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Do you find pacing very slow in older movies?

posted 6 years ago by [deleted]
19 replies | jump to latest

I was watching Die Hard and felt like there should have been a script doctor who should have taken a red pen and put lines through dialogue and entire scenes. A very slow movie at the start.

Other movies have dialogue for the sake of dialogue. Whereas these days the rule is that if something can be implied, let it be implied. If something can be shown instead of being explained, just show it. Dialogue should be used to propel the story forward, not just kill time.

[–] howgamer (3744) 6 years ago

Cinema, over time, has drastically increased the number of shots in a film and shortened the average length of a shot. Try watching something from the 60's and compare it to today. I don't think older movies were slow paced, it is just a different style and technology has certainly helped with having more shots available to a filmmaker. Actually I wish modern films would buck the trend and start to slow down a bit. I feel like a lot of modern films are too fast paced to get their point across or leave room for dramatic impact. It's like cut cut cut cut cut cut cut cut cut!

[–] twinA (4827) 6 years ago

Modern films do feel more frantic, so many fast-pace scenes, so much editing.

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

And student films feel cheap because they’re not cutting to different shots every 2 seconds.

I’ve noticed older movies have very long scenes with very few cuts.

[–] actionkamen (23176) 6 years ago

True. However, more cuts do not always correlate with faster pacing. When the movie has nothing to tell, a cut every 2 seconds still feels slow. Looks faster than no cuts, but still slow. Case in point, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016).

To make the pacing feels faster, a movie should convey information more densely. More tightly. Not stretching it too thin. The story has be meaty. And all the scenes and dialogs has to be relevant to the core story.

Fillers make pacing slower because the audience sub-consciously disregard those scenes. When the movie ends it feels like wtf was I watching. That's because the movie has no substance.

[–] twinA (4827) 6 years ago

Sure. Compare the long intros and fairytale storytelling flow of Disney's animated films from the late 1930s, around the time of 'Snow White' to the 'Aristocats' into the 1970s. Then, match it with Disney's animated features like 'Aladdin', The Lion King', and 'Tarzan' from the 90s Renaissance, which emphasizes the Broadway style song, sound, and stage, almost like a live musical performance.

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

The original Dracula with Bela Lugosi moves at a snails pace.