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Comment by laurent92 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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