release dates from 1935 to 2005 into their sequences of shots and then analyzed the pattern of shot lengths in each film. Autoregressive and power analyses showed that, across that span of 70 years, shots became increasingly more correlated in length with their neighbors and created power spectra approaching 1/f. We suggest, as have others, that 1/f patterns reflect world structure and mental process. Moreover, a 1/f temporal shot structure may help harness observers' attention to the narrative of a film.

We measured 160 English-language films released from 1935 to 2010 and found four changes. First, shot lengths have gotten shorter, a trend also reported by others. Second, contemporary films have more motion and movement than earlier films. Third, in contemporary films shorter shots also have proportionately more motion than longer shots, whereas there is no such relation in older films. And finally films have gotten darker. That is, the mean luminance value of frames across the length of a film has decreased over time. We discuss psychological effects associated with these four changes and suggest that all four linear trends have a single cause: Filmmakers have incrementally tried to exercise more control over the attention of filmgoers. We suggest these changes are signatures of the evolution of popular film; they do not reflect changes in film style.

The structure of Hollywood film has changed in many ways over the last 75 years, and much of that change has served to increase the engagement of viewers' perceptual and cognitive processes. We report a new physical measure for cinema-the visual activity index (VAI)-that reflects one of these changes. This index captures the amount of motion and movement in film. We define whole-film VAI as (1-median r), reflecting the median correlation of pixels in pairs of near-adjacent frames measured along the entire length of a film or film sequence. Analyses of 150 films show an increase in VAI from 1935 to 2005, with action and adventure films leading the way and with dramas showing little increase. Using these data and those from three more recent high-intensity films, we explore a possible perceptual and cognitive constraint on popular film: VAI as a function of the log of sequence or film duration. We find that many "queasicam" sequences, those shot with an unsteady camera, often exceed our proposed constraint.

Most films contain many shots knit together by several types of transitions, and by far the most prevalent is the cut. Over the last 70 years, fades and wipes have become increasingly rare. Dissolves have also diminished in frequency but, unlike the others, they remain an important part of the general visual narrative and have shown a small increase in contemporary film. We tracked the usage of dissolves in 150 films released from 1935 to 2005. We found: (a) that after a lull between 1970 and 1990, dissolves have become more numerous, although not nearly so common as during the studio era; (b) that shots surrounding single dissolves are fairly long compared to the median shot lengths of a given film, suggesting visual preparation for scene change before a dissolve, and a re-acceleration after; and (c) that after their nadir, dissolves have increasingly reappeared in clusters reflecting a rebirth of the Hollywood montage. We also discuss the functions and meanings of these montage sequences in the stream of a film's narrative, with more contemporary films focusing on setups, altered mental states, and celebrations rather than older films' focus on travel and time gaps of various sizes.

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