How Attention Is Driven by Film Edits: A Multimodal Experience

A Hollywood movie will contain more than 1,000 edits, although filmmakers have found ways to make these transitions hardly noticeable. Why do we appear blind to film edits? In the present investigation, participants watched clips from feature films that included a brief target presented just before an edit (pre-edit targets), just after an edit (postedit targets), or in the middle of a shot (control targets). Compared with control targets, detection was disrupted for postedit targets but not for pre-edit targets. Visual features such as target eccentricity and type of transition (e.g., those that included camera movement) also influenced target detection. In Experiment 2, the audio portion of the movie was turned off, which had the effect of improving target detection, particularly for postedit targets. These findings suggest that multimodal influences, which drive attention to the narrative, have the capacity to engage viewers to the extent that cognitive processes immediately after an edit are disrupted. As magicians of cinema, film editors have acquired techniques to conceal cuts and keep us riveted to the screen.