film length for different audiences

Not so much explanation as background: http://www.movieforums.com/community/archive/index.php/t-16296.html

I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken.

From what I've been told by people who lived in that time, going to the movie theater was more of an event than it is today. People would go to the movie theater and stay for hours, especially if it was hot and the theater was the only air conditioned place in town.

In a world without television, video games, the Internet or other competing forms of entertainment, the movie theater was the place to go see newsreels, which was the only way to view current events remotely. Kids would get to see cartoons, and there would be other stuff as well.

So an evening at the movies could start off with newsreels and/or cartoons or other light entertainment, an intermission and then a feature film. After the feature, there would be another intermission, then another feature known as the B movie. If you came early and stayed late, you could get hours of entertainment from one admission ticket.

After World War II, the technology developed during the war led to competing forms of entertainment, and television soon made newsreels obsolete. TV also became a more convenient medium for entertainment that used to be the sole province of the theater, including cartoons and B movies.

The sea change in technology that ended the reign of the "night at the movies" and the double feature enabled the rise of the epic movie, lasting 2 hours or longer. And because few people wanted to sit that long, it caused the return of the intermission to break up a long movie.

In the mid '70s the Eventide company produced the Harmonizer, a device that could pitch shift audio in real time. It allowed singers to harmonize with themselves, and was the forerunner of the autotuner. It also allowed any movie to be sped up without cuts, and without the "Donald Duck sound". Today the same technology is widespread and inexpensive. I haven't seen it integrated into consumer video players though. My guess is that Hollywood doesn't like the idea of mere mortals choosing how long they want a movie to be...

Thanks for that, interesting about the Harmonizer and so on. Apart from films being sped up I wouldn't be surprised if there is (or will be) software giving a large, perhaps limitless, range of options of different cuts which would reflect individual viewer preferences as to duration or type of content. For example cutting out sex scenes or alternatively cutting out everything but.

I beseech ye in the bowels of Christ, think that ye may be mistaken.

From what I've seen, these tools are only available in professional gear. I've never seen a DVR or disc player with similar features. I can only presume that the content producers don't much like the idea of the end user having so much control over the product. The industry has been promising things like that, but never has delivered.