No not another thread on naked chicks and bad language.
Saw Star wars this weekend. At first I thought I was suffering from a bit of ADD as I was regularly distracted by “background” effects.
This happened several times as my attention was diverted to some happening in the background and ended up missing part of the main scene.
As I was thinking about this later I was wondering if there isn’t some effect of the 2D screen that draws one attention to “realistic” happenings in the background that in real life normally wouldn’t grab your attention. IOW are the background “battles” becoming more real than real life background and thus actually distracting? Is it possible to have just to much going on in a scene? Do we “phase” out certain things in the background in real life that we can’t on a movie screen?
The only thing I can compare this to is the “disctraction” of a cell phone conversation. There have been at least one study I’ve heard of that cell phone conversations are more distracting than regular conversations because subconsciencely we can “tune out” a full conversation. However once half teh conversation is missing we have trouble “tuning it out”.
I’m wondering if a similar effect may be taking place onscreen. Then again maybe it’s just me…
Technology is an excuse for those that don’t want to communicate. Before cellphones and IM it was email, before that it it was the land-line telephone, before that it was letters. People who actually care to communicate face-to-face (not always the best means possible for communication, there are times when a conference call or email are better) will make the effort to do so.
People also get this feeling that they HAVE to answer a cell phone call. Why? It’s not a rule anywhere, it’s just that the succumb to this. If I’m in an important face-to-face conversation and my phone rings I shut off the ringer and don’t even look at the caller ID. People who don’t know me are shocked by this, they think I’m nuts for doing this. No, I have just chosen to make my present conversation my priority. If I’m home alone and my phone calls I screen them all the time. If it’s a buddy out drinking or calling for no important reason I let it go to voice mail. No one says I have to answer (though there are actually exceptions to this, like my job), but it is my choice to feel this obligation.
To me blaming the technology for communications problems is like blaming society for kids who misbehave. It’s not just society, it is the people involved: the kids and the parents.
It’s the people involved, not the technology.
As to movies, there’s definitely more crap out there, but a lot of it I enjoy. Most action/adventure movies these days obviously focus around the visual medium, and the acting/plot suffers. Hopefully this will even out, but we’re such a technology driven society these days.
“Most action/adventure movies these days obviously focus around the visual medium, and the acting/plot suffers.”
I’m not actually speaking about putting more “effects” in to make up for poor acting.
I’m actually talking about having too much on the screen. So much so that it becomes a distraction rather than an enhancement. At times during Star wars I felt I was trying to watch multiple fireworks shows simultaneously. In the end I often left a scene feeling like I missed the main picture, like I was watching teh wrong fireworks show adn missed the finale of the one right in front of me.
It all started when those damn Ringling Bros. went to three rings. What’s wrong with only one ring? I watch the center ring and I miss the lion tamer off to the right! I watch the lion tamer and the Chinese acrobat in ring #3 does a quadruple flip and lands on his pinky! Too much, man? And what the hell was wrong with smoke signals, anyway?
I’m wondering if different people have different levels of tolerance for this type of thing. I certainly know people that are incapable of wathcing or doing more than one thing at a time. OTOH I also know people that seem to simple absorb everything on the screen. These are the people that almost always seem to catch errors in the film, mismatches etc etc, that most of us just glaze over.
Certainly each one of has a different tolerance level for “going on’s” on the big screen. I wonder if Star Wars crossed mine.
How about the previous movies? Or similar action/adventure flicks?
The old school Star Wars movies obviously had a lot of background battles going on while you were supposed to focus on the foreground, but due to SFX limitations they always intentionally kept the background stuff a little less focussed. This forced you to focus on the foreground. This isn’t (to my understanding) of natural human ocular perception (aka “vision”) were the whole picture is in focus. So I’m not sure which is more realistic etc.
No I have not noticed this in other films and that is why I brought it up.
I’m wondering if like you said teh background is actually becoming more clear, in fact mroe clear than in real life, and thus distracting.
In a couple of scenes the “main action” actually looked lost in the picture…to me anyway.
It was kinda like…“Wow look at that cool ship…behind that other cool ship…just behind that one ship that’s on fire”. All the while the main character is zooming around in the middle of the screen…and I’m not watching, he dies and the movies over. I’m still looking at the cool ship…way in the background, that is now also on fire plummeting towards planet Xenon.
In the case of Star Wars - III, I don’t think it was an excess of background “noise”, it’s the lack of foreground action/story/character that made that movie blow.
Movies remove our steroscopic vision and we must rely on other visual cues, then, as to what is foreground and background. Usually, what elements are in focus are what the director wants us to hone in on. But with these ‘epic’ battle movies, so much is spent on making the scenes look perfect, it would be a shame to blur it while we’re supposed to be looking at Anakin’s angry face (which looks just like his sad face, happy face, remorseful face…). So the viewer is unable to tune the battle out. But, then again, in SWIII, those battles were the only cool elements of the movie. Oh, except for Yoda saying “Wookie”. That made me laugh.
Technology is an excuse for those that don’t want to communicate. Before cellphones and IM it was email, before that it it was the land-line telephone, before that it was letters. People who actually care to communicate face-to-face (not always the best means possible for communication, there are times when a conference call or email are better) will make the effort to do so.
To me blaming the technology for communications problems is like blaming society for kids who misbehave. It’s not just society, it is the people involved: the kids and the parents.
It’s the people involved, not the technology.
As to movies, there’s definitely more crap out there, but a lot of it I enjoy. Most action/adventure movies these days obviously focus around the visual medium, and the acting/plot suffers. Hopefully this will even out, but we’re such a technology driven society these days.
“When I was your age, movies were called ‘books’” - Grandpa, “The Princess Bride”*
** Excellent action, adventure, comedy, romance, with no special effects (except Andre the Giant)*