The median recent film has 1,535 shots. The spread is wide: a tenth have fewer than 770, while a tenth exceed 2,460.

Film analyst Stephen Follows used TransNetV2 to detect shot boundaries in 8,770 features, then checked the counts against human annotations from Cinemetrics. His October 12 analysis explores differences across eras, directors and running times.

The chart covers films released in 2017–2025. Automatic detection can miss fades or mistake strobe lighting for edits; shot counts alone do not measure a film's quality.

Chart and original analysis: Stephen Follows
stephenfollows.com/p/how-many-shots-are-in-the-average