How light and motion bathe the silver screen.

Abstract

Popular movies are spatiotemporal arrays of light and motion, but almost nothing is known about their distributions across whole films. Psychological research shows that the center of the screen is the most important region, but is light and motion most prominent there? I confirm that they are while exploring a sample of 160 movies released from 1935 to 2010. Concerning how light bathes the screen, I found that newer movies have greater luminance contrast than older movies; that luminance falloff can be used to estimate the average lens lengths of many movies; that screen centers are brighter than predicted by luminance falloff; and that American films noir are not actually darker than other movies of their era, but their surrounds are much darker. Concerning motion, I found that more recent movies have more motion (or change) contrast than older ones; that despite what might be predicted by camera motions, the center of the screen has the most motion; and that this is particularly striking for animated movies, which have more visual change than any other movie genre. In sum, content aside, filmmakers have crafted a viewing space for our attention and given us good reasons to look at the center of the screen.

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