351
Film Students Are Having Trouble Sitting Through Movies, Professors Say
(www.hollywoodreporter.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2026
351 points (97.3% liked)
Not The Onion
19808 readers
2835 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Please also avoid duplicates.
Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because a movie is a constant continuation, where as each episode has a hard end and you can stop and decide if you want to continue or stop.
Except that if you look at the stats, most Netflix viewers binge watch (88% here), and most engage in long binges (70% here reported 5 episodes or more at a time), binge watching is by all accounts 'the norm' for streaming service users.
So while you may be able to 'decide if you want to continue or stop' the statistics show that the vast majority of people end up watching much, much longer than a movie runtime - which was my point.
because most people put it on as background noise, like they did with TV.
half my my 'binge watching' is me falling asleep and waking up four hours later and the show is still going on. And then the next day I go back to where I was, usually 5-6 episodes back.
People tend to be more willing to do a lot of something if it’s broken up into smaller parts.
As an example, my great-grandmother used to always cut desserts and appetizers into smaller sizes if she noticed they weren’t being eaten. No one would take a large slice of cake but lots of people would take a small slice and then another small slice after. My grandmother took that advice from her and so did my mom, and it really does work very well. Same applies to movies and tv shows.
yeah this is just that large singular tasks tend to demand more of us than multiple smaller tasks.
Though there is nothing stopping anyone from pausing a movie partway through and returning to it later.
Even though I said that, I am more reluctant to start watching a movie because of that time commitment, but I have done that when I did start some movies but wasn't really feeling like I could stay interested in the moment.
true, but it sucks.
a movie is meant to be consumed as a unified whole. so is each tv episode. it's typically more immersive when you watch it whole.
I know a lot of people who hate watching just part of a movie. I’m one of those people too, though I also don’t really like tv shows normally. I’d rather a standalone film over one in a series as well. If I’m going to watch something, I want it to start and end in the same sitting, and ideally be 90-120 minutes, though there are exceptions of course.
Yeah that's a good point. It's a psychological hurdle.
Doesn't mean people are attentive throughout though. I think it were Netflix execs that are currently pushing writers to constantly reiterate plot points because people aren't paying attention.
I read the same, and I feel like that is a negative feedback loop.
Like the more the content is written so that people don't have to pay attention and plot and scenery is verbally stated by actors, the less people will feel like they need to pay attention.. and then they'll turn to their phone.
Its gonna come back to bite them when they dumb the content down and people realize they don't actually need to pay for Netflix to run in the background, and can instead just have YouTube videos of people reciting the plot to them while they doodle on their phones.