# This face changes for one second. From across the room, did you catch it?

- Series: [How Cameras](https://miu.fm/howcameras.md)
- Premieres: 2026-11-13
- Page: https://miu.fm/howcameras/this-face-changes-for-one-second-from-across-the-room-did

## Story

This face changes for one second. From across the room, did you catch it?

James Cutting and Kacie Armstrong at Cornell measured more than 31,000 shots from 24 films made between 1940 and 2010. The wider the shot, the longer it stayed on screen: about 8 seconds for the widest, about 2.5 for the closest. Then they timed 21 students judging happy or disgusted faces at four sizes: the smaller the face, the slower the answer. Only by about 50 milliseconds on a white page; in real film frames, about three times that. The editor Walter Murch asks: can you read the expression in the actor's eyes? If not, use the next closer shot.

The room, the stand-in and the face are our own models, built and lit in code.

Small face, give it time. Big face, cut sooner. How long would you hold it?

Sources: Cutting and Armstrong, "Facial expression, size, and clutter", Attention, Perception & Psychophysics 78 (2016); Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye (2001).
Music: our own, played on GarageBand instruments. Sounds: made by us.

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