
Why don’t our brains explode at movie cuts? - subnaught
http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/why-dont-our-brains-explode-at-movie-cuts/
======
sp332
Making cuts so that you don't notice them is an art.
[https://vimeo.com/channels/everyframeapainting/122702786](https://vimeo.com/channels/everyframeapainting/122702786)

Edit: another video
[https://vimeo.com/channels/everyframeapainting/113439313](https://vimeo.com/channels/everyframeapainting/113439313)

~~~
getsat
Thanks for the link. I had seen some of Kurosawa's films but was unable to
pinpoint why they felt so different from modern films.

~~~
sp332
Another from the same channel, not related to cuts though
[https://vimeo.com/118078262](https://vimeo.com/118078262)

------
gclaramunt
Our brains don't "explode" at movie cuts because there's years of evolution
about the techniques that makes a cut appear fluid, essentially keeping a
continuity of the movement and position of the main subject of the action.

The photographer and the editor take particular pains to ensure that. E.g. if
you "cross the line" between two actors, you'll see a "jump" because the
actors will swap positions. If you cut in a movement, the next shot will have
to show something continuing the movement, or the cut is done when the object
stops or is hidden behind something.

That makes the cuts a fluid motion even if the whole scene changes. If you
break the rules, even if the scene is the same, you'll feel a "jump" between
the shots and it will feel unnatural

( For the interested, here is a very detailed description of the common
"idioms": [http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Film-Language-Daniel-
Arijon/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Film-Language-Daniel-
Arijon/dp/187950507X) )

~~~
snarkyturtle
Moreover continuities nowadays are extremely distracting, at least if you know
what to look for. Some things like if a chess board completely disappears for
a scene pops out to me:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeMM4hCdDyk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeMM4hCdDyk)

~~~
anigbrowl
Argh. I fully support camera and phone manufacturers adding a feature whereby
it stops recording the minute someone tries to point it at a TV. WTF.

~~~
freehunter
It's the analog hole. If I upload The Simpsons to YouTube, it's taken down
immediately. If I upload a video recording of a TV showing The Simpsons, it
needs to be taken down by hand.

I also sometimes take still pictures of my computer monitor because there's no
good way to take a screenshot of a PC and send it in a picture message to
someone without uploading to Imgur or Dropbox or something, which takes time
compared to just snapping a pic.

What _I_ would fully support is having TVs with good enough screens that you
can't tell the difference between recording them and recording a real-life
scene.

~~~
anigbrowl
But there are literally millions of Simpsons clips on Youtube. Nobody minds as
long as they're very short clips.

It's not the look of the screen that bugs me, it's the inability of the person
to hold the phone still and stop talking. I suspect that what's _supposed_ to
be happening in this scene is that Ace Ventura has swept all the pieces off
the chessboard in an excess of accusatory zeal, but I can't tell if there's
any sound of chess pieces hitting the floor because the guy keeps talking and
waving the phone around.

~~~
freehunter
Yes, people in general are terrible when they're recorded. It's not as bad in
real life, in the moment, but watching it on a video is awful. I recorded a
fantastic event once that was completely mindblowing. Could not watch the
video because everything that happened seemed so awful. Our minds are machines
of context and in-the-moment stimulus that has up performing actions that
don't hold up to repeated or out-of-context viewing. That's why actors are so
highly trained and respected, because even pretending to be _yourself_ is
impossible for most people. Recordings are just so unnatural that we have to
get ourselves into a different mindset before hitting the red button.

------
piptastic
Humans have been able to instantaneously change their field of view long
before films/television.

Just throw a blanket over your head, or close your eyes and turn around and
open them.

We evolved long ago to process new imagery and quickly react to it.

~~~
post-it-note
Not only that, but in order to make intelligent inferences from multiple
points of observation (a memory of an aggressive animal and the aftermath,
combined with a present visualization of a different but similar aggressive
animal, and knowledge of one's offspring nearby).. All of these things can be
visualized in the mind as a sequence of environmental, first person
perspective imagery, with emotional associations and connected knowledge, that
comes in the form of feelings, and constructed symbolic representations of
reality.

We put things together almost instantaneously without even understanding how
we fill in the gaps. The same mechanism occurs when one jumps to conclusions,
or understands how one line of a mathematical proof implies that the next line
can now be read. It's all absurd and has the potential to be brain exploding
when you really sit and try to think about what makes you think that gap is
totally filled, but it's also not, because memories and feelings like
'obvious', and also because it's a big part of science to question those gaps.

Brains are weird though, even with all the explanation and science and
repetition and predictability in scientific knowledge, it is still 'awe'
invoking.

------
codingdave
I've noticed in recent years that I really cannot parse out quick cuts in
movies anymore. For example, I have a very hard time following action
sequences in the Marvel movies, and the Transformers movies were just a jumble
to me. I mostly don't even bother with trying to watch movies anymore.

I'm probably just getting old...

~~~
moskie
These action sequences being a jumbled up mess is a feature, I think. It
allows the action on-screen to be visually sloppy and imprecise (thus easier
to make), and the audience makes up for it (subconsciously) with their
imagination filling in the imperfections with something even better than what
they could put on film.

At least, that's what I tell myself. Perhaps we're both just getting old.

~~~
MAGZine
You're exactly right. Not only is the ASL (average shot length) decreasing
over time _, but flurries of quick shots are great for hiding action that
doesn 't actually happen. It's definitely can be used as a crutch. Not always,
it can accelerate the feeling of action, but often feels lazy, and a
disservice to the viewer.

_e.g. Citizen Kane had an ASL of 12 seconds. Transformers: Dark side of the
moon? 3.4seconds!
[http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php](http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php)
Average ASL in 2006 was actually 2.9s.

~~~
Jtsummers
Comparing to Citizen Kane seems unfair as it's not an action movie. So here
are some other action movies. (NB: There are multiple entries for some of
these but I'm not listing them all).

    
    
      Die Hard      4.5
      Die Hard 2    3.1
      Die Hard 3    1.8
      Armageddon    2.2  -- at least he's ben consistently on the quick side
      Total Recall  3.7  -- original, 1990
      Robocop       3.7  -- original
      Haywire       6

And I keep trying to search for movies they don't have in the database. So
certainly for action movies (1980+), at least for some popular ones, the ASL
isn't out of the ordinary.

But then I searched for Alfred Hitchcock and got some interesting results.
This database has many duplicate entries and some wildly different values. The
Skin Game had 3 entries at about the same time (17.1, 17.3, 17.4). However,
Rear Window has an entry at 3.7 and another at 8.8, and several at 10.5. I
suppose I need to read about their methodology to understand why there's so
much variance.

~~~
etcet
It's crowd sourced. They have software that returns timestamps when you click
a button and you use it when watching a movie. It's definitely error prone and
the data should be treated as if you got it from Mechanical Turk.

There's so much data in movies that is really hard to get automatically. We
should really be digitizing and cataloging old films if we're able. It's hard
to find films in the public domain but this is what we should be doing with
them: 4k scanning and digitizing. Perform a rough automatic restoration on all
frames and audio then put it all online, every frame in 4k, and accept pull
requests. During this process all shots and scenes should be accounted for.
They are timed with actors and locations marked. Subtitles should have crucial
metadata such as the actor speaking the lines. Music and musicians should be
identified.

------
regehr
Often, the sound from the scene following the cut precedes the cut itself.
There must be a name for this technique and a reason for it-- anyone know?

~~~
xtagon
It's called a J-cut: [http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/18690/sound-
of-a-n...](http://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/18690/sound-of-a-next-
scene-starts-one-moment-earlier-than-video)

~~~
BFay
Cool, I never knew there was a name for that. Watching lost, I would always
know a flashback was coming up when I started to hear the ambient noise of the
next scene. (Or maybe there was a special flashback sound effect? Some kind of
swoosh? Having trouble remembering...)

~~~
danielweber
There was a definite rumble for flashbacks. Kind of like a muffled jet engine
(perhaps exactly that on purpose).

------
pjc50
We don't see a continuous view of the world anyway; eye saccades blur vision
but the brain edits it out.

~~~
raverbashing
It also compensates the fact that we have a very near field of high-res
vision, that is constantly pointed at a different direction, by still keeping
the big picture in mind.

------
lotsofmangos
Movies do not follow the logic of external sensory input, they follow the
logic of internal reflection on memory that gives rise to dream and story.

------
regehr
Watching TV/movies is definitely something that we learn to do, though most of
us learned so early that we no longer remember it.

Source: anecdotal evidence from friends/relatives who observed childrens'
reactions when first exposed to TV/movies when they were relatively old.

~~~
scott_s
The article mentions an experiment where they showed short movies with local
actors to people in a village in Turkey who had never seen movies or
television. They found that people processed the cuts with no issues.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
Yeah, it's likely that the state of the visual cortex suffers a hard reset on
the cut, but we integrate our experience at a higher level (semantic, not pure
visual). It's the higher level that dictates our overall response. It might be
one of the reasons why we possess intelligence and awareness.

------
SilasX
I've wondered something similar about movies: why do they even make sense to
our social brains?

Throughout history, you'd never be in a position where there would be two
people having a confidential conversation in which you weren't an active part.
How does the monkey brain react to that? The closest thing might be e.g. two
village elders discussing your fate in front of you, such that you know you
can't participate.

But then, if that's how your brain frames it, why would you enjoy that at all?
It would throw off all the indicators of you being low status.

~~~
qbrass
>Throughout history, you'd never be in a position where there would be two
people having a confidential conversation in which you weren't an active part.

It's literally how you learned to speak.

~~~
SilasX
It's part of how you learned to speak, but the full process still requires
your interaction, which the movie doesn't allow. In any case, _after_ that
developmental stage, it's a very atypical situation.

------
molbioguy
I think the fact that the movie represents a part of your visual field makes
it understandable -- the surrounding setting is stable. If everything around
you changed instantly, your brain would have a hard time adjusting. Might be
interesting when more sophisticated VR is available.

------
desidio
One thing I noticed while watching the movie Birdman was the long shots for
the scenes instead of multiple short takes. I felt uneasy the whole movie
because of this, maybe my brain got used to the short takes.

------
JoeAltmaier
Because we blink; its normal for our brain to process rapidly-changing scenes.

~~~
logicallee
yes, or dart our eyes. I think this is the answer.

But the author still has an interesting perspective, as obviously to an extent
we immerse ourselves in what is shown on screen, even though we always know
we're outside of it. (It's on a screen at a fixed length from us.) That is
something evolution never made us do.

------
anigbrowl
We already have a name for this in film theory; it's called _suture_ , our
ability to mentally 'stitch things together. The reason people typically
ignore drastic changes in continuity (eg the example of different color
scarves etc.) is that we don't process the whole scene at once; even in fairly
static shots we have regions of interest - if it's two people talking to each
other without much movement, then you'll look at their eyes - and in shots
involving motion, wherever in the frame the motion ends in one shot will be
where you'll focus your attention following a cut.

Commercials exploit this all the time. Next time you watch TV, squint and/or
turn off the sound to break your connection to the semantic content of the
advert, and try to just look at it as a series of random shapes and colors.
Frequently, the most dynamic shot in the commercial is followed by a
relatively static shot of the product, with the product situated at wherever
the greatest movement in the frame was (typically lower left or right third in
live action).

This is especially true for detergent and personal care products that need to
be picked out from crowded shelves at the supermarket. It's also why locally
produced commercials look cheap - there's usually no sense of movement within
the frame, just a series of images that don't connect up visually and so leave
only a random fragmentary impression in the mind.

Startup owners, this is often also a problem for you: it's really easy to make
a video these days and everyone wants to tap into the feel of those Apple
commercials, but it requires a lot more than a cute acoustic guitar track and
footage of people looking happy! When you opt for a video presentation rather
than text copy on your landing page, you're asking the visitor to process a
_lot_ more information a lot more rapidly. If you don't have a cohesive visual
as well as semantic narrative, then your video can end up making the same bad
impression as the stereotypical 'geocities' web page does for static
presentation. Put another way, if your shots don't link up or your sound isn't
good, then you will never make it past people's visual cortex.

Your semantic context rides into people's brains on the back of the visual and
audible context you create for it. _You_ can watch your product video
endlessly and feel good about it, because it's an expression of _your_
semantic map. People who don't have that semantic map already in place (ie
everyone else) won't be able to put it together if you just give them the
pieces in video form but don't show how they cohere. You find it illuminating
to test your product video by playing it on a large TV to small children or
even pets. Animals will watch TV _if it seems like something is happening_ ;
if you can't hold the attention of a dog or cat, then I guarantee you that
whatever it is you're trying to explain to your human viewers isn't getting
through to most of them.

------
randyrand
Try sightline the chair in VR. Real life cuts are shocking.

