Filmmaking is meant to be an art, right?
In the era of content and streaming, things have changed a little.
Earlier in the year, actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast to promote their new Netflix movie “The Rip”. Damon, who was also a producer with Affleck through their company Artists Equity, revealed that Netflix had some stipulations on how the story was to progress.
“A standard way to make an action movie, that we learned, is you usually have three set pieces. One in the first act, one in the second and one in the third and they kinda ramp up. And the big one with all the explosions, you spend most of your money on that one in the third act and that’s your kinda finale. Now, they’re like, ‘Can we get a big one in the first five minutes? We want people to stay tuned in.”
And further, on the subject of staying tuned in, Netflix hinted to Damon and Affleck “it wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phone while they’re watching.”
Surveys have shown over half of people watching TV these days are also using a mobile device at the same time. It’s not unheard of for the people financing movies to have some opinions on how the story should be presented, but now a lot of viewers aren’t fully engaged the previously common advice of “showing” in movies and TV becomes more “telling” and reminding viewers what’s going on.
Two Videos at Once
What are these half-engaged watchers doing on their mobile devices that has them distracted? Talking to their friends or probably watching other videos! Just much shorter videos. As a Netflix executive admits, “we have to make sure that the points come through, even though kids are watching TikTok while they watch it”.
TikTok’s success as a short form video platform has meant other social media platforms moved into the area. They’re all pushing short videos under 2 minutes, and it doesn’t seem that short videos are the best place to be distracted. Some studies in China have looked at students and short form video addiction, who gets addicted, and what it’s potentially doing to the brain and focus.
A study of 111 college students found those who are more prone to feeling envious of others are more likely to become addicted to short videos. Brain scans revealed that heavier short addiction is linked to increased gray matter volume in the orbitofrontal cortex and cerebellum, as well as stronger spontaneous brain activity in areas involved in reward, self-control, attention, and emotion processing.
Another study tested 48 young adults, finding those with a shorts addiction (self-admitted by questionnaire) had poorer self-control and showed weaker brain activity related to executive control. During an attention task, higher addiction scores were linked to reduced theta brainwave power in the frontal region when participants had to resolve conflicting information. This was not seen during a resting state electroencephalogram. Overall, the results suggest that excessive short viewing may impair the brain’s ability to exert executive control and self-regulation.
Of course, this sounds bad and it might simply be those with already low attention spans are the ones easily hooked by short videos, but it could be argued for others their addiction to a mobile device and watching short videos is akin to brain training. If someone is unwittingly training themselves to be addicted to short videos, they can also train themselves to hook into something more positive and substantial. Potentially elongating their attention span.
This can be done by reading books and being focused on something for a longer timeframe. Only doing one task at a time. Only keeping one web browser open. And taking scheduled breaks away from devices, instead of using the device as a break.
Investment Attention
When it comes to investing, we’ve done our utmost over the years to shift everyone’s attention from short term market movements, to focus on their long-term investment goals.
A couple of years after the global financial crisis in 2008, we began a writing program. A way to stay in touch with you as our clients, reinforce key messages about investing, give you something interesting to read, and hopefully help you on your investment journey. The posts were also on our website so anyone could read, and it would help with search engines finding our website.
How would we measure success? Nothing too clinically, but hopefully clients would develop a more relaxed and less nervous approach to investing. Back in the day when we started if there was a market plunge, we’d certainly field a few phone calls from nervous clients. Some of them would start with the darkly humorous, “do I have anything left?”
These days we don’t receive many of those calls. Maybe it gets mentioned if a client is in for a meeting, but today when there’s a market dip, we might not get any calls at all. Over the past year we’ve seen the President Trump market tariff tantrum and the Iran war, oil spike, Strait of Hormuz blockade, and the phones have been pretty quiet.
While we still make the effort to reference what’s going on, we don’t feel the need to specifically shoot something out the moment there’s a world event (covid being the exception). It’s nicer to get an update from your financial adviser than be left with the media filling the void, but we don’t react instantly to market movements. They’re a part of life. Like Christmas and Easter, they’re coming once a year, we just don’t know when or why. Unfortunately, that’s still the unnerving part.
What’s the difference between a market tumble in 2010/11 and 2025/26? Maybe the GFC was fresh in everyone’s mind and people were still a little raw and edgy about market movements. The GFC did have a peak to trough decline from November 2007 until March 2009 before markets began the recovery. Maybe there were some scars in the years after. Maybe that’s long forgotten. Maybe we’ve been in a very long bull market since the recovery started in 2009, albeit there have been some 20% drops in that time.
Maybe our writing did help everyone develop a more relaxed and less nervous approach to investing.
We can’t be sure, but for a few minutes a month we’re glad we’ve got your attention.
This represents general information only. Before making any financial or investment decisions, we recommend you consult a financial planner to take into account your personal investment objectives, financial situation and individual needs.
