Movie editing influences spectators' time perception

Abstract

Filmmakers use different techniques (e.g., camera movements, editing) to shape viewers' experience. In particular, editing can be used to handle the temporal unfolding of events represented in a movie. Nevertheless, little is known about how different editing types impact viewers' time perception. In an exploratory on-line study (90 participants) and a pre-registered conceptual replication study (60 participants), we asked participants to judge (Study 1) or reproduce (Study 2) the duration of 45 excerpts of the movie "Le Ballon Rouge" containing either continuous editing, action discontinuity editing or no editing. Each excerpt was formatted in three durations (2000, 2500 or 3000 ms). In both studies, we reported that scenes containing continuous editing were perceived as longer than the other two scene types. Moreover, scenes containing action discontinuity editing were perceived as longer than scenes with no editing. This study contributes to the emerging field of psycho-cinematics which could ultimately develop the dialog between arts and science.

Figure 1

Time estimation error for the three editing types. The picture represents the marginal means (estimated by mixed models) with data distributions and data points. Error bars represents 95% CI. The confidence intervals of marginal differences between conditions are reported between the conditions of interest. *p < 0.05, ***p < 0.001.

Figure 2

(A) Example of time course for Study 2. Stimuli were presented after a fixation cross (500 ms) for one of the three durations (2500, 3000 or 3500 ms). Then, an empty screen (500 ms) followed by a question mark (500 ms) were shown before the appearance of a black square at the center of the screen. Participants had to press the spacebar when they estimated that the duration of presentation of the square was equivalent to the duration of the preceding video clip. After the time reproduction, an arousal scale was presented. (B) Examples of edits for each condition. In the continuous condition, two edited sequences show the same action although a change of perspective (a child looking out of the window), while in the action discontinuity condition the edited sequences present two separate actions. In the control condition the were no edits.