Why does double speed become "just needed" for watching dramas?
Double speed gives users the right to choose the viewing experience.
From 0.5 to 3.0 times speed, users can freely choose the playback speed.
If you watch at 2.0 times speed, you can catch up to 60 or 70 episodes of TV series in a day and a half. For viewers who have limited time, pursue efficiency and don’t want to miss popular dramas, or who just want to avoid sections that they don’t like but don’t want to abandon the drama, double speed Become optional.
According to the "2021 China Internet Audiovisual Development Research Report", 28.2% of online video users do not watch the original speed, and the post-00s especially favor the double speed function, with 39.6% of users.
Speed and the common "time anxiety" in contemporary society hit it off. It has become the standard configuration of many audio and video applications, and "2.0 times speed" has even become a way of life.
Double speed is a virtual button on the video playback interface, but to a certain extent, it also represents the viewing mode that is changing completely.
Double-speed playback allows you to experience the thrill of "playing with your mobile phone", making traditional viewing behaviors more game-like and interactive
Tracing back to the history of the screening and viewing of media art, at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, after experimental exploration, people chose to project movies on the big screen, establishing a collective sharing viewing mode in movie theaters.
The right to show is handed over to full-time technicians, and requirements are gradually formed for the audience, such as seating according to the number, not touching the screen, and not allowed to take pictures and videos during the filming.
The broadcasting of TV programs has always been uniformly arranged by the TV station and broadcast at a fixed time.
Therefore, in the 1990s, when CCTV broadcasted popular TV series such as "Desire", there would be scenes of empty streets.
Subsequent video recorders and DVDs and other playback devices allow viewers to choose what to watch, and can also operate buttons or remote controls to pause, fast forward, and rewind the video content. However, like watching TV, it is still a small group around family members to watch Activity.
Regardless of film or television, private persons are not allowed to possess images, and there are restrictions on the contact between the viewer and the projection equipment. Distance is the prerequisite for maintaining an ideal viewing order.
For more than a hundred years, even though the audience is passive and restrained in their behavior, they are still obsessed with the big screen or staying in front of the TV.
Computers and smart phones have begun to change the traditional way of viewing media art.
Nowadays, "watching mobile phones" has become a new daily routine that can cover all viewing needs.
It breaks the collective and public nature of cinema screenings, and replaces the distanced aesthetic experience, allowing viewers to occupy and manipulate images through touch, such as screenshots, double speeds, etc.
"Watching mobile phone" is also different from TV and DVD playback. It is completely private and individual viewing, and has the characteristics of mobility, sustainability, and viewer control.
"Watching the phone" is not actually looking at the mobile phone. It is not the mobile phone screen that transfers the big screen and the attractiveness of the screen, but the user manually manipulates the screen to establish a brand new viewing mode.
In the touch-screen viewing mode, "seeing" is a personal power and personality choice.
What video content a video user obtains and what kind of viewing experience he obtains depends on which functions the individual chooses on the interface.
Turn on the double speed, and the series will be different from the original work in terms of playing rhythm, character speech speed, and performance style.
The same video, choose 1.25x speed, and the viewing experience obtained by playing at 2.0x speed is also different.
The attraction of touch screen viewing to users is thus produced in the experience of human-computer interaction.
In the era of mobile Internet, smart phones are more portable and mobile for viewing. The time and space restrictions on viewing have been removed, and images continue to be output, and viewing cannot be stopped.
With personal control and touch screen viewing, there is not only no distance between the user and the image, but also an intimate interaction. "Watching a mobile phone" has become "Playing a mobile phone". The traditional viewing behavior adds gameplay and interactivity.
As of June 2021, the number of mobile Internet users in China has reached 1.007 billion.
The machine is inseparable, and it has become people's living conditions and the landscape of the times.
Therefore, away from the exploration of the touch screen viewing mode, it is very likely that "double speed" is only used as the remote control "fast forward" function, and it is difficult to fully explain how the small screen creates great appeal.
Whether double-speed broadcasting can “dehydrate the water injection drama” becomes the “touchstone” of the quality of the work
The new manual touch-screen viewing mode gives users the right to choose what to watch, when and how to watch, but "free viewing" has quickly become "overviewing".
In contrast, although movies and television have many restrictions on viewers, they also limit viewing indulgence.
Take "sweeping drama" as an example. The audience uses a tablet or smart phone to click on the video application. Among the massive film and television series sorted out, through active search or intelligent recommendation, select the series they want to watch, and they can watch it all at once. Multiple episodes of TV series, and even "swipe" the entire series.
In June of this year, the survey data provided by the China Network Audiovisual Program Service Association showed that the viewing time of the series on the on-demand side (70%) was much higher than that on the live side (39.5%).
Video users who realize the freedom of "scrolling drama" can increase efficiency and save time with double speed, drag the progress bar to skip uninteresting plots, and skip advertisements and credits directly when charging VIP members.
Before the head video platform cancels the paid advance-on-demand model in early October, users can unlock the plot in advance by paying.
Users can also take screenshots, share, send bullet screens, etc. at any time while watching. Manually selectable functions make the pleasure of "scrolling drama" at your fingertips.
I wanted to watch an episode at a double speed of 20 minutes, but it often took N 20 minutes.
A short video of ten seconds or so, many people can "swipe" continuously for several hours.
Users complained online and "cannot stop at all."
In fact, what really makes people "unstoppable" is the obsession mechanism hidden behind the touch-screen viewing mode, and the double speed is just a catalyst.
Some studies claim that 1.33x speed audio does not affect the listener's understanding, and there is no difference between people's comprehension abilities at 1.5 and 1.8x speeds.
It is theoretically possible to use double speed to accelerate information reception in a short period of time.
At this point, Double Speed is similar to the "reduced version" of classic literary works, compressing text or video content, so that readers and audiences can understand the content of the story more quickly.
This process turns the artistic and aesthetic activities of literary and film and television works into entertainment consumption of information output.
The appreciation of literary works takes time and a full psychological process, from trivial intuition to emotional resonance, and then to the aesthetic acceptance process of conceptual cognition.
Poems, novels, and film and television dramas often use the omission of words, empty shots, freeze-frame shots and other methods to leave blanks, arousing infinite associations and imaginations of readers and audiences, generating aesthetic experience, and sublimating tangible and limited literary works into an infinitely broad spiritual world .
Contrary to double-speed playback, compressing images and compressing time also compress the space for the viewer's psychological experience.
In the past, reading a poem or watching a painting would touch the imagination of readers and viewers, or open up associations, stirring up the interactive space of thoughts and emotions.
Nowadays, when mobile phone users “scroll dramas” and watch videos online, when they have questions or have ideas, they don’t even need to click on links or open other pages. On the same playback interface, they can click on a function button such as “Wonder” to get a “one-click”. Recognize actors" "One-key recognition of background music" "One-key recognition of line knowledge".
Technology not only externalizes psychological activities, but also "feels" the user's psychology through algorithms. For example, AI can recognize user facial expressions and introduce personalized functions such as "just look at TA" (only look at favorite actors).
However, the viewing function of one-click satisfaction may also simplify the experience of art and psychological activities into information acquisition and entertainment pleasure.
Double-speed playback is also such an application.
The creation and acceptance of online literary and art works has subverted traditional artistic principles and laws in many ways, and has also changed the way and ecology of literary and artistic dissemination.
The application of double speed is also related to the low quality and time-consuming procrastination of some online literary works.
Some people say that it is the "bad drama" that forced the double speed to "just need", the double speed "dehydrates the water injection drama", and the double speed has become the "touchstone" of the quality of the work.
Nevertheless, for technical empowerment under business strategies, it is extremely necessary for users to understand the nature of capital pursuit of profit.
Entertainment methods that demand efficiency and refreshment have been launched with the help of technology, and have become popular in the cultural consumer market. This is related to the increase in the number of online literature and art works and the fierce competition in the cultural entertainment industry.
The double speed increases the playback speed, which helps to lock the user and increase the amount of video clicks and playback.
However, the achievement of these commercial goals is precisely related to obsessive viewing and internalizing utilitarian aesthetics.
The real process of literary appreciation and aesthetics is slow aesthetics, rejecting the interference of double speed
The user's use and satisfaction of the speed is related to the general "time anxiety" in current life.
Art works often take time as the theme, reflecting on the manipulation of people by capital and technology.
Commercial films use fast editing and interlocking narratives to create illusory reality, while art film creators use long shots and slow rhythms to break the image illusion with reality, trying to awaken the audience who are addicted to the story.
However, most audiences who walk into the theater want to find comfort and entertainment in the video, rather than the reality. Therefore, the number of screenings of art films is often left in the cold.
A film director once tried to force the audience to face and experience images and sound with a long lens that lasted 6 minutes without lens movement, hoping to stimulate the audience’s positive psychological attitude with the ultimate slow aesthetics, and also hope to express “the movie theater is the "The ideal place to watch movies" point of view.
This reflection of literary works is related to the compression of time caused by modernization, consumerism, and the development of new media.
Film narratives have always explored how to delete "dead time" (that is, the time when nothing happens), and allow the audience to perceive the meaning of the narrative by condensing time into moments.
The public is generally happy to watch movies and TV works with a large number of shots, fast editing rhythms, and compact narratives.
The industrialized production of film and television represented by Hollywood and Netflix can take the world by storm, and it has nothing to do with its accurate catering to the demands of the public.
Film and television drama audiences have gradually formed a consistent standard. High-quality films and dramas should highlight the demands of fast-paced, high suspense, tight plot, and high-quality audiovisual.
"Fast" has become the dominant daily rhythm, and it has also shortened the time and rhythm of literary works. Slowness has become an obstacle to people's enjoyment of audiovisual.
So, is it possible to win users by handing over the power of broadcasting and acceleration to users?
For a long time, the time of literary works has been in the hands of the creators.
Film and television directors use lens editing, audio-visual special effects and narrative techniques to determine the time rhythm and duration of the work. There are "bullet time" and "last minute rescue" to the artistic delay of physical and psychological time. There are also space transitions and subtitle annotations. Compression of image time and breaking of linear time often become the path of artistic innovation.
However, the time and rhythm of the film and television works are handed over to users to decide by Double Speed, which will inevitably be resisted by creators, who refuse users to change the way the film and television works are presented.
However, the protest did not always work.
Can the double speed appearing in the name of efficiency solve the "time anxiety" of online art users?
As we have seen, the daily manipulation of people by mobile media is creating new "time anxiety".
Technology and capital have a long history of restraining and manipulating mankind.
Industrialized society requires people to identify with the body image of others. New media guides people to accept the psychological structure of others. From imitating the bodies of idol stars to following the psychological trajectory of new media programmers, capital continues to transform and control people’s body and mind. Profit.
Speed and art, efficiency goals and aesthetic processes are fundamentally contradictory and repelling.
Therefore, in the multi-screen media ecology of the Internet age, it is difficult for people to spend a large amount of continuous time as viewers, and the viewing mode will inevitably change.
However, while pursuing efficiency, advocating technology, and immersing pleasure, it is necessary to reserve space for artistic creation, slow down the pace of artistic aesthetics, maintain the power of reflection in literature and art, and face up to the manipulation of human beings by consumer society and the media.
In this regard, it requires the thinking and consciousness of literary and artistic creators, as well as space for artistic exploration.
Although network literature and art have obvious product and use characteristics, they should ultimately be responsible for guiding and purifying the hearts and emotions of the audience, and should not blindly stop at the level of entertaining the masses.
On the other hand, in the new viewing mode, compatible with the existence of slow viewing and slow aesthetics, perhaps it can rejuvenate perception, restore the time compressed by technology, the inner experience and memory corroded by time, and gain a new way of observing the world. Way.
Double speed is not a complicated technology, but it hides the complex problems of many new viewing modes. Double speed accelerates not only the viewing speed, but also aggravates the indulge in touch screen viewing and aggravates "time anxiety". These are contrary to the double speed technology. The original intention is therefore more worthy of attention.
(Author: Zhao Lijin, a special researcher at the Research Center for the Theoretical System of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in Gansu Province, and a professor at the School of Media and Communications at Northwest Normal University. 〕Phase results)