why are films as long as they are?

[Freya Black]

Conversely, I believe that CDs were fixed at 80 minutes by the classical music department (who had first claim on the format), because it was held to be long enough to accomodate any known symphony, generally the longest form of classical music. Unfortunately Gustav Mahler was still out of fashion at the time. Several of his come in at a few minutes longer than 80 mins, (unless the conductor hurries things along quite disgracefully).

 

It was a bit more arbitary than that, it happened to be the length of a long symphony that somebody high up in Sony really liked!!! :)

 

So the story goes anyway!

 

love

 

Freya

Edited April 15, 2009 by Freya Black

[David Auner aac]

Conversely, I believe that CDs were fixed at 80 minutes by the classical music department (who had first claim on the format), because it was held to be long enough to accomodate any known symphony, generally the longest form of classical music.

 

Hm, I seem to remember that Redbook, the original CD-Audio standard specified only 74mins as maximum duration. Yes, have a look here: Wikipedia on CDA.

 

Cheers, Dave

[John Sprung]

They cut out all the songs that the German soldiers sang here in the US for the same reason. ;)

 

The German soldiers had songs? I didn't know that. What were they?

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Tom Jensen]

The German soldiers had songs? I didn't know that. What were they?

 

 

 

-- J.S.

 

Not any of the good songs. Let's see, there was "How do we kill the Von Trapp Family" and "What will we do with all these paintings." "Making Hitler Proud" was my favorite. ;) :o

[Leo Anthony Vale]

Not any of the good songs. Let's see, there was "How do we kill the Von Trapp Family" and "What will we do with all these paintings." "Making Hitler Proud" was my favorite. ;) :o

 

They didn't want to killl the von Trapps. they were trying to recruit the Baron/kapitan.

He was a WWI Austrian Submarine commander/naval hero.

They wanted him to command a U-boat base.

 

http://syndetics.com/index.aspx?isbn=97808...et&type=hw7

 

Thoough my favorite deleted german song was 'I Long to go a blitzkrieging (across the polish plain)'

 

Very snappy and catchy.

[Leo Anthony Vale]

I don't remember it having one. The intermission seemed to go out of fashion... none of the Lord of the Ring film had one and they were 3 hours long.

 

In addition to the intermission, with music, the roadshow releases in the 50s and 60s also had overture and exit music and sold colorful souvenier books. The '2001' book was particularly nice.

[A. Whitehouse]

In addition to the intermission, with music, the roadshow releases in the 50s and 60s also had encore and exit music and sold colorful souvenier books. The '2001' was particularly nice.

 

Some of the DVDs and and BDs still retain these segments (not the books unfortunately). On a related note how does everyone feel about the modern trend to release a 2-3hr cut for cinemas and then a blown out 4+ cut on DVD as a special edition. You can pretty much count on one hand the number of films that were improved by doing this and for some reason the others just annoy me.

If you couldn't fit it into the theatric release or if it didnt help the edit then why do it? "Kingdom of Heaven" being an example of something which was immeasurably improved in the long edit, it made so much more sense and filled in so many crucial gaps, and something like the "Apocalypse Now Redux" and the star wars directors cuts being something we could have lived without.

I know there are redux fans on here but so few of the extra things do anything for the film except make it longer. Painful.

IS there a trend towards films getting longer? I havent watched many 90min films recently that I can think of...

[Tom Jensen]

Though my favorite deleted german song was 'I Long to go a blitzkrieging (across the polish plain)'

 

Very snappy and catchy.

 

Thanks a lot Leo, now I can't get that song out of my head.

[Simon Wyss]

Films are only so and so long because there is a limit to how far one can stretch an idea. Most movies are too long and repetitive. Remember those wonderful days when the flicks came up and so many different little plots were brought to the screen, just like that?

 

What a great movie: Explosion of a Motor Car by Cecil Hepworth, 1897! Run time one minute

[Gavin Greenwalt]

Remember those wonderful days when the flicks came up and so many different little plots were brought to the screen, just like that?

 

As a counter point I'm going to be seeing a 70mm print of Laurence of Arabia next week. 3 hours and 40 minutes I believe...

[Brian Dzyak]

As a counter point I'm going to be seeing a 70mm print of Laurence of Arabia next week. 3 hours and 40 minutes I believe...

 

 

Avoid the Super Big Gulp before you go in. ;)

[John Sprung]

Thoough my favorite deleted german song was 'I Long to go a blitzkrieging (across the polish plain)'

 

Very snappy and catchy.

 

The one real one of those that I've heard is "Wir Fahren auf England" -- alas, not much for melody. "Lili Marlene" was their crossover hit -- the allies played it, too. And now there's the Mel Brooks musical version of "The producers" with the expanded version of "Springtime" .... ;-)

 

Back to long movies, wasn't "Gone with the Wind" the first to have an intermission?

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Jean Dodge]

Ah, you youngsters with your flat disk records....

 

Don't laugh, I've got crates of these things cluttering up my house. Heavy as hell, but still quite a bit of music that can't be found elsewhere, even today. Also, you can take them on a picnic and not need batteries! The story about CDs is similar, it was chosen by a Sony exec based on the length of his favorite Beethoven symphony. The moral is, convention dictates, but somewhere there was an innovator or a physical reason behind it all.

 

Getting back to DW Griffith, the "convention" started with an Italian movie called CABRIA, an elaborate historical/costume epic that was a huge hit and played in America. I seem to recall Griffith saw in in San Francisco. Prior to that Griffith had made hundreds of two reelers where he invented little tricks like, the close up, and parallel cutting between storylines, etc. But the europeans pioneered the long form.

 

The world war ended the French and Italian's ability to bother with the art form and America stepped in. THE SQUAW MAN was the first Hollywood feature (1914) but the next year Griffith released THE BIRTH OF A NATION, and the movie went on to make 18 million dollars, 1915 dollars, mind you and that's with ticket prices s heck of a lot lower than nine bucks apiece. Who wouldn't want to imitate that sort of business model? Art begats commerce, then commerce chases after the artists in hopes of replicating the success.

 

Of course regarding your 26fps friend of a friend, there once was a time when the cinematographer chose the proper speed at which a film was shot by cranking slower or faster in regards to the feel of the scene on a shot by shot basis. We do that today but not for dialog scenes, and certainly not as a general rule for the length of a film. It used to be like the beat kept by a jazz band - they pushed and pulled with so called "perfect tempo" as a means to introduce play, tension, swing that could get resolved when all the elements came together for the finale.

 

But I'm just riffing here.. Maybe movies are that long because that makes them "feature length..."

 

There is the easy, flip statement that episodic television makes little feature films each week that simply don't have to take the time to introduce the setting, theme, genre or main characters, which is the job of Act One in a 90 minute film. There's some validity to that, I guess.

 

As far as comments about "all movies needing 20 minutes chopped out, etc," it's more a matter of pacing than of length if a movie feels too long. I've sat thru 75 minute snooze fests and been riveted to the edge of my set for three hours. (It's called writing and acting, and directing!) Different stories unspool at different lengths.... they just do. Generalizations are facile - see previous paragraph.

 

Reminds me of a story they tell in Oklahoma about Quanah Parker, the last prominent Comanche chief to surrender his band. One day the Quaker indian agent came and told him he could only keep one of his five wives. Quanah pointed to his house and said, "fine, YOU go tell four of them the news!"

 

So yeah, write a script you love, raise the money, cast it, pick the locations, hire the crew, shoot it for six weeks, edit it for six months and then YOU decide which 20 minutes can go. Or, leave it up to a bored, random 17 year old at a preview screening to tell a marketing exec "it was too long." And let them decide. Formula for success?

[Freya Black]

Of course regarding your 26fps friend of a friend, there once was a time when the cinematographer chose the proper speed at which a film was shot by cranking slower or faster in regards to the feel of the scene on a shot by shot basis. We do that today but not for dialog scenes, and certainly not as a general rule for the length of a film. It used to be like the beat kept by a jazz band - they pushed and pulled with so called "perfect tempo" as a means to introduce play, tension, swing that could get resolved when all the elements came together for the finale.

 

Even worse the projectionist also cranked the projector and there was some variance here too, leading to a lot of argument about what speed old silent movies should be transfered to DVD at. I think they decided at 12fps for Chaplin but apparently it varied! I'm sure that some picture houses might have varied it a little to their own intent too!

 

love

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

Hm, I seem to remember that Redbook, the original CD-Audio standard specified only 74mins as maximum duration. Yes, have a look here: Wikipedia on CDA.

 

Cheers, Dave

 

Yes 74 minutes, a rather stranger number and I looked it up and apparently (so the story goes), it was Beethovens 9th Symphony and the Sony exec was Norio Ohga, who became President and COO of Sony in 1992. Of course there are a few other stories that do the rounds too so who knows! :) People seem to like the story tho so thats what matters I guess! :)

 

love

 

Freya

[Leo Anthony Vale]

Even worse the projectionist also cranked the projector and there was some variance here too, leading to a lot of argument about what speed old silent movies should be transfered to DVD at. I think they decided at 12fps for Chaplin but apparently it varied! I'm sure that some picture houses might have varied it a little to their own intent too!

 

I came across a 1920s projectionist manual at a university library, sso I looked up projection speeds.

it said that each shot might be shot at a different speed, thus the projectionist's job was to crank each shot at it's correct speed.

 

I think some Soviet films were cranked at 12fps. I found a series of 12 shots and title cards in 'October'. back then the soviets were importing their film stock, so probably cutting corners.

 

& 24fps was chosen for sound because most theatres were cranking at 24pps

[Guest John Lasher]

So many films run on for at least 20 minutes after they should have finished.

 

Ah, but then you have other films like Karate Kid, The Cutting Edge, Pump Up The Volume, and probably a few others I can't think of right now, where it seems like there should have been at least 5 more minutes at the end, instead of rolling the credits the second the climax was over. OK, I can assume that the characters live happily ever after (or not), but we're working in a visual medium here, SHOW me just a little bit of the characters starting to live happily ever after.