“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” will become the biggest box office success of all time. So much for short attention spans.

In our sound-bite and text-byte world, we are told to keep it short. And in the corporate video production world, we’ve been told to make it shorter, then shorter yet.

That’s something I’ve fought my whole career. There is a “right length” for a corporate video or meeting opener, and it’s never quite what the client prescribes. That’s because the right length is dictated by the subject matter, audience makeup, and sales logic.

Subject matter: simple, complex, information, motivation or both?

Audience makeup: This isn’t so much a matter of age (although that’s a factor). It’s a matter of why they are there. Did they pay to be there, and therefore are invested? Are are they ty here because they have to be, and are they fresh or hung-over?

Sales logic: What facts and motivation mix are necessary for the audience to say “Yes”!

The 7th installment of Star Wars is 2 hours 15 minutes. Apparently, Gen-Xers and Millennials have no problem with this. Neither do us boomers.

Just because twitter is 140 characters and Vines are six seconds don’t mean your script and video have to be.