Viewer processes the film emotionally or intellectually only after it ends—like thoughts arriving during the drive home. Delayed narrative impact.
You're sitting in the cinema, the film is playing, and you notice: something's not quite right. But it's only two hours later, as you're driving home down the street, that you realize what. The protagonist should have reacted right there, not here. The plot has a hole. An emotional wave that should have arrived didn't — it only hits you now, much too late. That's the Driveway Effect: the viewer's delayed reaction to something the narrative should have delivered, but didn't.
For us on set and in the edit, this is a critical phenomenon. It means: your work isn't functioning in the moment, but only afterwards — and that's a problem. A good film should have an impact while it's running. The viewer should feel it in the theater, not later in the parking garage. Typical cases are editing errors where an emotional reaction is two frames too late, or a music cue that took a second too long. The viewer perceives that something is missing, but can't locate it — until the cognitive process later shows them exactly what it was.
In practice, you often see this in test screenings. The viewers come out, and you ask about their reaction to scene 47. And they say: "I don't know exactly, but something..." A clear sign that the timing physics are off. This can also happen with exposition: information that seems trivial to you now will only be missed by the viewer later — but too late. Or an edit that needs a pause to breathe doesn't get it and causes internal friction that only becomes conscious after the film.
The solution is radicalism in editing and sound. Not working faster, but more precisely. One frame less silence before the cut-in, a decibel difference in the music — such things change whether the information arrives now or only in the driveway. Viewers are not machines. Their emotional processing needs space and timing. Give it to them in the film itself, not afterwards.