How Act Structure Sculpts Shot Lengths and Shot Transitions in.PDFVIP

How Act Structure Sculpts Shot Lengths and Shot Transitions in Hollywood Film James E. Cutting, Kaitlin L. Brunick, and Jordan E. DeLong Abstract: Cinematic tradition suggests that Hollywood films, like plays, are di- vided into acts. Thompson (1999) streamlined the conception of this large- scale film structure by suggesting that most films are composed of four acts of generally equal length—the setup, the complicating action, the develop- ment, and the climax (often including an epilog). These acts are based on the structure of the narrative, and would not necessarily have a physical manifes- tation in shots and transitions. Nonetheless, exploring a sample of 150 Holly- wood style films from 1935 to 2005, this article demonstrates that acts shape shot lengths and transitions. Dividing films into quarters, we found that shots are longer at quarter boundaries and generally shorter near the middle of each quarter. Moreover, aside from the beginnings and ends of films, the arti- cle shows that fades, dissolves, and other non-cut transitions are more com- mon in the third and less common in the fourth quarters of films. Keywords: cinemetrics, film acts, Hollywood film, shots, transitions Film analysis can be done in many, sometimes overlapping, ways—through historical study, through cultural study, through the lens of a large-scale the- ory, through assessment of psychological responses, and through statistical analysis. The statistical analysis of film—the approach we adopt here and sometimes called cinemetrics—begins with units. One cannot measure and compare films without having separable units that are appropriate to the cin- emetric task. It is generally agreed that available units in film form a nested hierarchy: acts, sequences, scenes, shots, and frames (e.g., Field 1979; Harring- ton 1973). Frames are easy to measure. The film industry long ago settled on the pro-