Manufacturing Focus: How the Film Industry Keeps Us Watching

The popularity of streaming services has made an irreversible impact on the production of film and television. Second screen culture, or the habit of using other devices while watching TV, has led actors, filmmakers and critics to voice concerns about the changing value of film in the attention-based economy. 

Production companies have mastered the ability to captivate viewers to a biological extent. When our focus is centered on a single point, our brains are wired to stay attentive. Films that make cuts without moving the focus point capitalize on the fact it requires more effort for people to rapidly adjust to shifts across the screen. 

This mirrors the successful formulaic addiction inherent to social media. Eyes are situated directly on small phone screens, rarely having to look elsewhere. In the case of boredom, users can simply refresh their feeds with a single swipe, recapturing focus. 

Discussions have surfaced online about the trend of recent films relying on the center of the screen. Action located in the middle easily translates to aspect ratios commonly used on social media, where users can vertically view entire scenes posted online. 

In the case of “Blade Runner” and “Blade Runner 2049,” the latter — made 35 years later — saw shots closer to the center, on average. 

Countless factors go into the creative choices of shooting a film, including different film crews, plots and genres. However, the era in which the film is produced may lay the context for this noticeable shift.

Proponents of the centering theory have considered audiences are more likely to be attracted to a film if there’s less need to look around the screen — a trend becoming distinctly recognizable in newly released television. 

Netflix’s new installment in their “Monster”  anthology series, “The Lizzie Borden Story,” was promoted with a two-minute trailer on X in which two main characters confronted each other. The entirety of the trailer saw center-framed shots of each character, not once changing the angle. 

The effect of overreliance on center framing is a loss of connection to the scene at hand. When characters aren’t shown in perspective to one another, it’s difficult to visualize the setting and removes the ability to fully immerse viewers in the film. 

If audiences aren’t expected to pay attention, there’s less emphasis on making visually engaging scenes. The only truly important element of a shot, therefore, is the subject, which removes the significance of creating layered compositions. 

Center framing isn’t completely unimportant, but when used imprecisely it can detract from a scene’s cinematic weight. Auteurs like Wes Anderson have become known for using center framing as a means of creating symmetry, surrounding the screen with details emphasizing the central focus point. 

Scenes including a pivotal center-framed shot with contextual buildup can make a shot unforgettable, something an overreliance on the technique can’t parallel.   

In an era where users can simply click “menu” and re-enter the pool of thousands of selections to choose from, it’s not enough to have a captivating trailer or premise.

For a production company to commit millions of dollars, they want to ensure films are entertaining enough, a phenomenon discussed by Hollywood actors who have experience working with streaming services. 

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, actor Justine Bateman labels this concept as “conveyor-belt content,” describing film as functioning as background entertainment. Bateman explained the film industry wants to keep audiences engaged even if they look away for long segments of the film. 

Similarly, actor Matt Damon told Variety there are behind-the-scenes discussions at Netflix about reiterating the plot multiple times in dialogue to account for people being on their phones. 

This year, young filmmakers were overwhelmingly present at the box office. 

26-year-old director Curry Barker’s “Obsession” is the year’s highest-grossing film, made with under a $1 million budget. A similar record was broken by then 20-year-old director Kane Parsons with “Backrooms,” which brought in the highest box office returns ever seen for an A24 film. 

So far, “Obsession” and “Backrooms” rank 10th and 11th out of all 2026 releases in box-office gross. Of the top releases, they make up two of the three films whose domestic profit accounts for a majority of the total profit, reflecting a trend in younger filmmakers appealing to an increasingly online audience. 

It tracks that younger directors have a better grasp of what appeals to people in the height of the second screen era. Barker and Parsons both were raised during the popularization of short-form content and were prolific online creators.

Before streaming services became popular, film and television were made with the knowledge they’d be viewed in a theater or broadcast live. Now, networks have implemented techniques calling for easy, on-the-go streaming called video compression algorithms. 

These strategies impact the cinematography in which scenes are blocked to align with specific camera requirements, which can result in scenes feeling more dim or lifeless. This benefits viewers on mobile devices or computers, who, after downloading, experience a minimal loss of quality compared to users who watch on their TVs. 

Much of the credit for these filmic trends could be given to COVID-19 and a boom in the user base of nearly every streaming service when they were the only way to access film. People are now going to movie theaters less, and films premiere for shorter periods of time before becoming available digitally. 

Blockbusters from large companies like Disney and A24 are able to stay in theaters longer due to their cultural relevance and ability to sustain greater losses compared to independent films. For most smaller companies, if a film isn’t in high demand, it may leave theaters soon after release. 

If film continues to shift from theaters to television to telephone, we may see sustained audiovisual changes to the medium, following the likes of compression techniques and plot repetition in dialogue. 

Movies and television whose formats adapt to the demand of users’ attention spans make their impact harder to feel. When their messages have to be repeated several times, uncertain whether the viewer is looking at the TV, there is a danger of missing the values the art provides.