This is very noticeable. Watching movies from the 1970s is positively serene for me, vs the shot time on modern films often leaves me wonder, "wait, what just happened there?"

And I'm someone who is fine playing fast action video games. Can't imagine what it's like if you're older or have sensory processing issues.

My brain processes too slow for modern action movies.

I can tell what's going on, but I always end up feeling agitated.

I'm okay with watching the majority of action movies, but I distinctly remember watching this fight scene in a Bourne movie and not having a clue what was going on. The constant camera changes, short shot length, and shaky cam, just confused the hell out of me.

https://youtu.be/uLt7lXDCHQ0?si=JnVMjmu0WgN5Jr5e&t=70

I thought it was brilliant. Notice there’s no music. It’s one of the most brutal action scenes I know. Brutal in the sense of how honest it felt about direct combat.

I'm glad we're finally getting away from the 00's shaky cam era.

Obligatory: Liam Neeson jumps over a fence in 6 seconds, with 14 cuts[1].

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCKhktcbfQM

I'd like to fact check this amazing comment on that video, but it would require watching Taken 3:

> Some of y'all may find how awful this editing gets pretty interesting: I did an Average Shot Length (ASL) for many movies for a recent project, and just to illustrate bad overediting in action movies, I looked at Taken 3 (2014) in its extended cut.

> The longest shot in the movie is the last shot, an aerial shot of a pier at sunset ending the movie as the end credits start rolling over them. It clocks in at a runtime of 41 seconds and is, BY FAR, the longest shot in the movie.

> The next longest is a helicopter establishing shot of the daughter's college after the "action scene" there a little over an hour in, at 5 seconds.

> Otherwise, the ASL for Taken 3 (minus the end credits/opening logos), which has a runtime of 1:49:40, 4,561 shots in all (!!!), is 1.38 SECONDS . For comparison, Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) (minus end credits/opening logos) is 3:50:59, with 3163 shots overall, giving it an ASL of 4.40 seconds, and this movie, at 1 hour 50 minutes, has north of 4,561 for an ASL of 1.38 seconds?!?! Taken 3 has more shots in it than Zack Snyder's Justice League, a movie more than double its length...

> To further illustrate how ridiculous this editing gets, the ASL for Taken 3's non-action scenes is 2.27 seconds. To reiterate, this is the non-action scenes. The "slow scenes." The character stuff. Dialogue scenes. The stuff where any other movie would know to slow down. 2.27 SECONDS For comparison, Mad Max: Fury Road (minus end credits/opening logos) has a runtime of 1:51:58, with 2646 shots overall, for an ASL of 2.54 seconds. TAKEN 3'S "SLOW SCENES" ARE EDITED MORE AGGRESSIVELY THAN MAD MAX: FURY ROAD!

> And Taken 3's action scenes? Their ASL is 0.68 seconds!

> If it weren't for the sound people on the movie, Taken 3 wouldn't be an "action movie". It'd be abstract art.

It's worth noting that Taken 3 has a 13% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is well in to "it's so bad it's good" territory. I don't think the rapid cuts went unnoticed.

Yeah, this sequence is a meme commonly cited to show "choppy modern editing"

More chops than an MF DOOM track.

The top comment makes a really good point though:

"He's 68. I'm guessing they stitched it together like this because "geriatric spends 30 seconds scaling chainlink fence then breaks a hip" doesn't exactly make for riveting action flick fare."

Lingering shots are horrible for obscuring things.

Movies have stunt performers.

And Neeson was only 60 when filming Taken 3.

Keanu Reeves was 57-8 when he shot the last John Wick. IIRC Bob Odenkirk was 58 in Nobody. Neeson was 60 in Taken 3.

There ways to shoot an action scene with an aging star that doesn't involve 14 cuts in 4 seconds. You just have to care about your craft.

Is it Liam Neeson, or his stunt double?

Enjoy some Tarkovsky.

The first time I watched The Rise of Skywalker it was just too much being thrown at my brain. The second and third watch was much easier to process of course. I'm a big fan of older movies and have noticed the shot length difference anecdotally - Lawrence of Arabia and Ben Hur are two of my favorites. So I suppose it all makes sense to me now that there is actually a comparison measurement that has been completed.

Even if the shots are very short you still need coherency between shots, and they don't seem to have tackled that problem yet.

How many of those 2.5 second "shots" are back-and-forths between two perspectives (ex. of two characters talking to one another) where each perspective is consistent with itself? This would be extremely relevant for how many seconds of consistent footage are actually needed for an AI-generated "shot" at film-level quality.

Shot length, yes - but the scene stays the same. Getting continuity with just prompts seems not yet figured out.

Maybe it's easy, and you feed continuity stills into the prompt. Maybe it's not, and this will always remain just a more advanced storyboarding technique.

But then again, storyboards are always less about details and more about mood, dialog, and framing.

In 1930 they often literally had a single camera.

Just worth keeping that in mind. You could not just switch between multiple shots like you can today.