Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/proj.2023.170106
Joseph P. Magliano, Lin Luan, Laura Allen
Cutting (2021) argues that the narrational complexity of fiction film can be quantified similarly to computational measures of text complexity. Narrational complexity refers to the structure that arises from how a story is told. This article expands upon Cutting's proposal by taking inspiration from contemporary approaches for measuring text complexity. These approaches reject the notion that complexity can be measured via a limited set of indices as Cutting proposed for narrational complexity. Similarly, we argue that narrational complexity for fiction films should be multi-dimension and include indices that are associated with events, characters, and the rules that govern the fictional world. We discuss the viability of using computational approaches to analyze video and natural language processing to develop approaches to measuring narrational complexity.
{"title":"Further Thoughts on Measuring Narrational Complexity in Fiction Film","authors":"Joseph P. Magliano, Lin Luan, Laura Allen","doi":"10.3167/proj.2023.170106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2023.170106","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Cutting (2021) argues that the narrational complexity of fiction film can be quantified similarly to computational measures of text complexity. Narrational complexity refers to the structure that arises from how a story is told. This article expands upon Cutting's proposal by taking inspiration from contemporary approaches for measuring text complexity. These approaches reject the notion that complexity can be measured via a limited set of indices as Cutting proposed for narrational complexity. Similarly, we argue that narrational complexity for fiction films should be multi-dimension and include indices that are associated with events, characters, and the rules that govern the fictional world. We discuss the viability of using computational approaches to analyze video and natural language processing to develop approaches to measuring narrational complexity.","PeriodicalId":93495,"journal":{"name":"Projections (New York, N.Y.)","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83080712","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/proj.2023.170102
Maria Belodubrovskaya
This article challenges the moniker “the master of suspense” as applied to Alfred Hitchcock. I show that Hitchcock's guiding principle was often not suspense but surprise. The penchant to surprise explains why Hitchcock utilized the surprise plot, as well as why he is often considered a deeply conflicted artist. In addition to standard surprise and suspense, which generate little uncertainty for the audience, Hitchcock developed parallel versions of these structures that incorporated premise uncertainty and allowed telling two stories at once. Double plots, which I term overt, structure some of Hitchcock's most sophisticated works, such as Notorious and Suspicion. The distinction between standard and overt surprise and suspense helps us better understand both Hitchcock's mastery and his enduring relevance for all narrative media today.
{"title":"The Master of Surprise","authors":"Maria Belodubrovskaya","doi":"10.3167/proj.2023.170102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2023.170102","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article challenges the moniker “the master of suspense” as applied to Alfred Hitchcock. I show that Hitchcock's guiding principle was often not suspense but surprise. The penchant to surprise explains why Hitchcock utilized the surprise plot, as well as why he is often considered a deeply conflicted artist. In addition to standard surprise and suspense, which generate little uncertainty for the audience, Hitchcock developed parallel versions of these structures that incorporated premise uncertainty and allowed telling two stories at once. Double plots, which I term overt, structure some of Hitchcock's most sophisticated works, such as Notorious and Suspicion. The distinction between standard and overt surprise and suspense helps us better understand both Hitchcock's mastery and his enduring relevance for all narrative media today.","PeriodicalId":93495,"journal":{"name":"Projections (New York, N.Y.)","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86972619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/proj.2023.170111
Joseph G. Kickasola
His eyes were invariably full of curiosity and kindness. This is an odd way to start a tribute, perhaps, but as those of us who knew and loved Henry Bacon can attest, it was true of him and a gift to us. This observation does no disservice to his sizable contributions to the academy, as all his good work for film studies flowed from magnanimity, friendship, and wonder. For Henry, the study of cinema—or anthropology, or opera, or religion, or philosophy, or the many different customs of varied cultures throughout the world, to name a few of his interests—expressed and enacted genuine love for the world before him.
{"title":"In Memoriam: Henry Bacon","authors":"Joseph G. Kickasola","doi":"10.3167/proj.2023.170111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2023.170111","url":null,"abstract":"His eyes were invariably full of curiosity and kindness. This is an odd way to start a tribute, perhaps, but as those of us who knew and loved Henry Bacon can attest, it was true of him and a gift to us. This observation does no disservice to his sizable contributions to the academy, as all his good work for film studies flowed from magnanimity, friendship, and wonder. For Henry, the study of cinema—or anthropology, or opera, or religion, or philosophy, or the many different customs of varied cultures throughout the world, to name a few of his interests—expressed and enacted genuine love for the world before him.","PeriodicalId":93495,"journal":{"name":"Projections (New York, N.Y.)","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73985928","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/proj.2023.170107
T. Smith, Claire Essex, R. Bedford
IQ tests have charted massive gains over the last century, known as the Flynn Effect. Over the same period, the time society spends with screens has massively increased and intensified, for example, shorter and closer shots, increasing narrative complexity. In Movies on our Minds (2021), James Cutting suggests a potential bidirectional link between the two effects: generational increase in visual processing abilities led to movie makers increasing the demands their movies place on viewer cognition, which in turn has trained societal visual processing capacity. In this commentary we review the evidence for such a positive association. The evidence indicates that increasing screen time may be associated with faster visual processing but also a potentially decreased ability to process this information (i.e., reduced executive functions). Further, effects may be dependent on the type of screen experience (e.g., developmental appropriateness of content and delivery platform such as TikTok) and other environmental considerations (e.g., socioeconomic status, parenting), suggesting that the factors influencing our evolving media/mind niche may be more complex than originally proposed.
{"title":"Are Movies Making Us Smarter?","authors":"T. Smith, Claire Essex, R. Bedford","doi":"10.3167/proj.2023.170107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2023.170107","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000IQ tests have charted massive gains over the last century, known as the Flynn Effect. Over the same period, the time society spends with screens has massively increased and intensified, for example, shorter and closer shots, increasing narrative complexity. In Movies on our Minds (2021), James Cutting suggests a potential bidirectional link between the two effects: generational increase in visual processing abilities led to movie makers increasing the demands their movies place on viewer cognition, which in turn has trained societal visual processing capacity. In this commentary we review the evidence for such a positive association. The evidence indicates that increasing screen time may be associated with faster visual processing but also a potentially decreased ability to process this information (i.e., reduced executive functions). Further, effects may be dependent on the type of screen experience (e.g., developmental appropriateness of content and delivery platform such as TikTok) and other environmental considerations (e.g., socioeconomic status, parenting), suggesting that the factors influencing our evolving media/mind niche may be more complex than originally proposed.","PeriodicalId":93495,"journal":{"name":"Projections (New York, N.Y.)","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74271343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/proj.2023.170105
Maria Belodubrovskaya
Since cinema communicates meanings through images and sounds, it has long been assumed that it possesses a language—a coded system of units and rules. Cinematic practice is infinitely varied, and it has proven difficult for film theory to pinpoint a language of cinema beyond the assertion that classical continuity codes cinematic illusion. The computational approach presented in James Cutting's Movies on Our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement offers a promising new path toward defining a true language of cinema. It shows that mainstream narrative film uses a reliable set of measurable, evolving formal patterns to match the neuropsychological capacities of the average viewer. This article argues that the cinematic “code” Cutting identifies can be elaborated by specifying the minimal narrative unit.
{"title":"A True Language of Cinema","authors":"Maria Belodubrovskaya","doi":"10.3167/proj.2023.170105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2023.170105","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Since cinema communicates meanings through images and sounds, it has long been assumed that it possesses a language—a coded system of units and rules. Cinematic practice is infinitely varied, and it has proven difficult for film theory to pinpoint a language of cinema beyond the assertion that classical continuity codes cinematic illusion. The computational approach presented in James Cutting's Movies on Our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement offers a promising new path toward defining a true language of cinema. It shows that mainstream narrative film uses a reliable set of measurable, evolving formal patterns to match the neuropsychological capacities of the average viewer. This article argues that the cinematic “code” Cutting identifies can be elaborated by specifying the minimal narrative unit.","PeriodicalId":93495,"journal":{"name":"Projections (New York, N.Y.)","volume":"110 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88059199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/proj.2023.170109
J. Cutting
What a pleasure it is to have colleagues read Movies on Our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement, to understand it, and to offer some praise and a panoply of diverse and penetrating criticisms. The perspectives and qualms raised in the four commentaries in the special section of this issue are well-worth considering in detail. My first reply concerns relations between cinematic narration and narrative, the second explores constraints on cinematic complexity and its assessment, the third addresses possible consequences of changing movie structure and our increased cognitive processing speed, and the fourth ramifies concepts I use to account for the historical changes in popular cinema.
{"title":"Replies to Commentators on Movies on Our Minds","authors":"J. Cutting","doi":"10.3167/proj.2023.170109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2023.170109","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000What a pleasure it is to have colleagues read Movies on Our Minds: The Evolution of Cinematic Engagement, to understand it, and to offer some praise and a panoply of diverse and penetrating criticisms. The perspectives and qualms raised in the four commentaries in the special section of this issue are well-worth considering in detail. My first reply concerns relations between cinematic narration and narrative, the second explores constraints on cinematic complexity and its assessment, the third addresses possible consequences of changing movie structure and our increased cognitive processing speed, and the fourth ramifies concepts I use to account for the historical changes in popular cinema.","PeriodicalId":93495,"journal":{"name":"Projections (New York, N.Y.)","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84197504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/proj.2023.170104
J. Cutting
Movies on Our Minds (Cutting, 2021) provides structural analyses of popular, English-language cinema and maps them onto biological and psychological bases. It progresses from the details of optics and screen projection; through transitions and shots; on to scenes, montages, and syntagmas; and finally to larger narrative units and the flow of patterns of elements across whole movies. It focuses on changes in all of those patterns across a century, ascribing them to evolution. That evolution, akin to Darwinian evolution, is hallmarked by patterns of reproduction with inheritance, variation, and selection of traits over time. Two forces appear to have guided this evolution: the matching of elements of film form to predilections of the biology of our visual systems, and their matching to predilections of our cognition, particularly as it has been shaped by visual culture.
{"title":"Précis of Movies on Our Minds","authors":"J. Cutting","doi":"10.3167/proj.2023.170104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2023.170104","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Movies on Our Minds (Cutting, 2021) provides structural analyses of popular, English-language cinema and maps them onto biological and psychological bases. It progresses from the details of optics and screen projection; through transitions and shots; on to scenes, montages, and syntagmas; and finally to larger narrative units and the flow of patterns of elements across whole movies. It focuses on changes in all of those patterns across a century, ascribing them to evolution. That evolution, akin to Darwinian evolution, is hallmarked by patterns of reproduction with inheritance, variation, and selection of traits over time. Two forces appear to have guided this evolution: the matching of elements of film form to predilections of the biology of our visual systems, and their matching to predilections of our cognition, particularly as it has been shaped by visual culture.","PeriodicalId":93495,"journal":{"name":"Projections (New York, N.Y.)","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78411160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.3167/proj.2023.170108
M. Turvey
Cutting's quantitative approach to analyzing films enables him to discover many fascinating and important design features of mainstream movies as well as how they have changed over cinema's history. Cutting also proposes plausible psychological explanations for some of these features and changes. However, Cutting places his empirical findings and his psychological explanations of them within a broader account of what he calls the evolution of cinematic engagement. For Cutting, movies have “evolved” to better “fit” our psychological capacities and have therefore become more “absorbing.” While some aspects of this account are plausible, others are less so. In this article, I therefore focus critically on Cutting's use of the concepts of “evolution,” “psychological fit,” and “engagement.”
{"title":"Engagement, Psychological Fit, and Evolution in Movies on Our Minds","authors":"M. Turvey","doi":"10.3167/proj.2023.170108","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2023.170108","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Cutting's quantitative approach to analyzing films enables him to discover many fascinating and important design features of mainstream movies as well as how they have changed over cinema's history. Cutting also proposes plausible psychological explanations for some of these features and changes. However, Cutting places his empirical findings and his psychological explanations of them within a broader account of what he calls the evolution of cinematic engagement. For Cutting, movies have “evolved” to better “fit” our psychological capacities and have therefore become more “absorbing.” While some aspects of this account are plausible, others are less so. In this article, I therefore focus critically on Cutting's use of the concepts of “evolution,” “psychological fit,” and “engagement.”","PeriodicalId":93495,"journal":{"name":"Projections (New York, N.Y.)","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83907972","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.3167/proj.2022.160301
Sara M. Grady, Ralf Schmälzle, Joshua Baldwin
When audiences watch a movie, we can examine the similarities among their brain activity via inter-subject correlation (ISC) analysis. This study examines how the strength of ISC (how similarly brains respond) varies over the course of a Pixar short film: specifically comparing this across the exposition, rising action, climax/fall out, and resolution sections of the story. We focus on ISC in the mentalizing network, often linked to social-cognitive processes that are essential to narrative engagement. We find that ISC rises from exposition to the climax. Moreover, we explore this shared response across age groups, finding that ISC is present across age groups, albeit weak in younger children. This approach offers new insights into the brain basis of engagement and story structure.
{"title":"Examining the Relationship between Story Structure and Audience Response","authors":"Sara M. Grady, Ralf Schmälzle, Joshua Baldwin","doi":"10.3167/proj.2022.160301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2022.160301","url":null,"abstract":"When audiences watch a movie, we can examine the similarities among their brain activity via inter-subject correlation (ISC) analysis. This study examines how the strength of ISC (how similarly brains respond) varies over the course of a Pixar short film: specifically comparing this across the exposition, rising action, climax/fall out, and resolution sections of the story. We focus on ISC in the mentalizing network, often linked to social-cognitive processes that are essential to narrative engagement. We find that ISC rises from exposition to the climax. Moreover, we explore this shared response across age groups, finding that ISC is present across age groups, albeit weak in younger children. This approach offers new insights into the brain basis of engagement and story structure.","PeriodicalId":93495,"journal":{"name":"Projections (New York, N.Y.)","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72590530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.3167/proj.2022.160302
Jose Cañas-Bajo, Johanna M. Silvennoinen, P. Saariluoma
The success of a film depends not only on the quality of individual elements in the film but also on cultural factors that may influence the viewers’ reactions. In this study, we investigated the role of these factors by presenting Spanish and Finnish participants films produced in Finland, Spain, or the United States. Emotional reactions were assessed online through a response system synchronized with the films and offline through questionnaires. Results indicated that overall emotional reactions of the two audiences were very similar, suggesting a high degree of universality. However, we also found differences in the way the two audiences reacted to some specific sequences within the films. Qualitative analyses suggested that these differences are related to some cultural dimensions (e.g., collectivism). We interpret the data as supporting both universality and cultural mediation where cultural variation might be more evident in films varying in narrative structure, genre, or cultural origin.
{"title":"Emotional Responses of Finnish and Spanish Audiences to Culturally Loaded Films","authors":"Jose Cañas-Bajo, Johanna M. Silvennoinen, P. Saariluoma","doi":"10.3167/proj.2022.160302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/proj.2022.160302","url":null,"abstract":"The success of a film depends not only on the quality of individual elements in the film but also on cultural factors that may influence the viewers’ reactions. In this study, we investigated the role of these factors by presenting Spanish and Finnish participants films produced in Finland, Spain, or the United States. Emotional reactions were assessed online through a response system synchronized with the films and offline through questionnaires. Results indicated that overall emotional reactions of the two audiences were very similar, suggesting a high degree of universality. However, we also found differences in the way the two audiences reacted to some specific sequences within the films. Qualitative analyses suggested that these differences are related to some cultural dimensions (e.g., collectivism). We interpret the data as supporting both universality and cultural mediation where cultural variation might be more evident in films varying in narrative structure, genre, or cultural origin.","PeriodicalId":93495,"journal":{"name":"Projections (New York, N.Y.)","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84082811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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