A little anecdotal perspective on this. In the ancient days when films were shown on film, my brother and I attended the Marrakesh Film Festival (!!) -- where they were screening About a Boy. 1/ https://twitter.com/verge/status/1289244461692645377

We went to the test screening -- it was a smaller portable projector for an outdoor venue, not a "home" model by any means but not the giant platter-fed monster of latter days. As it began to play, we could tell SOMETHING WAS WRONG.

The pace felt off. The dialogue sounded strange. The feel of my usually sprightly comedy was off -- timing of jokes felt wrong -- everything felt grey and blah. Why? Here's the answer: (clickbaity of me!)

THE FILM WS PLAYING AT 23 fps. Whether because of the electricity supply, or the age of the projector. Once you realized it, it was nails on a chalkboard (to us). An audience might not ever know or care, not having the original to compare to. But --

The projectionist insisted, with Gallic haughtiness, that this was NOT the case. It was perfect 24fps! He was a projectionist at Cannes! He knew his business! However, we knew our film, every foot of it, and a mother knows when something's off with their kid... Well --

Imagine this -- 1 fps might now seem like much. But consider how desperately we try to get our films down to fighting weight. 1 fps = 4% (ish) = FOUR MINUTES LONGER. That means that EVERYTHING IS FUCKED. We asked the projectionist to crank it "up" to 25fps. ("25fps"). So --

Balance restored. But the lesson -- filmmakers already have to deal with various outrages too our original intent. Tiny screens. Ads. Pauses. We get it. We want our movies to be seen. If it weren't for @netflix I wouldn't get to see a lot of films, especially now. But just know -

There was an intent. There were many many hours spent timing things out. Fuck with that and you're not having the whole experience. Enable it and you're encouraging people to speed watch. Lawrence of Arabia is a long motherfucker of a movie. But I don't believe it works at 2hrs.

(btw see it in a theater if ever you can, when the slo-mo apocalypse is over).

Let me add -- I know that the pandemic and systemic racial discrimination are the bigger problems actually worth fighting about.

But there are other, little things to bum out about too. Bye!