Film Courage: You talked about switching up cognitive processes.
Are there certain movies that seem to do that in a 2-hour span where you are gong from one
emotion to the next?
Dr. Connie Shears, Author and Professor - Crean at Chapman University: Sure, there are lots
of movies that fast forward your emotions.
Most of your JACK REACHER kind of solve-the-crime, stay-out-of-danger, moving at a very quick
pace.
Those movies tend not to involve much humor or much regret.
Those movies tend to be based on fear and anticipation so they keep kind of a higher
heart rate going while you are watching.
The movie that are more psychological or involve an aspect of reflection, thinking about your
memories.
So 500 DAYS or 50 FIRST DATES, those kind of movies that portray people who have lost
memory or are not forming memories properly are very engaging, real successful in the
box office.
More engaging for an audience who may not be a hero or a daredevil or that kind of a
person, maybe can watch those but has a lingering appreciate for someone whose mind is not working
exactly the way their’s is.
So lots of movies come at different cognitive processes and in forming a story around not
working cognitive processes, some kind of brain injury that has changed that person,
you get a lot of fascination from the viewer’s perspective because everybody relates to forgetting
at some time or another.
Everybody has had a forgetful experience.
What is it like to not be able to form a memory so that you live in a forgotten state?
Those are some interesting psychological brain processes that have been presented and done
well in the theaters.
One of the aspects that we point out in [Connie and Paul Joseph Gulino’s book] The Science
of Screenwriting is how skilled screenwriters build in the contrast of emotions.
So there’s been some studies done and researchers have used eye trackers in audiences such that
they can tell where the audiences eyes are focused on the screen during which kinds of
movies.
And because we can measure like how long the eyes stay on the character and how often the
eyes move off of the character we can translate those eye movements into attentional factors.
And we now understand that timing is critical.
So a viewer can take about 3 minutes of tension of that kind of bond (fighting with the shark
or whatever that is) and there needs to be a break or the eyes are going to soccolld.
You can take too much tension so we need a relief.
So if you’ll notice in the [JAMES] BOND movies it’s really brief.
It’s about a minute and a half where it’s bad stuff kind of tension and then there’s
a segue whether that means it’s a further away shot, long distance shot or a scan to
the boat that is coming to the rescue or whatever interruption in order to give the nerves,
the brain processes that are building tension in that watcher a break.
And it has to be at least at 30-60-90 second breaks to scan away before you can reengage
in a tight emotional situation.
So we know those processes are happening in daily life and that when people go to a movie
they anticipate experiencing deeper tension, more dramatic exchanges in order to maintain
their attention.
You still have to give those interactive breaks so that there is a release and then a reengagement
in the tension and conflict.