What is it about?
Undergraduates watched a number of movies together and in one sitting. They then were given rough synopses of each movie, and were asked to divide the movie into between three and seven parts and write an essay supporting their choices. Most divided them into four roughly equal-length parts, plus a beginning section after what is often called the "inciting incident."
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Why is it important?
It is commonplace to divide a popular movies into three acts. Act I is the first 30 minutes or so, Act III is the last 30 minutes or so, and Act II is roughly the middle hour. Data from viewers written synopses of movies suggest that most movies have four large narrative sections (acts), but some have three and some have five. These data support views of Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell.
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This page is a summary of: Large-scale narrative events in popular cinema, Cognitive Research Principles and Implications, September 2019, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1186/s41235-019-0188-x.
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