Cinemetrics Extracts Statistical Data From Movies
An analytical method introduced by the film historian Barry Salt 40 years ago, cinemetrics extracts statistical data from movies to reveal their inner workings. Its adoption helped add scientific rigor to film studies back when it was still earning respectability in academia. Today the Cinemetrics website, run by Yuri Tsivian, a scholar at the University of Chicago, Daria Khitrova and Gunars Civjans, holds statistics on more than 14,000 films.
(Cinemetrics website: http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php)
David Bordwell, a co-author of “Film Art: An Introduction,” a widely used textbook in film studies classes, said in an interview that there were two main ways to assess a performance: “One is in the actor’s relationship to their environment and to other actors within a single shot. The other is in the editing,” in which cuts between shots of the actor and of other images create meanings and emotions.
Editing is but one aspect of screen performance that we aren’t supposed to notice. In “Gravity,” for instance, Sandra Bullock is seen for 73 minutes, but heard for 75. Most of that time isn’t spent on dialogue but on breathing, attesting to the power of sound design in creating an actor’s presence.
Read the full story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/02/movies/awardsseason/cinemetrics-extracts-statistical-data-from-movies.html?_r=0