The Editing Density of Moving Images Influences Viewers’ Time Perception: The Mediating Role of Eye Movements

Abstract

The present study examined whether cinematographic editing density affects viewers' perception of time. As a second aim, based on embodied models that conceive time perception as strictly connected to the movement, we tested the hypothesis that the editing density of moving images also affects viewers' eye movements and that these later mediate the effect of editing density on viewers' temporal judgments. Seventy participants watched nine video clips edited by manipulating the number of cuts (slow-and fast-paced editing against a master shot, unedited condition). For each editing density, multiple video clips were created, representing three different kinds of routine actions. The participants' eye movements were recorded while watching the video, and the participants were asked to report duration judgments and subjective passage of time judgments after watching each clip. The results showed that participants subjectively perceived that time flew more while watching fast-paced edited videos than slow-paced or unedited videos; by contrast, concerning duration judgments, participants overestimated the duration of fast-paced videos compared to the master-shot videos. Both the slowand the fast-paced editing generated shorter fixations than the master shot, and the fast-paced editing led to shorter fixations than the slow-paced editing. Finally, compared to the unedited condition, editing led to an overestimation of durations through increased eye mobility. These findings suggest that the editing density of moving images by increasing the number of cuts effectively altered viewers' Stefania Balzarotti and Federica Cavaletti contributed equally to this work.

Movie editing influences spectators’ time perception

“…The finding that scenes containing editing were perceived as longer that those without cuts are partially in line with the results of Balzarotti et al 12 showing that the density of editing (number of cuts) was associated with an overestimation of video duration compared with unedited video. Nevertheless, they only reported a significant difference between fast-paced editing (10–12 cuts) and unedited scenes, but the difference between the latter and slow-paced (5 cuts) editing was not significant.…”

“…On the contrary, here we reported significant differences between scenes containing only one cut and those with no cut. Of note is that in the study by Balzarotti et al 12 , the difference between slow-paced and unedited scenes went in the same direction and approached significance ( p = 0.056), suggesting that the null results could be due to low statistical power. In any case, the comparison between the two studies is not straightforward due to methodological differences.…”

“…In any case, the comparison between the two studies is not straightforward due to methodological differences. For example, in Balzarotti et al 12 durations were in the order of tenth of seconds (11–13.5 s), while we used durations between 2500–3500 ms. Our results are coherent with recent proposals that tracking changes in low-level perceptual processing provides a basis for human time perception 33 , 34 , in particular with results showing that naturalistic videos with greater perceptual change were estimated as longer in duration 33 . Indeed, even if we did not directly measure perceptual change, a cut introduces an abrupt change in the visual information flow by definition.…”

“…Surprisingly, to our knowledge, there is only one published study investigating how editing style modulates spectators’ time perception. Balzarotti, et al 12 , asked participants to judge the duration of different video clips representing goal-directed routine actions. The authors manipulated the editing density (number of cuts) of video clips to obtain three different versions: a master shot (without cuts), a slow-paced editing (5 cuts), and a fast-paced (10–12 cuts).…”

Motion Picture Editing as a Hawkes Process

“…Motion picture editors shape viewers' experience of time in the cinema by controlling the timing of shots by deciding which frame to cut on, where to place a shot within a sequence, how long a shot is held on screen, and the pacing of a film by controlling the rate at which cuts occur and information is presented to the viewer (Pearlman, 2017). The rate at which cuts occur in motion pictures has been shown to affect viewers' levels of arousal and attention (Lang et al, 1999;Ludwig and Bertling, 2017), memory (Lang et al, 2000), and temporal perception and judgements (Balzarotti et al, 2021).…”