Struggle with film plots.

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I usually have to load several pages of interest up on the net. Scan them briefly if my mind wonders or I start feeling stressed watch a video or go to something else. If I buried my head and read something for a long time it was make me stressed,fatigued. I'm glad IAM not the only one lol

I went and saw Zootopia again earlier tonight, and it didn't impress me nearly as much as it did the first time, because I already knew everything that was going to happen. I kind of wish I could forget everything I knew about it so that I could watch it again with fresh eyes.
It's a very well-made movie with fun characters, lots of attention to detail, and some nice twists and surprises, but I just didn't enjoy seeing it in the theatre again as much as I thought I was going to. Maybe this will change once the Blu-Ray comes out, who knows.

Now, it's interesting how this relates to the topic at hand, because unlike most other films I've watched, Zootopia's characters are well defined and easily identifiable. In other films, usually live action films of a more "mature" variety, I'll have trouble following what's going on or even what the characters' names are. Subtitles are a lifesaver for me because they clear things up so much.

Movies and TV or "Motion based entertainment" is much easier for me to follow because the stories follow some sort of predictable path. You are led to a conclusion.

Real life is messy and unpredictable. Nothing ever really concludes.

My biggest pet peeve is when watching a movie and someone is always asking what is going on because they don't pay attention, or worse, they haven't explained what is going on yet. It is unfolding.

And, when people talk while watching, it's like a conversation in a crowd. I can only follow one or the other.

But, aurally, today's movies and TV are a mess for me. Before, the spoken dialogue was most important and mixed to promote the spoken dialogue. But, now, it's all a mess with music and sound effects overpowering the dialogue.

I've never fully understood what's going on the screen lol.

I love and hate plot tips , and didn't see that coming moments.

I LOVE SPOILERS! to me they are NOT spoilers but are instead "fresheners" as they help me grok the flick. all movies should come with cliff notes fresheners to help some of us understand them. mebbe call 'em "AHA! books."

I know what is happening on the screen but I very often don't know why characters behaving the way they do. I may get annoyed by lack of logic and won't be able to watch to the end

Went to see Batman v superman today. Struggled with some of it. Wasn't to complicated so wasn't as bad as usual. Found it a bit convoluted,choppy,the last hour was great though lots of visuals which I really enjoy. On a critical note it was as if Zack Snyder gave a big F.U to the critics of man of steel and left everything in they hated in man of steel deliberately Lol .. Most of the time I'm not even sure why I enjoy a film

I grok that.

Reading spoilers after I've seen the movie they're for gives me things to look for when I watch it again. I don't appreciate spoilers for things that I plan on watching but haven't watched yet, but I have come across quite a number of them. I also have a bad habit of reading synopses for movies I've never seen on Wikipedia.

Also, "The Big Lebowski" confused the living crap out of me the first time I watched it, and I'm still not sure if I entirely understand the plot of it.

I find film plots confusing probably about 50% of the time. I tend to watch quite a lot of family films and animated films as they're easier.

I wonder if the fact that I don't fully understand films the first time might be partly why I like to watch the same film many times over. I certainly see different things in it each time. A film has so much data. One of the things I really like are films with intersting sets, like Diagon Alley in the Harry Potter series. I could watch the same clip on the same set 20 times and see new facts each time. It's like a wonderland!

I've thought a bit about why I don't get films straight away. I think it's due to multiple factors:

1. Social references and language sometimes go over my head and I have to pause and look them up on the internet. If I'm not watching alone then I have to watch it again alone so that I can sort these bits out without being annoying to others.

2. The way the plot is described sometimes relies on inference and context and I'm not good at picking the flow of that up without practice within each film.

3. I frequently find objects more intersting than people. (Please don't think that I don't value people - I do. People are more important than things, it's just that my mind finds people complex and sometimes confusing whereas objects are easier and so to me they feel more friendly.) Because of this I will get caught very often on a detail - it could be an object or it could be just a particular rich shade of colour or a pattern or a piece of architechture. But while that is on screen I find myself focused on that and I miss bits of the plot. Again, when I watch alone I can rewind and pick up the plot by going back but in a cinema I can't.

4. I also get hung up on logical inconsistencies and continuity errors. In fact this happens in conversations too as well as films. When something doesn't make sense I get obsessed with sorting out the truth. It makes me a really good programmer when it comes to bug fixing because the bug, the error, the inconsistency is like a piece of sharp metal in my brain and I have to sort it out. But it makes me a poor conversationalist and films watcher because when there's a problem (and it can be my understanding as much as the films error) I can't seem to focus beyond the problem. I have this huge drive to fix a probelm all teh way to the finish. It's one of those things I really love to do in my life but it is a 'double-edged sword' - there are bad parts to this too.

I would be really interested to know what things make film watching difficult for others on the spectrum and how this might compare to non-autistic people to?

I do it a different way, I just repeat different parts of films/vids until I get them.

what do you do, when you're with people, and they ask you what you thought of so and so, but you didn't grok so and so the first time? how do you handle this?

that happens to me also, and makes me have to rewind/repeat. a 2 hour film could take 4 hours due to this. and I find that my things/objects are my friends

that is your advantage over me, you have enough presence of mind/memory to be able to notice these things in the first place, I think your main difficulty is in maintaining this level of energy for a solid 2+ hour block of time, what seems to be happening is your brain will "lock in" at certain times so when this happens it locks onto strings of details that others would not notice except in passing, this streamlining of attention span allows most folks to just sit back and watch the overall flow of movies. but for people like us we get hung up due to overattention or underattention.

the main thing is poor sound quality, the dialogue was not recorded with enough distinctness/clarity for me to grok what the actors are saying, or the actors for whatever reason deliberately mumbled their lines for more "realism" or whatnot. or the actors spoke too quickly.

I do that too. I feel relaxed and satisfied when I do get it.



I just explain the experiences I had which I liked. (People seem to prefer positive responses more.) So if I liked the detail in Diagon Alley but didn't get the whole film I say how wonderful I thought the set was and talk about the details I liked. If I'm with good friends I might ask them about the bits I didn't get but it depends on how much I trust them.





Yup - I can take ages to watch a film too.






I've never thought of it like that but what you say does make sense - thanks!





Absolutely - I find that hard too. I use subtitles all the time (except in the news because they're always so far behind). That helps me a lot. I used to think I had a problem with hearing but I had it tested multiple times and they told me it was my auditory processing which was not working normally. Now I have an ASD diagnosis it all makes sense.

I watched The Nanny Diaries last night and didn't always understand what was going on in the movie. But I was also on my computer so that might have interfered with it. I also like spoilers. They can also help me understand the movie better and the character's intentions. Sometimes they say.

I'm good with Movies or most TV as long as I'm not disturbed. Can't stand for any intrusions because I'm following it so closely. Plots usually don't give me trouble. It's motivation and characters that give me issues. Being able to back things up on DVD helps a lot. Just wish they balanced the audio better so that voices were more prominent and not mumbled.

Maybe that's why TV is easier. Because of the truncated format and need to break things up for commercials, they usually work with archetypes and a formal structure.

Plots do confuse me at times, although usually I can make more sense of them watching a second time.

But I have a hard time telling characters apart, too. As much as I loved the LOTR movies, I had trouble keeping all the long-haired male characters (e.g., Boromir and Aragorn) straight from a visual standpoint. I know the characters well from the books - it's their on-screen depiction that throws me. The same is true with other movies that have similar looking characters.