Viewer Attention Quotes

All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.

I think that people are interested seeing me on the screen.

You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.

The thing that I love about television there are no more than two or three people watching you at a time. If there are more than two or three people in a room they're talking to each other, they're not listening to you.

With TV, the most important thing is just to get people to turn it on.

The idea of having a narrative guiding the viewer through and grasping their attention is a really compelling thing.

We want eyeballs on the screen.

I think network TV to a large extent has underestimated the intelligence of the American public for so many years now. It's tried to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I think the average viewer is much more intelligent than that and crave a little more complexity and are willing to pay more attention.

With moviemaking, the audience always has to keep asking, 'What happens next?' If you have the wrong piece of music over a scene, people aren't going to get the scene. If you have the wrong camera angle, people aren't going to pay attention. That's as much a part of the process as getting people to talk to you.

I wanted to write a story that demanded the viewer's attention.

I am not a big fan of what I call 'ambient television,' which just washes through you in a very polite way. I like television that grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go.

When you go to commercial, you want something to call the viewers back, and if you don't have a decent act out, the audience probably won't be there in the numbers you want when the show returns.