It got me thinking, does the length of certain books/movies/songs scare people away from them? With books, I don't care at all how many pages they are, they can go on FOREVER as long as they're good books. With songs, it's the same way. I favor lots of songs that have a tendency to be +4 minutes, even though the average song is around 3. Movies, I admittedly think a little bit differently. Probably with the exception being Harry Potter movies, movies longer than 2 1/2 hours or so tend to bore me or I don't watch as many of them because I just don't like sitting and watching a movie for that long. I think it's different because with movies I just sit there and watch them; maybe clean or something, but mostly just sit there. With music I'm normally listening to it while I do something else (read, write, homework, in the car, clean, craft). While I read I'm an active part of the book because I'm physically reading it- and a lot of the time it's when I'm in the car or when I *should* be sleeping.
Back to the book I was just reading, "Beautiful Creatures". It's a very popular book/series, despite it's length. Same with the Harry Potter books (well, 4,5,6,7 anyway), Twilight's not exactly short, The Inheritance Cycle (Eragon, Eldest, Brisingr) books are bigger every time they're released; so clearly it doesn't intimidate that many people- yet most books I come upon are 200-300 pages. Why is that then? Do people prefer to write shorter books? Do most people prefer to read shorter books? Do publishers prefer to publish shorter books? Also, most books in a series tend to be closer to the 200-300 page range, aside the books I've already mentioned. Would most authors prefer to release six 200 page novels as opposed to three 400 page ones? Is it because most 400 page novels cost the same at the book store as a 200 page one, so they can make more money off of a six book 200 page series?
With movies, most movies are around 2 1/2 hours, maybe a little less, a few minutes more. Why is that? Why do movie makers delete scenes, sometimes important ones, so that the movie is 10 or 20 minutes shorter? Why bother? Is it because Americans have short attention spans? Take the recent Harry Potter movie. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 has a run time of around 2 hours and 30 minutes. According to an article that I read, there's about 20 minutes of deleted scenes that are going to be on the DVD that comes out Friday. Harry Potter fans are already accustomed to huge movies, and they don't mind. Some of the deleted scenes were actually considerably essential, according to said article, including the scene where they explain that Voldemort's name is taboo, and the scene where Harry says goodbye to Dudley. The first one explains why every time someone says his name they have a load of Death Eaters after them; which happens in the movie. Unexplained. So, why cut those 20 minutes of deleted scenes, for dedicated Harry Potter fans especially that clearly don't mind sitting for a 3 hour movie?I'm not sure of the answers to any of those questions. That's why I wrote this post. What do you think, blogverse?
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