Study: Why We Can't Resist Big Action Movies

(Feb. 23) -- Any moviegoer could attest to the fact that today's big hits, such as "Avatar" or "Sherlock Holmes," are faster-paced than the films of 50 years ago. But Cornell University psychologist James Cutting and his group have quantified just how much faster and found something even more revealing. It's not just that individual camera shots are shorter. In a new paper in Psychological Science, Cutting and his team uncover an underlying pattern -- a sort of secret sauce -- to modern blockbusters.

What it shows is that even the snobbiest cineast shouldn't feel bad for getting wrapped up in a schlocky popcorn flick. The way those films are made practically guarantees we can't turn away.

The pattern Cutting's group found isn't unique to movies. Scientists have also seen it turn up in traffic flow, star emissions, river discharge and, more relevantly, studies on the ebb and flow of human attention. The work suggests that the editing of modern box-office hits may actually conform to the brain's naturally shifty focus. "There's a particular pattern in how our attention wanders in and out over time," Cutting explains. "What we found is that sort of wavering pattern is the same that seems to be evolving in movies."

As a starting point, the team broke down 150 movies spanning seven decades. Sticking to the hits, the researchers studied the top five movies of every fifth year from 1935 to 2005, dividing them into five genres: action, adventure, animation, comedy and drama. Next, they segmented each film into individual digital stills, compiling 165,000 frames in all. Finally, graduate student Jordan DeLong built an algorithm that could scan these frames to detect cuts from one camera shot to the next.

The algorithm wasn't perfect – DeLong estimates that it was 95 percent accurate -- so he recruited help. "We forced undergraduates to go through and actually confirm or deny whether it was a cut or not," DeLong says. In the end, it took between 15 and 36 hours to analyze a movie and extract the desired data.

"What we did was measure the length of each shot," Cutting explains. No one in the group was surprised that shots are, on average, shorter than they were 70 years ago. But the extent of the difference can be striking. For example, the 2005 hit "King Kong" consists of 3,099 shots; 1950's "Seven Year Itch," only 231.

Things got most interesting when the team analyzed how the duration of each shot related to the others. The researchers identified an oscillation that conforms to a distribution pattern found in nature, known as 1/f noise. Psychologists have linked the 1/f noise distribution to reaction times and attention in people. Now Cutting's group has detected it in Hollywood editing patterns.

The effect, Cutting says, is that the movies have gotten better at keeping viewers interested. "It's hard for us to hold our attention, but if we are presented with something new, we can refocus our attention quite easily," Cutting says. "What movies are doing is every time they present you with a new shot, they are refocusing our attention."

Action flicks are particularly good at the trick, whereas the film noir classics the group analyzed don't conform at all. Cutting cites this as proof that the pattern has no relation to whether or not a given film is actually good. "There are a lot of bad films that follow the 1/f structure," DeLong says. His least favorite among the 150 is Adam Sandler's "The Longest Yard." "There's a football sequence that follows a complete 1/f action-packed distribution. It's terrible, but I watched it."

Cutting, for his part, felt the effects in "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith." "I think it was the worst of the 'Star Wars' prequels. But it followed the pattern pretty closely.

"I often find myself saying, 'Why in the world am I watching this?' " he adds. "But at the same time, I'm absolutely riveted to the screen."