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Comment by simias | Hacker News Reader

I've noticed that the latest trend on social networks is to have ultra-sped up mini-videos, I think because it's popular on Instagram or TikTok (or both?). It's as if our entire civilization had suddenly caught ADHD.

Frankly maybe I'm old school but I found the Youtube version a lot more palatable, I could understand what was going on much butter, take a few seconds to understand the how the contraptions worked. When I watch one of these shortened ultra-edited versions I feel like I'm holding by breath.

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The case study of the ADHD trend in general population is Mission Impossible IV. It is filmed by shoulder cameras and the mounter is just playing piano on the console: there isn’t a shot longer than 4s in the entire movie, and the average of changing camera angle is 0,7s. All you can get is an impression of the main character on any given image, but you can’t rest and you can’t contemplate. This is especially comical in romantic scenes because it makes you wonder how they came up with this idea of fast-paced romantic dialogues. Compare that to pre-2000 movies, even The Gremlins is ultra-slow and makes you wonder whether we were actually slow-minded pre-2000.

Alfred Hitchcock films would be agony to that crowd. The opening shot for his film "Rope" clocks in at about 9 and a half minutes. All in a single shot!

Opening shot? That movie only had one shot ;)

Several shots, planned out carefully so it could be edited to look like one shot.

Russian Ark (2002) (Russian: Русский ковчег) is a single 96-minute steadicam shot, and it has over 2,000 actors and three orchestras in it. It was recorded directly to a hard drive carried behind the camera operator, which could hold 100 minutes.

thus the winking emoji. thank you for reminding me that I need to watch Russian Ark again though!

And then watch the 'making of'. Also fascinating.

It was shot in segments but edited to look like one shot.

Back then, there were no such studio cameras to continuously record to film reels over a certain length.

The film camera magazine had a capacity of up to 10 minutes, so Hitchcock could film the scene all in one shot.

> there isn’t a shot longer than 4s in the entire movie

is this hyperbole? Genuinely asking.

- The pictures they make these days are all MTV. Cut, cut, cut, cut. The opening shot of Welles's Touch of Evil was six and a half minutes long.
- Six and a half minutes?

- Three or four, anyway

Seems like hyperbole. I just looked at Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol (aka Mission Impossible IV).

In the first two minutes there were multiple shots of over 10 seconds.

And at the 0:14:44 mark there is a 24 second shot.

Parent here. I admit this wasn’t from a scientific method, it is just that when I saw it in the theater, I suddenly understood why it was annoying, and started counting from there. Maybe there were longer shots earlier in the movie (although I’ve tried watching it recently and the first scenes were cut this way), maybe the average isn’t 0.7 which was a ballpark figure based on my counting.

Sorry for being probably wrong on the exactness of the figures, I thought the background idea was important, that pre-2000 movies were slower, and there has been an acceleration to the point of ridicule, and it is probable that directors dialled down from the extremely-fast-paced style because it didn’t find its audience. Yes, more recent movies didn’t go faster than that one, it was really a style that had its apogee in that movie.

I honestly don't think it makes a good case study to be honest. Assuming what you say is true, I would still chalk up the shots/cuts to the artistic direction of the director/crew over anything to do with ADHD.

I think this falls apart even more when you compare Ghost Protocol to the most recent MI film, Fallout, which is the highest rated and grossing MI movie in the series. Just from an artistic perspective, it's shot very differently than Ghost Protocol.

I think this is an exaggeration. Short/Long takes are an artistic decision. We have recent movies that are a few long takes (sometime pretending to be a single take) 1917, Birdman, Russian Ark (true single take) all shot in recent years. Same with TV: True Detective has a famous long take scene, Mr. Robot, BCS.

A little cheer for Russian Ark. I liked it. Done as said, in one take.

Spot the bit well into the film where the guy nearly drops the book, you can feel the oncoming-but-narrowly-averted pain.

> The case study of the ADHD trend in general population is Mission Impossible IV. It is filmed by shoulder cameras and the mounter is just playing piano on the console: there isn’t a shot longer than 4s in the entire movie, and the average of changing camera angle is 0,7s.

Seems like hyperbole. I just looked at Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol (aka Mission Impossible IV).

In the first two minutes there were multiple shots of over 10 seconds.

And at the 0:14:44 mark there is a 24 second shot.

Yeah, I cannot stand the trend of sped-up videos. Especially those "life hack" ones where people fold their laundry super fast or that kind of thing. I want to take the time to ingest what I'm seeing. If it's only enjoyable/watchable at 4x speed, maybe it's not worth paying attention to to begin with?

Of course time-lapses and stuff like that are intentionally sped up, but for something like an instructional video, it's going to be challenging to take real meaning from it.

In general it seems that people want to see some "neat" thing, click Like, and move onto the next interesting thing. For me, I don't relate. I like to dive into my interests and invest some real time into them. Otherwise my perception of the world and the things around me is super shallow. In fact, when I want information, I usually want text and images, not video/audio.

Further, I don't find it very rewarding to watch those sort of "clickbait" clips. I understand it can be satisfying in the short term, but I find almost zero need for this type of entertainment. I sense the primal nature of it and find it unappealing. I also feel that those primal "entertainment" desires are being exploited for clicks/likes/advertising, and I prefer to be compensated by greater value than relatively-shallow time-wasting if I am being exploited :)

Watched both, and it was clearer to me to go through the sped up version three times than watching the whole 3 min on youtube.

Most of us are used to faster paced information delivery, and we still go back to what we missed or want to check more in detail.

That’s what we deal with day in day out, and I don’t think we end up with an understanding that is shallower than when stopping at each frame for 5 seconds.

I find it sad it becomes some “kids these days” rant material when it’s just a matter of preferred watching pace.

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