EDIT BLINDNESS
A quarter go unseen
In a 2008 Edinburgh study, viewers asked to spot edits missed a quarter of cuts between two views of the same scene, and a third when the cut came with sudden movement.
Compare the cutsEvery cut replaces the whole picture.
Film editing does this several times a minute, and most of the time we barely notice. Eye-tracking studies and measurements of hundreds of films show how editors keep it that way, and how the pace has quickened.
- Cut on the movement
- Keep the scene
- Follow the eyes
- How editors hide the join
THE SHORT ANSWER
The story holds
your attention.
Some cuts land during a blink or an eye movement.
Most slip by because you are following the story.
PACE
Shots got shorter
Measuring 160 Hollywood films, Cornell researchers found average shots of about 10 seconds in the 1930s and 1940s, falling below 4 seconds after 2000.
See the numbers
CLOSE-UPS
Big faces, short shots
Across 31,000 shots in 24 films, close-ups were briefer than wider shots. In tests, people read a face's emotion faster when it filled more of the frame.
Try it yourself
FOUR THINGS TO TRY
Watch the film,
not just the story.
You only need a film and a timer. Spotting cuts deliberately is harder than it sounds, which is exactly the point.
Count the cuts for a minute
Tap the table at every cut in one minute of a recent film, then try a film from the 1940s.
Work out the average shot
Divide the seconds you watched by the number of shots. That is the average shot length researchers measure.
Catch a match on action
Watch for a door opening or a glass being lifted: editors often cut in the middle of the movement.
Notice where your eyes go
Researchers report that cuts tend to pull viewers' eyes towards the middle of the screen. See if yours follow.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
Faster films,
almost all cuts.
One figure on pace,
one on how shots are joined.
10 → <4 sec
Typical shot, 1930s and 1940s vs after 2000
From 160 English-language films released 1935 to 2010. The Seven Year Itch (1955) had the longest average shot at 26.2 seconds and Rocky IV (1985) the shortest at 2.2.
AVERAGE SHOT LENGTH · CORNELL
≈ 99%
Share of shot transitions that are straight cuts since the 1970s
Early films used cuts, dissolves and fades to mark shots, scenes and larger sections. The researchers say dissolves and fades turned out to be largely unnecessary.
TRANSITIONS · CORNELL
The same team found that contemporary films also contain more motion and are darker on average than films from the 1930s, and argue that all these trends help filmmakers steer viewers' attention.
WHICH CUTS SLIP BY?
Pick a cut,
see how often it's missed.
Choose a type of cut to see how often viewers missed it when they were trying to spot every edit. The bar shows how easily that cut hides.
Based on Smith and Henderson (2008), Journal of Eye Movement Research. Viewers watched clips from feature films and were asked to detect every edit while their eye movements were recorded.
A RHYTHM IN THE CUTS
Long and short shots
in a hidden pattern.
In a 2010 study of 150 popular films from 1935 to 2005, James Cutting's Cornell team found that shot lengths increasingly follow a 1/f pattern, the same kind of fluctuation found in human attention, heartbeats and tides.
Of their sample, Back to the Future (1985) came closest to a perfect 1/f profile. The pattern had no relationship with how much people liked the films on the Internet Movie Database, so it says nothing about quality, only about holding attention.
In conversation
Questions people ask
What is a cut in film editing?
A cut is an instant change from one shot to the next. Cornell researchers report that since the 1970s almost 99% of transitions between shots in popular films have been cuts rather than dissolves or fades.
Why don't I notice most cuts?
Smith and Henderson found that a few missed cuts coincided with blinks or eye movements, but most seemed to be missed because viewers were attending to the story. Cuts that follow the continuity editing rules were missed more often.
Are films really edited faster than they used to be?
Yes. In 160 films from 1935 to 2010, average shot lengths fell from about 10 seconds in the 1930s and 1940s to below 4 seconds after 2000, a trend that held across all five genres studied.
Why are close-ups so short?
A Cornell study found that people read emotions faster when a face is larger in the frame and when there is less clutter around it. Across 24 films, closer shots were briefer.
What is a match on action?
It is a cut made in the middle of a movement, so the action carries across from one shot to the next. In Smith and Henderson's study it was the type of cut viewers missed most, at 32.4%.
Sources
Each figure on this page comes from the sources below.
- Smith and Henderson (2008): Edit Blindness, Journal of Eye Movement Research
- Cutting et al (2011): Quicker, faster, darker: Changes in Hollywood film over 75 years, i-Perception (PMC)
- Cornell Chronicle (2010): Pattern in movies mimics that found in our brain
- Cornell Chronicle (2016): Here's looking at you, kid: filmmakers know how we read emotions