Skärt brus pulsar allt mer på bio

Ett underbart abstract till en artikel*:

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.

New York Times sammanfattar utmärkt forskningen som visar att Hollywood-filmer alltmer pulserar i "skärt brus", bl.a. genom att scener som är lika långa klustras tillsammans (många korta scener tillsammans först, sedan flera långa scener på det) och skapar ett fraktalt mönster som tydligen synkar bra med hur vi tänker:

This mounting synchrony between movie pace and the bouncing ball of the mind's inner eye may help explain why today's films manage to seize and shackle audience attention so ruthlessly and can seem more lifelike and immediate than films of the past...

Kolla också den tillhörande grafen, där man ser att Back to the Future uppvisar perfekt skärt brus, medan Walk the Line från senare år, rätt mycket suger.


* James E. Cutting et al, "Attention and the Evolution of Hollywood Film", Psychological Science, doi:10.1177/0956797610361679