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The Impact of Sound Technology on the Distribution of Shot Lengths in Hollywood Cinema, 1920 to 1933 Nick REDFERN

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The Impact of Sound Technology on the Distribution of Shot Lengths in Hollywood Cinema, 1920 to 1933 Nick REDFERN The Impact Of Sound Technology On The Distribution Of Shot Lengths In Hollywood Cinema, 1920 To 1933 Nick REDFERN Independent Researcher, [email protected] Volume 2.1 (2012) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2012.50 | http://cinej.pitt.edu http://cinej.pitt.edu Abstract The impact of sound technology on Hollywood is analysed through looking at the median shot lengths of silent films from the 1920s (N=54) and early sound films (n=106). The results show a large increase in the median shot lengths with the introduction of sound (Mann Whitney U=554.0, Z=-8.33, p= <0.01, PS = 0.0968), estimated to be 2.0s (95% CI: 1.6, 2.4). The dispersion of shot lengths measured using the robust estimator Qn shows a similarly large increase in the dispersion of shot lengths with the transition to sound (Mann Whitney U = 319.0, Z = -9.18, p = <0.01, PS = 0.0557), estimated to be 2.0s (95% CI: 1.7, 2.4). Keywords: film style, statistical analysis, Hollywood, shot length distributions, sound cinema, silent cinema This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Introduction It is generally accepted the introduction of synchronous sound in the late-1920s had an immediate impact on the style of Hollywood cinema as the film industry adapted to incorporate new technologies and filmmaking practices into its mode of production. Sound opened up a range of new aesthetic possibilities, but it also constrained the choices available to filmmakers and, in the short-term, is considered to have retarded the development of film style1. Filmmaking became studio bound as early microphones, being omni-directional and highly sensitive to ambient sound, were unsuitable for location filming. The quality of microphones was also a problem within the studio, with the mobile camera of the late-silent period imprisoned in a soundproof booth for the earliest sound films. The synchronous recording of sound and image made filmmaking a less flexible process, particularly for sound-on-disc systems. Dialogue determined the length of takes and the image edited to match the soundtrack, so that the recording of sound determined the tempo of a film. To avoid the monotony of scenes shot as a single take, multiple-camera shooting was used as a means of preserving narrative space by having several cameras film a scene simultaneously and then cutting between the different shots. Editing patterns became more formulaic as the master shot became crucial in guaranteeing the relationship between image and sound and coverage became standard. Reframing replaced cutting as a means of guiding the viewer’s attention, with an increase in panning and tacking shots. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson summarise the impact of sound technology on Hollywood cinema: The differences between silent and sound visual style, then, can be seen as issuing in large part from attempts during the transitional years 1928-1931 to retain the power of editing in the classical style. Slightly longer takes, with more camera movement, emerged as functional equivalents for controlling spatial, temporal, and narrative continuity. Technical agencies worked to make the equivalents viable and efficient. It is during this period that basic premises of the classical style were transmitted into the sound cinema.2 CINEJ Cinema Journal: Nick REDFERN 78 Volume 2.1 (2012) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2012.50 | http://cinej.pitt.edu The transition to sound film did not result in the emergence of a new film style in Hollywood. It was, rather, a process of assimilating new technologies into existing stylistic norms where possible and of adapting those norms when not. One of the most frequently cited changes in film style attributed to the impact of these new technologies is the increase in the duration of shot lengths. To date, quantitative analyses of the impact of sound technology on Hollywood film style have used the mean shot length as a statistic of film style, and have consistently reported a slowing in the cutting rate from the silent to the sound era. Bordwell, Staiger, and Thompson describe the change in shot lengths as an increase from a mean mean shot length of approximately 5-6 seconds in 1917-1927 to a mean of ~11 seconds in 1928-19343. Barry Salt quotes similar figures, with a mean mean shot length for American films in the period 1924-1929 of 4.8s and increasing to a mean of 10.8s for the period 1928-19334. Although these studies do not quote measures of dispersion or confidence intervals making direct comparisons impossible, the general consensus amongst film scholars is that the introduction of sound technology caused shot lengths in Hollywood cinema to increase by approximately 6 seconds from ~5s to ~11s. Charles O’Brien and Salt both note a similar change in the mean shot lengths of European films.5 The mean is the point at which a data set is balanced, and as a ‘centre of gravity’ is a representative statistic of central tendency when the distribution of the data is symmetrical. However, the distribution of shot lengths in a motion picture is characterised by its lack of symmetry so that the majority of shot lengths are less than the mean due to the influence of a number of shots that are of exceptionally long duration relative to the rest of the shots in a film. In statistical terms, the mean shot length is not a robust statistic of film style because it does not provide a stable description of a data set when underlying assumptions (e.g. a symmetrical normal distribution) are not met. It has a breakdown point of 0 and high gross error sensitivity so that just a single outlying data point can lead to the mean becoming an arbitrarily bad estimate of the centre of a data set6. Consequently, the mean shot length does not give an accurate or reliable description of a film’s style and use of this statistic to compare shot length distributions inevitably leads to flawed inferences. The conclusions of those statistical studies on the impact of sound on film style cited above are flawed and the estimates of the size of the impact of sound technology on the distribution of shot lengths in Hollywood cinema incorrect. Furthermore, many of the above results are also based on an analysis of shot lengths in the first 1800 seconds of a film, and this method may under- or over-estimate the mean shot length of the whole film. Consequently, researchers have been laboring under a series of CINEJ Cinema Journal: The Impact Of Sound Technology On The Distribution Of Shot Lengths In Hollywood Cinema Volume 2.1 (2012) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2012.50 | http://cinej.pitt.edu 79 misconceptions about the nature of film style. It is therefore necessary to reassess the claims made regarding changes in shot length distributions with the introduction of sound technologies in Hollywood. This paper examines changes in shot length distributions with the introduction of sound technologies in Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s by looking at robust statistics of film style. Methods Data We collected shot length data for silent and sound films produced in Hollywood between 1920 and 1933, inclusive, selected from the Cinemetrics database (http://www.cinemetrics.lv/). Shot length data was not collected from films where the submitter had acknowledged errors in the process of data entry. Shot length data was not collected from films for which multiple submissions had been made unless it was possible to judge which submission could be considered more reliable. In interpreting the results presented here it is important to bear in mind that the accuracy of data produced using the Cinemetrics software is dependent on the response time of the submitter to observing a cut, and this will inevitably incorporate some observational error into the results. For this reason, the data are best regarded as estimates of a film’s style even though all the shot length data has been included. Descriptive Statistics In place of the mean shot length, we use the median shot length as a robust measure of central tendency. The median shot length is widely used for the analysis of style in motion pictures. Brett Adams, Chitra Dorai, and Svetha Venkatesh base their analysis of editing’s contribution to tempo in motion pictures on the median shot length because it ‘provides a better estimate of the average shot length in the presence of outliers.’7 Similarly, Nuno Vasconcelos and Andrew Lippman reject the use of the mean because it is ‘well known in the statistics literature [...] that the sample mean is very sensitive to the presence of outliers in the data,’ and that ‘[m]ore robust estimates can be achieved by replacing the sample mean by the sample median.’8 Hang-Bong Kang used the median shot length ‘because it shows a better estimate than the average [mean] shot length in the presence of outliers’ when analysing the relationship between emotion and film style.9 Finally, in television studies Richard CINEJ Cinema Journal: Nick REDFERN 80 Volume 2.1 (2012) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2012.50 | http://cinej.pitt.edu Schaefer and Tony Martinez used the median shot length in order to study changing editing patterns in news bulletins because it provided a better indicator of shot length than the mean, because the latter is inordinately influenced by a few “outlier” values from the longest shot.10 The median (M) is the middle value when shot length data is ranked by order of magnitude, so that for any film 50 per cent of shots will be less than or equal to the median and 50 per cent will be greater than or equal to the median shot length.
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