Monday, March 3, 2014

Citizen Kane: 617 shots later

It was an interesting pre-Oscar article in the NY Times that introduced me to the Cinemetrics database. Trying to answer the question whether it is an actor's ability within a shot or the editing of shots together that provides the dramatic quality to a performance, the article pointed me to Cinemetrics which is a kind of nerdy baseball-stat-like enterprise that tracks the number of distinct shots and their duration within a movie. Site visitors can administer the process to movies using site software and then contribute the results to the site's 14,000 movies.

It is a thoughtful stab at objectivity within a critical process that is largely subjective. Fun, too.

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