A while ago, I read an interesting article. I don’t know if it’s true, but I learned that the angle/shot of a typical tv production changes once every six seconds (on average). This includes parts where the cut is really fast (1-2 seconds) and parts where it takes much longer (10-12 seconds).

I know this ‘6 seconds rule’ isn’t a law and the speed of a broadcast depends on the speed of the program. Nonetheless, I sometimes try to stimulate the team and myself to move faster by urging them (and myself) to reach this arbitrary goal of six seconds per shot/angle on average. Most often Always, we fail doing so (in our defense, sometimes we get really close). But with this video (above), I think we might reach our ‘goal’. Let’s see…

Duration: 225 seconds / Number of shots: 30

So, 225 divided by 30 equals… ehm… let’s see… 7,5. Aargh… I guess we have to try again next year…

UPDATE: It turns out we did reach the ‘goal’ of 6 seconds per shot/angle, but not with this clip. Instead, it’s this video, which has a duration of 187 seconds and has 32 cuts. This is an average of 5,8 seconds per shot. Wow!