Editor's introduction: With the increase of Internet information, users prefer to watch some "short and fast" content, and a major element of short video popularity is because it is "short", but it is this type of content, commonly seen in long videos The speed has also moved to short videos. This article explores what has changed in the user's perception of time in the context of changing the reading of traditional media. When doubling the speed becomes the standard, what kind of image logic is reflected?
In the first half of this year, after the re-screening of the magic epic movie "The Lord of the Rings", although many fans were addicted, there were also many new bad reviews in the Douban comment area, most of which criticized the film for being too long and boring, and even many people said that such a long movie fell asleep before watching it.
Image source: Douban
These film reviews of "The Lord of the Rings" have sparked a new discussion on an issue that has been concerned by many scholars— the impact of the development of the medium on the public perception of time. Most people believe that the popularity of short videos and double-speed dramas has driven audiences to become more and more impatient with slow-paced, complex plots. Compared with the scene scheduling under the camera, this audience seems to be more attracted by fierce contradictions, horse-grabbing plots and cool characters, and after getting used to fast-paced narratives, it is not easy for the public to return to slow narratives or even normal rhythms.
The public's demand for speed has also prompted the platform to continuously adjust the playback mode, and the double-speed playback mode that previously only appeared in long videos has also been applied to short video platforms. Users of platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and Xiaohongshu can now also watch short videos at double speed as needed.
Little Red Book double speed playback mode option. Image source: Little Red Book so the problem comes, most of the short video length is only ten seconds to two minutes, such a short period of time need to open double the speed, the user's viewing habits have really been accelerated to this extent? Such a change makes us have to rethink the relationship between the medium and the person, and the media environment school emphasizes that the media shapes people may only be on the one hand, on the other hand, people are also changing the media.
This issue of the all-media school (id: quanmeipai) for everyone to interpret the catalyst habits of the change, how will it affect people's perception of time? When the double speed function becomes the "standard", what kind of image development logic is reflected?
Previously, scholars have counted the length of shots in 160 English-language films from 1935 to 2016, and found that the average length of shots in Hollywood movies in the 30s and 40s was about 10 seconds, and this value dropped to 4 seconds after 2000.
British scholar Steven Frans has done a similar study, and after counting Hollywood films released between 1997 and 2016, he pointed out that the average number of shots in cinema is about 1000-1500. This means that in a 90-minute movie, the shots switch every 5 seconds on average.
Such variations of footage are even more pronounced in the series of films. According to statistics, the average shot length of "Iron Man 1" is 3.5 seconds, and this number has become 2.5 seconds by the third part, because film and television producers have also noticed that compared with before, the audience is more and more unable to sit still. In order for the audience to maintain attention, it is necessary to constantly stimulate the audience and keep the audience fresh. Perhaps because of this, in Avengers 4, there are more than 3,000 special effects shots.
Image source: The movie "Avengers 4"
The immersive environment of the cinema also helps to retain the audience, but when the mobile phone becomes the main medium, multi-threaded tasks become the norm for the public, and attention is more and more easily dispersed, the platform needs to retain the public in various ways, which may include both content improvements and changes in the technical level.
Therefore, from the perspective of the development and change of images, the double speed function of video can be said to be the inevitable result of "racing" with the needs of the audience.
Canadian communication scholar Harold Innes once pointed out in his masterpiece "The Bias of Communication" that communication and communication media have certain biases, that is, oral communication bias and written communication bias, time bias and spatial bias, and different media have differences in their bias. For example, some media are conducive to the spread of information in space, while others may be more conducive to the spread of time.
Innis's media types when he created this book were relatively limited compared to the present, so his focus was more on oral communication and word transmission, as well as the role of broadcasting in propaganda before and after the war, but his cutting perspective and focus laid a certain foundation for the media environment school, especially the influence of the media environment on people and human civilization, which had a profound impact on subsequent communication studies.
As a medium, short video has long had an impact on the audience's media choice and use habits, and promoted the formation of a new round of media system dependence. In particular, the algorithm recommendation of short videos can recommend videos that meet the audience's expectations according to the different psychological needs of the audience, so as to provide the audience with a higher spiritual experience. Therefore, the previous scholar Lin Yujun pointed out that the important motivation for the audience to rely on the short video media is personal emotional needs, and short videos can provide the resonance of the audience's emotions and emotional identification.
Under the attraction mechanism and immersion of short videos, the audience is accustomed to quickly identifying content, quickly generating emotions, and quickly jumping to the cycle of new content, and can get an entertaining look and feel in this cycle. The pursuit of speed often means a profound abandonment, which also adapts to the fast-paced, efficient social development state, thus reconstructing the video ecology, social form, aesthetic habits and even the public communication picture.
In the age of speed, time is placed in an extremely important position. How to do as much as possible in a limited time and have as much information as possible has become a problem that many people think about and try to solve. And double speed viewing is obviously one of the solutions.
When they are accustomed to watching videos at double speed, the audience's pursuit of speed and perception of time have also changed. This is also why many people feel that everything has slowed down after getting used to double-speed viewing, after returning to the original speed of video and even real life. Audiences who can't stand the slowdown can only speed up their pace, and by the way, the video in the phone is 1.5 times faster to 2 times faster.
Image source: Tencent Video
The logic of the double-speed function of short videos is also based on the consideration of meeting the needs of the audience, even if it is a short video within 5 minutes, it is still not fast enough for the audience, not to mention if you can use the time to watch a video to watch two videos, why not enjoy it? At the end of the day, speeding up the flow of video time is addictive.
Communication scholar Robert Hassan once mentioned in the book "The Age of Distraction: Reading, Writing and Politics in the High-Speed Network Economy" that information communication technology has accelerated time and accelerated the operation of society, which makes the electronic reproduction of meaning begin to jump and flow at a continuous and accelerated rhythm, it refuses to pause, refuses to lag, refuses to focus, and refuses to reflect on the need for meaning, which enters what Hassan calls the "era of distraction".
Under such a medium rhythm, speed has long since broken free from the limitations of clocks and watches, and it is no longer the relative speed under modernism, but the further development of "postmodern time". Under this logic of time, reversible linear time is tortured, and time is not just an individual feeling, but a pluralistic landscape embedded in the process of multiple societies.
So on the one hand, the spread of double-speed viewing from long videos to short videos is the inevitable result of the entire media environment, on the other hand, the media rhythm is further accelerated, the two promote each other, and finally, the speed eliminates the content and eliminates the concentration, and the continuous and chronic distraction of attention becomes our norm, "Our relationship with technical writing, writing and reading has entered a new, tense, and anxious stage." ”
Equally unmistakable is the profound impact of rejection and abandonment. Short videos themselves have been criticized by many scholars as "products with no spiritual meaning to speak of", as a medium form that brings immediate emotional reactions, short videos will not bear too much profound and reflective content, intuitive expression and shallow themes make the audience easily understand the message conveyed by the content of the viewing without careful reading.
It's hard to imagine watching fellini, Bergman, and others at double speed, because we know it will directly affect our understanding of the film, and we may even be completely unable to understand the director's creative intentions. But watching a beauty blogger share at 1.5x speed will not affect our understanding, but will make us feel a sense of time-saving accomplishment.
Therefore, the short video platform chooses to launch the double speed viewing model not only to meet the needs of the audience, but also because it is clear that most of the content in the platform, even if the double speed view does not affect the audience's understanding.
Of course, when more and more people are pursuing speed, there are also people trying to go against the trend and try to make the public slow down in various ways and feel life with their hearts.
In 2013, when Cai Liangming's work "Outing" was screened at the Venice Film Festival, it caused a strong discomfort from many audiences, because some of the shots in this film were 11 minutes long, and there was a fixed camera head up to 7 minutes long, which was simply challenging the audience's patience limit. After all, for an audience who is accustomed to watching for a few seconds to switch a shot, staring at a shot that does not change significantly within a few minutes is a torture.
Stills from the movie "Outing", but this torture may be exactly what the director wants to achieve, as Jia Zhangke wrote in the creative notes of "The Hill Comes Home": "When people's audiovisual organs are accustomed to converting in units of 'seconds', are there still people with us who patiently gaze at the ultimate goal of those cameras- those who are the same or different from us." ”
Nostalgic people may lament the impact of mobile phones and short videos on public life in a pessimistic tone: in the era of speed, the medium represented by short videos allows audiences to indulge in content that directly stimulates the senses but may not have much nutrition, and falls into an attention crisis because they are accustomed to instant feedback.
Admittedly, we are doomed not to go back to the "past", but as individuals with subjectivity, we can also allow ourselves to a certain extent not to indulge in the so-called "efficiency", to turn the playback mode back to normal speed, to turn the perspective back to our lives and the people in our lives, and to retain a little ability to slow down in the era of distraction.
Because, the blue sky and white clouds and golden leaves in late autumn can give us emotional nourishment that short videos at 1.5 times the speed cannot provide.
Reference Links:
cutting j e,brunick k l,delong j e,et al.quicker,faster,darker: changes in hollywood film over 75 years[j].i-perception,2011,2(6):569-576.
LIN Yujun. Research on Short Video Audiences Under Media System Dependence[j].Friends of Editors, 2020(07):74-78.
Pazilia.x times chasing the drama, x minutes to watch, except for losing patience we still went to what? [eb/ol].Beijing News Book Review Weekly, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/hf4yoxdgxcr7ncdm9fywkg.
[Au] Robert Hassan. The Age of Distraction: Reading, Writing and Politics in the High-Speed Network Economy[m], translated by Zhang Ning, Shanghai: Fudan University Press, 2020
Author: Pazilia; Public account: All-media faction
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