I reckon I can now watch “The Italian Job” in about 20 minutes, “Blade Runner” takes longer. These are films I know well but I don’t necessarily enjoy every scene equally, which allows me to repeatedly fast-forward to the next interesting bit. It’s still important to view the intervening action, but I’m quite happy to do that at an accelerated pace.
Now that people have much less time to spend, even on entertainment, today’s invention is a digital recording system which will enable a large test audience to watch a movie online and then a record can be kept of which bits they fast forwarded through.
A version of the movie would always be available for download (perhaps at a different price) stored in such a way that each section was re-recorded at a speed proportional to the amount by which people had fast forwarded during their viewing. Boring bits would therefore be shown at an averaged higher speed, significant or simply much-loved sections would be run at normal pace.
This would save both on time spent viewing and the bandwidth required for delivery. It might also provide filmmakers with more objective understanding of what the most enjoyed sections of their movies really are (ie that ten-minute car chase with multiple explosions might get omitted from a final cut).
If the members of the test audience could record their age, sex etc, then versions of a movie might be created, tuned to specific demographics.
