More on short features

Related to my recent focus on SHORT features.

The latest Ankler podcast includes a discussion of cadence in movies. Filmmakers haven’t yet figured out how to capture and keep audiences who aren’t trapped. For several decades people went to the theater for an entire evening, and watched whatever was on. When the audience has put in considerable work to reach the entertainment, the producer can afford long overtures and ‘establishing shots’.

Now that movies are just like everything else, with endless choices and multitasking, movies are losing popularity because they don’t instantly grab you.

Newspapers and radio stations always understood this. Unless the paper was mostly for subscribers, it had to compete with dozens of magazines and books and newspapers in stores. Radio mastered the seven-second rule quickly, because the radio dial has always offered dozens of choices in a big city. Early TV regained some captivity, with only two or three choices.

I wonder if classical music made the same mistake. Formal music was strictly a theatrical experience until 1900. The composer could spend time on overtures and gradual buildups. After 1900, cylinders and 78s and 45s were SHORT media. You couldn’t fit an overture, let alone a whole symphony, on a 45. When 33s came along in 1950, more extended pieces were possible, but the captive audience had already dissipated and the composers had lost 50 years of audience development and loyalty.