Man With a Movie Camera Flashcards
Average shot length
It was said that the average film shot length (ASL) was around 11.2 seconds in the year 1929. When Man with the Movie Camera was released it had an ASL of 2.3 seconds, which is four times faster than most films of that time and the speed of the average action film made today. And so when people first laid there eyes on images and edits that were flying passed them at a speed of 2.3 seconds in the year 1929, it must of stunned them. It horrified the author of the New York Times as he wrote in his review of the film, “The producer, Dziga Vertov, does not take into consideration the fact that the human eye fixes for a certain space of time that which holds the attention.”
Vertov wanted to show the world that the cinema could break free from that tradition and move on a much faster speed. Vertov wanted audiences to undergo a free-association process which processes information as fast as our brain and incorporates it with the cinema along with the speed of a passionate musical composition.
