Initial Remarks

As I more thoroughly study film, I have found that, just like any other art form, there is a multitude of stimuli, meaning, symbolism, and intention behind each part of the film. For myself, a rather novice critic, I have found that it might take 2-3 viewings of a film to fully grasp the more subtle aspects of the film: subplots, intentionality in the cinematography, and other niche aspects that I might not have noticed in the first viewing.

On Cognitive Load and Experience

I refrained from titling this section "On Cognitive Load and Expertise," as the OED defines expertise as "expert knowledge in a particular field." Knowledge itself does not imply that the cognitive load for a given task will be reduced. In fact, assuming your knowledge (theory) has a negative correlation with experience, the opposite is true. You will have a higher cognitive load when you are more knowledgeable about a subject, naturally, as you will be aware of more aspects of the subject to analyze. This, without experience, can work much to your detriment. This creates an uncomfortable bottleneck as knowledge is fairly easy to acquire, but experience takes significantly longer. There is, however, a solution to this: Chunking. Chunking is a cognitive strategy that reduces load by grouping information into manageable chunks to avoid overloading working memory. Think of stimuli as a set of digits '184920349824' which is hard to remember, but if you chunk it into '1849 2034 9824,' it becomes much easier to remember. Similarly, in order to study film as a novice critic, I have found that it is best to chunk the film into manageable pieces. As you become more experienced, your cognitive load does not necessarily increase, but rather the more general aspects of the film become more apparent. Taking less cognition to process the general aspects leaves more for the subtleties.

The Problem with Chunking

Chunking is a great strategy, but it does pose a great problem for someone like myself. As someone whose goal is to consume a large amount of media, analyze it, and learn about art and the human condition, every additional rewatch of a film is time that I could be spending watching a new film. You could give up here and say that you will just inevitably miss some of the more subtle aspects of the film and move on. Alternatively, you could settle for watching fewer films over time. I propose my solution to this issue is better than both of the aforementioned options.

Film Study as Background Noise

A lot of cinephiles spend copious amounts of time at our computers doing a diverse range of tasks: from writing to coding, browsing the web, etc. Outside of this, there are also normal repetitive tasks such as cleaning, cooking, and other household chores. I propose that you can use this time to study film in a relaxing and unobtrusive way by simply rewatching films that you have already seen and are familiar with. This drastically reduces the cognitive load of the film, allowing you to naturally pick up on the more subtle aspects of the film even without the intention of doing so. It allows you to fall in love with new characters, scenes, subplots, and other decisions made by the director previously unnoticed.

Final Remarks

Film is a great art form, and I hope that you will take the time to study it. However, everything comes at a cost. Here, you give up the moments of slow reflection and analysis of one's own life that occurs when you are alone and not actively consuming. This is a trade-off that each individual must decide for themselves. In my case, my life is, and will continue to be, tailored toward isolation and introspection, giving me more than enough time to reflect on my own life, as well as use the time doing mundane tasks to study film. I hope that you will find this method useful and that it will help you become a better film critic and cinephile.

@article{yotam2025film-study-as-background-noise,
  title   = "Film Study as Background Noise",
  author  = "Yotam, Kris",
  journal = "krisyotam.com",
  year    = "2025",
  month   = "Jul",
  url     = "https://krisyotam.com/blog/film/film-study-as-background-noise"
}