Modelling Shot Lengths of Hollywood Motion Pictures with the Dagum Distribution

This paper demonstrates the three-parameter Dagum distribution provides a good fit for shot lengths in Hollywood films due to its ability to model a wide range of skewness and kurtosis values and a variety of tail behaviours by virtue of its two shape parameters. The fit of this distribution is better across films in the sample than the two-parameter lognormal distribution, though animated films are an important exception to this. These results can be applied to more closely replicate the editing practice of film editors when generating film sequences using automated editing software.