A very interesting article at Cognitive Daily highlights research that indicates that human memory is affected by edits and changes in viewing angle! While having cameras that move inside the scene seems to make things more interesting without much impact on your ability to remember what it is you saw in detail, having a jump cut or change in POV of any angle appears to rattle your brain and decrease ability to accurately recount what was going on…

Here’s an interesting vid on how Long Takes were used to bring an intimacy and immediacy to Children of Men.

So point, counterpoint, here for your consideration is the classicly edited montage sequence from Eisenstein’s Oktober..

Hauntingly beautiful, but sure enough I would be very hard pressed to describe in detail more than one or two snippets from when the edits slowed down…So this all makes sense to me, but then does it also hold true for conversations ? I’ve been known to lob the occasional non-sequitur, and if this translates then I may have discovered a new super-power.

Cognitive Daily: Cuts in movies, and their impact on memory