Will Cinema Survive the Human Attention Decline?

‘Humans have a shorter attention span than goldfish.’ This headline has been making the rounds around the internet for a while now, resulting in a lot of worried moms and a lot more meme content. But I believe we as a species are not getting dumber, just more distracted.

As our interaction with tech evolves sob does our mind. A recently published study from researchers at the Technical University of Denmark suggests the collective global attention span is narrowing due to the amount of information that is presented to the public. Released recently in the scientific journal Nature Communications, the study shows people now have more things to focus on – but often focus on things for short periods of time.

What was once a text message is reduced to an emoji, a 2 minute video is now condensed to a

10 second reel, and a blog post is a 140 character tweet. We have shortened our modes of communication but increased its volume, giving way to a never ending ocean of content. But has the content duration shortened because our attention has or is it the other way around? The film industry has always been in the business of creating content, telling stories and expressing opinions.The film industry is dynamic and any changes in media directly affects it but us as well, as its not just a reflection of our lives but also an influence on it. As we spend less and less time on one virtual experience, would short films become the norm replacing full length feature films going forward? I contacted a recent film graduate, Neil Mukherjee from Srishti School of Design, Bangalore to understand the affect of the declining attention spans on the oldest content generating industry in the game.

“The film industry is definitely recognising that things are not the same and probably won’t be in the future either. We can already see a shift with tv show seasons having 7-10 episodes compared to what used to be around 20-25, and even Bollywood also doesn’t put out 3 hour films 1.5 hours is anyway short for us. Most importantly though, due to the financial impact of the pandemic most studios are making smaller budget films— great quality content but shorter indeed.”

Short films and features are both competing for people’s time, and even though our attention is declining our interest prevails. Neil explains, “For short films to become the norm replacing full feature films, seems like a bit of a reach as they exist in two different contexts. It is not just the short length of the film which makes a short film a short film but also the structure of the script and the depth of the characters. There is time with feature scripts. That's all there is to it. However, because those feature pages have more time to fill, what we do provide must be intriguing and drawn out enough to keep the audience's attention.”

Even though our attention span may have taken a hit, our interest in stories and escaping real life is very much still alive. We want to sit in a dark room shut out from the rest of the world consumed in the lives of the characters unfolding in front of us. We feel safe, and in control watching a film, knowing there is a reason for every single scene included and that the ending would leave us with closure. Movies are fake, its all make believe and the actors are acting, but the emotions the audience feels is real, the connect and inspiration from a good film is only achieved because of the depth of the screenplay and the growth of the characters on screen. For that experience to be reduced to just 30 minutes, sounds like an argument already lost.