100 years of Finnish Cinema
This year is the first centenary of Finnish independence. Finnish cinema is somewhat older, as small scale film production started already when Finland was an autonomous Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire. Alas, apart from a handful of fragments, that output has completely disappeared. But film exhibition become fairly regular at this time and continued almost uninterrupted throughout the vicissitudes of the independence struggle and even the turmoil of the civil war in the spring of 1918.
Throughout the 1920s film production grew but was able to thrive only with the support of film exhibition which relied to a great extent on foreign export, at first mainly Nordic and other European cinemas, later on increasingly on Hollywood output. Only in the era of sound film did two companies, Suomi Filmi and Suomen Filmiteollisuus grow strong enough to be able to be able to produce films with enough popular appeal so as to make the industry profitable for a couple of decades.
Just like in most parts of the world, the studio system more or less collapsed toward the end of 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. French and other New Waves provided inspiration particularly for radical young filmmakers, but for them to realize their visions a system of state subsidy had to be created. The Finnish Film Foundation started its operation in 1969. It made a good start aesthetically, but in the next decade it became blatantly obvious that so called Foundation Films were not attracting audiences. The operating principles of the foundation were fundamentally revised in the 1980s, leading eventually to a new rise of Finnish cinema. Due to the small size of the domestic audience, it is not self-supporting, but it does catch about one quarter of the Finnish audience.
The way Finnish cinema has always connected with trends and developments in other countries was thoroughly explored in a research project headed by Henry Bacon, titled A Transnational History of Finnish Cinema. This was probably the first time that the entire film history of a national cinema was explored from a transnational point of view. This entailed further developing methods for the analysis of the economical basis of film production on the one hand, and analysis of style on the other. In our presentation Outi Hupaniittu will tell about the methods she developed for extracting information from company records as well as the often scarce statistical information in order to throw light on the economic conditions of film production and cinema attendance. Jaakko Seppälä in turn will relate how he employed Cinemetrics in his analysis of the impact of foreign influences on the development of style within Finnish silent cinema.
We will thus provide a glimpse into the hundred years of surviving Finnish cinema from a fresh scholarly perspective, providing insight into the ways corpuses of cinema of different sizes can be examined in a rigorous but insightful fashion.
Emotions promote our well-being in different survival-salient situations. They are typically triggered by biologically relevant signals such as threats and physical harm or rewards including food consumption or social interaction. However, also abstract and “simulated” threats and pleasures such as love stories and horror shown in films can trigger strong subjective feelings in the viewers. In my talk I present an overview on brain mechanisms supporting human emotions, and discuss how we can use cinema for studying the emotional brain. I discuss how viewing emotions in films makes individuals to “tune in” with each other, and how specific neurotransmitter systems in the brain govern out vicarious experience of the emotions we see in movies. Finally, I propose that humans enjoy engaging in strong, even negative, emotional movies because this provides safe means for preparing to meet the actual emotion-eliciting events in real life.
Allas Sea Pool Restaurant & Cafe - Helsinki on a plate at the tip of Helsinki
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Allas Cafe
The Allas Cafe offers breakfast, lunch, warm dishes, and, of course, high-class cafeteria products. We offer healthy and fresh food to the health oriented and also care for those with a special diet. The Allas Cafe products are made on spot from fresh raw materials: The assortment is prepared on the same day from raw materials from the nearby marketplace and the fish in the salmon soup is from responsible catches. The cafe wants to act as a good neighbour and be a meeting place for all the citizens – whether you want to enjoy a glass of wine or a cup or warm coffee.
Neighbour Bistro
The Neighbour Bistro’s kitchen utilises the season’s best raw materials, which are acquired from as close as possible. The menu includes Helsinki classics from during the last century, made fresh with a modern touch. Everything is close to our dear Baltic Sea and the restaurant follows the principles of sustainable development. We want also future generations to be able to enjoy the coasts and products of the Baltic Sea.
The Neighbour Bistro offers classic treats with modern spices in the form of portions to be divided between your company. Also the best parts of the Helsinki drink culture are served, ranging from the products of small breweries to the treats of the local distilleries.
See more http://www.allasseapool.fi/en/about.html
With this presentation I aim to analyze Inside Llewyn Davis within what I call an experientialist theory of cinema, which examines the affective and conceptual elements of film experience by employing Baruch Spinoza's psychological model of intensities and potentialities. More specifically, this essay examines a particular type of film experience, one based on sad passions. The experientialist model I am proposing identifies film experience as an embodied phenomenon based on the association between sensations and concepts, which avoids the standard distinction between emotion and reason. Affections and abstractions become part of the same integrated cognitive process, which makes us "physically sense" ideas. This associative mechanism is largely based on visual metaphors, which spatially describe complex concepts and even philosophical and behavioural models. In Inside Llewyn Davis viewers experience a particular spatio-temporal structure (chronotope), which describes circular patterns and the hero's constant failure to achieve goals. Film experience is, therefore, conceived as a synesthetic process that combines narrative and intellectual structures with emotional reactions, in order to facilitate empathic involvement with the characters, especially those inflicted with sad passions and negative emotions. Furthermore, because of the dynamic nature of film experience, viewers can use creatively the problematic potential of sad passions.
Social narratology draws from anthropology, evolutionary biology, experimental media studies, and social psychology to catalogue notions of the “function of fiction” in human relations. This paper describes the project of social narratology using film narratives as a primary example. It extends cognitive research focused on spectator response and the moment of engagement to emphasize the sociality of media use: the way narratives facilitate and mediate the spaces between people. Social narratology considers film as a storytelling art foremost, and addresses questions regarding the humanistic and ethical functions of narrative theory.
In film criticism, the ›feel-good film‹ is generally discredited for its allegedly cheap and manipulative emotional effects. However, the label also serves as a popular generic orientation for audiences seeking and enjoying certain films due to their ›feel-good factor‹. In my talk I will present the results from an online survey on feel-good films conducted among almost 450 participants in early 2016. I will concentrate on the affective, cognitive and emotional responses of the participants to the films in question and relate these findings to the narrative properties and aesthetic features which contribute to the emotional ›uplift‹ of the viewers.
It was in the mid-1970s, more than a decade after Japanese writer/director Yasujiro Ozu’s death that many western scholars turned their attention to a detailed consideration of style in his films. David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, Edward Branigan, Stephen Heath, Donald Ritchie, Noel Burch and others noted Ozu’s seemingly unique visual style, most clearly evident in his later films. Having embraced the classical continuity system in his early career, Ozu gradually evolved a specific set of stylistic parameters that included the rejection of eye-line matching and camera movement while at the same time retaining classical “rules” such as match-on-action cutting. Of particular interest to many was how Ozu often constructed cinematic space by using a set of camera angles and 90 degree or 180 degree shot variations that resulted in a complete 360 degree vista of a location. This prioritising of space over narrative intent contrasted sharply to Hollywood’s seemingly traditional practice of never revealing the “fourth wall”.
The examination of Ozu’s style also presented an opportunity for some to attack Hollywood continuity editing, claiming it as restrictive when compared to Ozu’s “system”. In a comparison with Spielberg’s “Jaws” (1975), Stephen Heath (1976) complained in a scene from the film “The 180-degree line that the camera is forbidden to cross answers exactly to the 180-degree line of the screen behind which the spectator cannot and must not go…” (p88). There is a certain irony that Heath chose a Spielberg film to illustrate Hollywood’s apparent inferiority in depicting space because it is in Spielberg’s films (“Jaws” in particular) that numerous instances of 360 degree - Ozu like - scene constructions can be found.Through the comparative analysis of scenes from both Spielberg and Ozu I will demonstrate how both directors use similar, innovative strategies of shot construction to build a comprehensive depiction of space. While isolated instances of 360 degree construction exists in the works of other filmmakers, it is only in Ozu and Spielberg that they occur repeatedly and in the case of Spielberg – seen to be evident in even his earliest television work. I further argue that while Ozu’s strictly limited set of devices makes his style more distinct as a formal system – and therefore more self-conscious, Spielberg intentionally disguises his 360 degree coverage behind the veneer of classical practice. This is done to reduce stylistic self-consciousness, and permits him to remain true to the classical convention that style not overwhelm narration.
Despite the significant generational, cultural, and industrial divide between the two directors, I will illustrate how each director’s drive for more effective storytelling strategies guided them into independently modifying classical practice in a way that resulted in them both arriving at stylistic systems that were (and are) distinct within their own industries yet common to each other.
Title: Feel-Good Films and Positive Emotions: Film in the Context of Health and Well-Being
Key words: Standard and moral feel-good films; Health and well-being; Positive emotions; Intentional objects of emotions
Short abstract:
A distinction between moral and standard feel-good films is sketched. Differences between the intentional objects of the positive emotions targeted by these two types are underscored. The implications of these differences are explored with reference to claims by psychologists regarding feel-good films in the context of health and well-being.
Abstract:
The idea that engaging with visual art (including as an amateur practitioner) brings psychological benefits is widely accepted in the field of art therapy. Psychologists have drawn attention to the health benefits that are to be derived from viewing specific types of depicted content in hospital settings, as well as to the role that certain moving images can play in promoting recovery from stressful episodes. Recently scholars associated with the “Greater Good Science Center” at the University of California, Berkeley, have made claims about the likely contributions of feel-good films to human health and well-being. Much of the Center’s work focuses on positive emotions/attitudes such as compassion, kindness, and altruism, all of which are seen as critical to well-being. To date, research focusing on the benefits, in terms of health and well-being, of engaging with certain types of films is at a very early stage, although suggestive efforts have been mounted by organizations such as Medicinema in the United Kingdom, again with reference to feel-good films. The intent is to present a proposed distinction between a standard feel-good film and a moral feel-good film, a degree of realism and the cueing of kindness being core ingredients of the latter and fantasy a defining element of the former. Making reference to practices of organizations such as Medicinema and to claims by psychologists regarding positive emotions in the context of film viewing, an argument regarding the possible benefits of viewing feel-good films will be developed. The point will be to underscore the importance of distinguishing between types of feel-good films and to argue for the greater promise of moral as compared with standard feel-good films.
The research is informed by the SCSMI’s mission statement, inasmuch as it is an interdisciplinary attempt to understand a specific aspect of how moving images impact the human mind. The project’s contribution consists, in part, in bringing claims made by psychologists into the ambit of film research, for the purposes of testing their conceptual validity and developing them further.
References:
Gaut, B. (2007). Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hjort, M. (2010). “Toward the Idea of an Ethical Feel-Good Movie.” In Lone Scherfig’s “Italian for Beginners,” 100-141. Washington & Copenhagen: University of Washington Press & Museum Tusculanum.
Johnson, J. L. & Alderson, K. G. (2008). “Therapeutic Filmmaking: An Exploratory Pilot Study.” The Arts in Psychotherapy 35.1, 11-19.
Shimamura, A. P. (2013). Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stellar, J. E., John-Henderson, N., Anderson, C. L., Gordon, A. M., McNeil, G. D., & Keltner, D. (2015). “Positive Affect and Markers of Inflammation: Discrete Positive Emotions Predict Lower Levels of Inflammatory Cytokines. Emotion, January 19; http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo00000331: 11-19.
Embodied cognition has become a dominant framework within cognitive film theory. One prominent strand of embodied cognition within cognitive film theory has been the application of cognitive linguistics to issues relating to film and spectatorship (Buckland 2000; 2015; Coëgnarts and Kravanja 2012). While the approach has been applied to a range of aspects concerning narrative and film form, attention recently has turned to providing accounts of the subjective states of characters (Coëgnarts and Kravanja 2015; Oritz 2015). This paper proposes that the theoretical grounds of such applications of cognitive linguistics to film and film characters are questionable. The conceptual underpinnings of cognitive linguistics as originally put forward by Lakoff (1987) and Johnson (1987) are significantly different from more recent accounts of embodiment. It is unclear how the multimodal representations advanced by Barsalou (1999) or the mirror neurons identified by Gallese (2007) offer support for the cognitive linguistics claim that metaphor and metonymy constitute distinct forms of conceptual structure. Nor is it apparent how these differing accounts of embodiment converge with respect to how abstract thought is conceived or how situated cognition is integrated into their distinct frameworks. The paper additionally reviews critiques of cognitive linguistics by Sperber and Wilson (2008) and Papafragou (1996) that dispute the claim that metaphor and metonymy are distinct forms of conceptual structure.
The paper will demonstrate that there are problems with the manner in which cognitive linguistics has been applied to film and the subjective states of film characters as well. Critical to the validity of this approach is the claim that filmmakers and spectators rely upon image schemata – universal conceptual structures that derive from shared bodily experience. This approach purports that not only do filmmakers draw upon image schemata when constructing narrative films and depicting subjective states of characters, but also that they underpin a spectator’s cognitive processes through their metaphoric and metonymic extension. It shall be demonstrated that such applications are too rigid and have tended to result in top down approaches to film analysis and lack the ability to account for variations in spectatorial response. The recent reboot of The Magnificent Seven (2016) will be used as a practical example to illustrate the limitations of the cognitive linguistics approach and will demonstrate that the spectatorial understanding of the subjective states of characters can be much more economically explained through a folk psychology model that highlights the spectator’s discovery of implicatures and use of inference to unpack them. The paper will conclude with a reflection upon the superiority of models of social cognition that stress situated knowledge over those models that privilege the invariant.
Indicative Bibliography:
Barsalou, Lawrence W. 1999. ‘Perceptual Symbol Systems’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 22:4. 577-609.
Buckland, Warren. 2000. The Cognitive Semiotics of Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coëgnarts, Maarten, and Kravanja, Peter. 2015. ‘Embodied Cinematic Subjectivity: Metaphorical and Metonymical Modes of Character Perception in Film’ in Maarten Coëgnarts and Peter Kravanja (eds.) Embodied Cognition and Cinema. Leuven: Leuven University Press. 221-243.
Gallese, Vittorio. 2007. ‘Before and Below ‘Theory of Mind’: Embodied Simulation and the Neural Correlates of Social Cognition’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences. 362, 659–669
Sperber, Deirdre, and Wilson, Dan. 2008. ‘A Deflationary Account of Metaphors’, in Raymond W. Gibbs Jr. (ed.) The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 84-105.
An Interdisciplinary Approach to Defining Cinematic Suspense
The construction of suspenseful sequences has been a crucial component for filmmakers to engage the viewer, especially within the thriller and horror genres. This paper takes a new approach to understanding cinematic suspense by creating a psychophysiological model to measure cinematic suspense and subsequently viewer experience. To date, film scholars and media psychologists have defined the process of suspense in terms of specific story case studies, rather than first independently identifying the components of suspense. Such theories become selective and open to subjective interpretation and have provided misinterpretations of the phenomenon of suspense (Friedrichsen, 1996: 329). Suspense then by existing definitions is not measurable and makes it hard to quantify any discussion of cinematic suspense in relation to the viewer experience. Although film scholars and media psychologists recognise that the experience of suspense involves cognition, emotion, and physiology, only media psychologists have carried out empirical studies with viewers. Even taking this into consideration there have only been a few psychophysiological studies about the experience of suspense (Kreibig, 2010: 408). Furthermore, there is a methodological dilemma, with film scholars preferring a qualitative approach, often via film textual analysis, and media psychologists primarily taking a quantitative approach, analysing data sets using statistical models, which film scholars see as offering little contribution to the complexities of film analysis (Smith, M. 2013). The differences between these methodological approaches raise the question of whether we can gain a greater insight into viewers’ experiences of suspense by drawing elements from both research methods and identifying the most appropriate methods, procedures, and techniques to defining cinematic suspense. One strategy for achieving this is to turn to the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) which often uses mixed methods approaches to resolve such interdisciplinary differences, especially in gaining a deeper insight into user/viewer experience of narrative trajectories (Benford et al. 2009).
This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach that combines film studies, media psychology, HCI, and psychophysiology. By drawing from film studies and media psychology it will identify the components of cinematic suspense and create a framework to measure suspense. Taking an HCI experiment approach in designing and analysing the findings of the ‘Terror & Tension’ film experiment, 20 viewers watched 32 short film clips from 8 horror films, dispersed through 4 sub-genres and 4 suspense narrative structures, defined by film scholar Susan Smith: vicarious, direct, shared and composite (Smith, S. 2000). Triangulation was used as a mixed methods approach to capturing and analysing three data sets which include: firstly, viewer physiological responses, which were measured in terms of anxiety durability and intensity level by recording viewers’ skin conductance responses (SCRs), a component of electrodermal activity (EDA). The findings were then tested to verify the physiological framework to measure viewer experience of suspense. This led to the development of an EDA model of suspense. Viewer feedback was captured through verbal self-reports, which were recorded after watching each film clip. These physiological responses and feedback were then analysed alongside textual analysis of the film clips in a series of case studies to provide a deeper insight into how cinematic suspense is constructed through narrative elements, cinematography, editing, sound, and mise-en-scène. The research findings demonstrate that the EDA model of suspense makes a valuable contribution to film analysis and understanding viewer experience of suspense and offers psychophysiology a new framework to measure suspense in terms of anxiety durability and intensity.
Recent approaches in embodied, embedded, enactive, extended, and affective (4EA) cognitive science argue that mental activity is best understood as relational. Such a science of the mind is “integrative” in the sense that the tools und cultural artifacts we engage with co-constitute the embodied relations that we can entertain. We argue that film – and more precisely edited moving images – constitutes a rather pervasive kind of such an artifact. Film therefore allows us to directly address and systematically research how artifacts alter our perceptual access and co-constitute the mental states that we entertain.
An embodied approach, on the other hand is also necessary in order to understand our intense engagement and aesthetic experience of film. We will discuss the motor involvement with camera and lense movements that we have investitgated in a series of EEG-experiment. We also will discuss experiments on cuts adhering to the 180 degree rule (continuity editing) vs. cuts violating this rule (cuts across the line) and jump cuts (visible editing) (Heimann et al. 2014, 2016, in prep). The model we suggest for such an engagement is that of an embodied seeing-in. We will compare and contrast this model with other, more phenomenological accounts of an embodied engagement with film (Sobchak, Voss).
Based on these empirical results and by building on our previous work in this area we will argue that an embodied approach to film can deepen our understanding of the filmic medium and might provide the basis for a theory of our aesthetic engagement with it.
Suspense is a naturally occurring emotional state for human beings and, in the real world, we are at risk of feeling it any time we wait for our name to be called at the doctor’s office or stare intently at a traffic light to change from red to green. What interests most cognitive film scholars of suspense, however, is not the suspense of everyday experiences found in everyday places like doctor’s offices and congested highways, but the suspense of aesthetic experiences found in cinema viewing. This special case of suspense, which I characterise as aesthetic suspense, differs from everyday suspense in that people often go out of their way to experience it. Unlike waiting for a traffic light, presuming most commuters would drive along happily if they encountered no delays, aesthetic suspense represents what may be thought of as a pleasurable emotion, one sought after while engaging in aesthetic activities such as watching films. Put another way, aesthetic suspense may be thought of as purposeful suspense; suspense that is, presumably in some ways, enjoyable and experience for its own sake. To further narrow my study of aesthetic suspense, I am specifically interested in cinematic suspense, which I take to be a kind of temporal affect and feature found in the temporal art of film. The primary aim of this paper is to evaluate the ways in which our perception and cognition of time and timing affect our emotions in suspense-thriller and horror films. Using an interdisciplinary, cognitive approach, I will demonstrate how aspects of time and timing have been little understood in the literature of film suspense and argue that in order to more fully understand the experience of cinematic suspense, one needs to seriously consider the ways in which time and timing factor into this experience.
When applied to cinema, the word suspense implies a temporal component both for film as a broadly temporal art and more narrowly as a narrative one. As the word implies, suspending dramatic action is the keystone to narrative suspense. Yet, suspense can also be thought of in terms of emotions. Suspense is the feeling one gets from willing Indiana Jones of Raiders of the Last Ark (Steven Spielberg, 1981) to outrun a giant boulder that threatens to crush him or hoping the innocent swimmer in Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975) escapes the water before the bloodthirsty shark wins a snack. In short, suspense is an affective temporal aspect of cinema that requires the viewer to have expectations, hopes, and sometimes simply curiosity. But suspense as it relates to cinema, what I will characterise as cinematic suspense, may also be thought of as a feature of a work and not just a feeling that arises while viewing that work. For instance, films falling into the genre of “suspense- thriller” such as No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007) or There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007) will not only use suspense as an affective feature, it may be characterised as an essential feature of the genre as a whole. Even if one disagrees that there are any essential features of a genre, it would, in any case, be difficult to imagine the same films without suspense. That is to say, even if it were somehow possible to “edit out” the suspense from No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood, we would, nevertheless, be left with drastically different films from the originals. Harkening back to the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone, these updated, contemporary westerns rely so heavily on the generation of suspense, even the titles of the films hint at that affect. The theoretical and aesthetic ground covered in this paper is, as the titles of these films imply, (respectively) "no country for old men" and "you can most definitely expect to see some blood."
Perception and Poetics of VR: The Problem of Medium
The emerging technologies that support virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are a significant departure from the rectangular two-dimensional screen. In fact, VR is a sort of meta-medium, encompassing a range from from 360-degree recorded video to 3-D interactive games. This presentation documents the current and future uses of VR and AR, examines how the perception of VR and AR differs from cinema, and suggests a new poetics for these immersive technologies.
VR and AR have been employed to allow viewers to see real places most viewers are unlikely to visit and show other places on which humans have yet set foot, like the surface of Mars and Pluto. Beyond the real, VR can show fantasy environments using computer-generated images (CGI) and photorealistic fictions, such as Netflix’s Stranger Things. Likewise, AR supplements a naturalistic view of one’s environment with data about that environment, overlaid in visual form.
Though emerging VR genres recall the debates of early cinema as serving realist or abstract aesthetics, the perception of VR is quite different than cinema. Beyond fully enveloping the visual sense with imagery and the auditory sense with immersive sound, VR also engages the proprioceptive and vestibular senses in ways cinema cannot. Antunes (2016) has described how audio-visual stimuli are experienced on a multisensory, perceptual level. VR further approaches a full sensorium, an immersive environment that works in consort to provide a perception of the real or builds an aesthetic out of its medium characteristic that differ from perceived reality. However, notable differences exist between VR and perception of a physical environment.
Bordwell (2008) provides a useful model for studying the poetics of a medium, a tripartite approach that includes a critical examination of that medium’s aesthetics, historical examination of the development of techniques, and cognitive explanations for the perception of an aesthetic. This same model can be used to examine VR, which resembles the individualized experience of Edison’s kinescope more so than the social one of viewing the Lumière Brothers’ cinématographe. What are the common characteristics of all VR media? What conditions of attendance are required when viewing VR? How do different uses of VR stretch from passive viewers to participants in narrative construction and experience? And, what are the perceptual, affective, and cognitive effects of VR that together contribute to the poetics of the medium?
Antunes, L. (2016). The Multisensory Film Experience: A Cognitive Model of Experiental Film Aesthetics. Bristol, UK: Intellect.
Bordwell, D. (2008). Poetics of Cinema. New York: Routledge.
Traditionally, there has been little convergence between cognitive film theory and documentary film studies. Cognitive film scholars have largely focused on fiction films, whilst documentary scholars have deemed cognitive models too limited in that they address only the hardwired attributes of audience reception, thus hypothesizing a universal body of spectators and neglecting individual, social, cultural and historical contexts of authorship and spectatorship. The aim of this paper is to overlap these two disciplines by proposing four interrelated approaches for cognitive film studies to examine the wide spectrum of documentary forms (Brylla & Kramer, forthcoming). This will be followed by two particular case studies that illustrate the efficacy of our model: Jon Bang Carlsen’s It’s Now or Never (DK, 1996) and Brian Hill’s Pornography: The Musical (UK, 2003).
Cognitive scholars have tentatively explored documentary in relation to, amongst others, the specificity of documentary in relation to fiction (e.g. Currie, 1999; Ponech, 1999; Carroll, 2003), different modes of narrative address (e.g. Odin, 1984; Plantinga, 1997; Smith, 2007) and the spectatorial reception of documentary texts (e.g. Bondebjerg, 1994; Eitzen, 1995). Although all these texts are rigorous and constitute seminal landmarks that establish key paradigms for our endeavour, they remain largely embryonic and isolated from a larger, overarching discourse. Creating such a discourse, we argue, requires a pragmatic bricolage approach covering four areas of interest:
1. Experience, Emotion and Embodiment
As the current stage of cognitive film theory embraces empirical research within the affective and social sciences, the focus here is on on-line (moment-to-moment) processes with regards to somatic responses. Metatheoretically, this area highlights an alternative to the predominant, narrative top-down approach to filmic experience by focusing on ‘low-level features’ of film, which comprise any “physical, quantitative aspect that occurs regardless of the narrative” (Brunick et al., 2013, p. 133).
2. The Mediation of Realities
The spectator’s construction of reality is informed by the film text, but also by his/her dispositions and context constituting individual, social, cultural and historical schemas and attributes, as well as by previous knowledge about represented topics and characters – knowledge that may be paratextual or intertextual. This area addresses emotion-generation, as well as hermeneutic processes in relation to ethics and the assessment of truth claims.
3. Character Engagement
In documentary the indexical relationship between screen characters and their status as real people may inform spectatorial engagement, since the consequences of their actions are real (Eitzen, 2005). On the other hand, documentaries that don’t use conventional plot structures may elicit momentary spectatorial experiences embodied within the film text, transcending the indexical relation between screen character and real-world referent.
4. Documentary Practice
This area can be seen as a reverse-engineering process that enables the practice-led researcher to gauge audience response to particular filmmaking choices. On a theoretical level it provides insight into the (intended) reception in relation to the production of a film. This “filmmaker-audience loop” (Plantinga 2011) describes the shared social and (folk)psychological dispositions of filmmakers and spectator, and it illuminates the popularity of certain documentary forms with particular audiences.
Deploying these four areas in a bricolage manner has the potential to examine the vast spectrum of documentaries and non-fiction texts, such as participatory documentaries, docudramas, documentary musicals, essay films, compilation films and activist web videos. Our first case study, It’s Now or Never, uses amateur actors and scripted scenes to stage a seemingly observational documentary, based on the director’s longitudinal primary research on Irish bachelors. Despite being technically a docudrama, the film’s refusal to index its fictionalised dimension produces different layers of character engagement depending on the audience’s knowledge/ignorance of Carlsen’s modus operandi, their schematic knowledge of observational documentaries, or their critical assessment of documentary-fiction hybrid forms.
In the second case study, Pornography: The Musical, porn stars are interviewed about their profession, but they also sing their stories in stylised interludes. The constant oscillation between conventional documentary and music video unsettles not only the spectators’ schematic expectations of genre but also their expectations of fixed, stock character identities in prototypical narratives. The viewer is invited to renegotiate the relationship between the documentary image and reality by awkwardly positioning the film artefact between authorial creativity and consumerist commodity.
References:
Bondebjerg, I. (1994). Narratives of Reality: Documentary Film and Television in a Cognitive and Pragmatic Perspective. Nordicom Review, 1, pp. 65–87.
Brunick, K. L., Cutting, J. E. and DeLong, J. E. (2013). Low-Level Features of Film: What They Are and Why We Would Be Lost Without Them. In: Shimamura, A. P. (ed.), Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 133–148.
Brylla, C. and Kramer, M. (forthcoming). Cognitive Film Studies and Documentary. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Carroll, N. (2003). Engaging the Moving Image. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Currie, G. (1999). Visible Traces: Documentary and the Contents of Photographs. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57 (3), pp. 285–297.
Eitzen, D. (1995). When Is a Documentary?: Documentary as a Mode of Reception. Cinema Journal, 35 (1), pp. 81–102.
Eitzen, D. (2007). Documentary’s Peculiar Appeals. In: Anderson, J. D. and Anderson, B. F. (eds.), Moving Image Theory: Ecological Considerations, Carbondale: SIU Press, pp. 183–199.
Odin, R. (1989). A Semiopragmatic Approach of the Documentary. In: Greef, W. D. and Hesling, W. (eds.), Image, Reality, Spectator: Essays on Documentary Film and Television, Leuven: Acco, pp. 90–100.
Plantinga, C. (1997). Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Plantinga, C. (2011). Folk Psychology for Film Critics and Scholars. Projections, 5 (2), pp. 26–50.
Ponech, T. (1999). What is Non-fiction Cinema? Boulder: Westview Press.
Smith, G. M. (2007). The Segmenting Spectator: Documentary Structure and The Aristocrats. Projections, 1 (2), pp. 83–100.
The presentation Film Colors, Textures, Lights. How Color Appearance Corresponds to Characters’ Inner States will address its topic based on the significant investigation of film colors for the Timeline of Historical Film Colors and, more recently, executed in the framework of the research project FilmColors, funded by an Advanced Grant of the European Research Council.
One of the main goals of this research project is a comprehensive investigation of a large group of films from the late nineteenth century to the mid-1990s using tools in the emerging field of digital humanities. By connecting a video annotation tool with an offline database, the research team explores the corpus at a high level of detail.
In addition to exploring color schemes, contrast and harmonies through concepts in color theory from art and design, three sections of the database aim at investigating lighting, surfaces, materials and textures of the characters, objects, and environments depicted. In fact, as Anya Hurlbert (2013) has stressed, color appearance is deeply influenced by textures and surface properties.
Based on our approach of investigating aesthetic strategies of films’ applications of colors, surfaces, textures and illumination systematically within a highly defined and structured protocol, we are able to identify diachronic patterns of stylistic approaches to express and connect characters’ inner states and moods to audience’s hypothetical reactions. By such strategies, films make use of the affective and subjective potential of colors to address spectator’s sensorial reactions by creating a common affective space between diegetic characters and film viewers. The German concept of Stimmung, elaborated at the fin-de-siècle by art historian Alois Riegl and writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal, perfectly grasps this connection between subject and environment.
The Worthless
(Finnish: Arvottomat) is a 1982 film directed by Mika Kaurismäki, who also co-wrote the film with his brother Aki Kaurismäki. It is a road movie about two men and a woman driving around the country as they are being chased by a group of criminals and the police.
Mika Kaurismäki won the Jussi Award for Best Direction for the film.
We will have our cozy get together event at one of our favourite bars in Helsinki.
Corona bar & billiard will host our bohemian conference club throughout from Monday night to Wednesday night. This is the place where we suggest you will head after the days work, for socializing and enjoying inspiring after-talks with drinks.
On Monday, after the Finnish Film screening at the Orion, we will gather together in the Corona Bar's downstairs lounge Dubrovnik. On the stage we will have our special guests and Q&A.
The film talk will lead later to some musical surprises, to be announced later.
Corona bar has achieved almost a cult status only in a few decades. Corona bar, founded by Kaurismäki brothers, is a New York-style relaxed streetbar with a pool-hall. Corona serves coffee, refreshments and probably the best toasts in Helsinki, every day of the week and all around the year.
As a contribution to creative authorship in film, the role of the editor in composing a screen work is relatively unexplored. Screen scholars recognise that extant theories of authorship privilege the work of the (usually male) director and efface the creative contributions of key women filmmakers. Woman with an Editing Bench draws on historical, cognitive and creative research into the processes of film editing to ask: can the understanding of editing as the work of a “distributed cognitive system” (Sutton, 2014) challenge romantic notions of the ‘auteur’ in film and reveal some of the other experts and forms of expertise that are crucial to creative filmmaking?
Inspired by the biography and work of one of cinema’s most accomplished editors, Elizaveta Svilova (Man with A Movie Camera; 1929), Woman With An Editing Bench, synthesizes knowledge about filmmaking with research into history, creativity and cognition to create a positive portrait of a woman with agency and significant influence in extraordinary circumstances. This creative research output makes an argument that edits are not results of editors’ thinking, rather the edits are their thoughts. It re-positions Svilova, an editor whose contributions have been effaced by individualistic conceptions of creativity, and creates an image of her work as an essential part of the distributed cognitive process of ideas generation.
Woman with an Editing Bench (Pearlman, 2016) had its premiere at the CinefestOz Film Festival, one of Australia’s major competitive film festivals. It won the national Australian Teachers of Media (ATOM) Award for Best Short Fiction and the Australian Screen Editors Guild Award for Best Editing in a Short Film. Prints of Woman with an Editing Bench have been collected for preservation and research scholar use by major cinema archives globally including: the Vertov Archive (Vienna filmmuseum), the British Film Institute (London), UCLA Film Archive (LosAngeles), Anthology Film Archive (New York City), Cinteca Nationale (Rome), Cinematheque de la Danse/Cinematheque Française (Paris), Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, and Yale University. Woman with an Editing Bench is distributed for use in educational contexts by Ronin Films (roninfilms.com.au) worldwide.
2 Sisters - 2 Neuropsychological Constellations in Lars von Trier’s MELANCHOLIA
This presentation offers a neuroaesthetic account of Lars von Trier’s apocalyptic and moving piece Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011). In light of recent evidence on the ways in which the interplay between large-scale brain networks underlies various aspects of subjectivity and selfhood and facilitates empathic experiences, we propose that Melancholia is a “neuroscientific thought experiment” (to rephrase Thomas Elsaesser, 2015) that examines, by the comparison of two mental arrays, a hypothesis regarding the manner in which we may cope with a certain state of extreme stress - the world coming to an end.
By staying independent, have postmodern filmmakers begun to remake the classic hero by means of alternative conventions? Certainly, while festival circuits may seem to be out of the mainstream of cultural influence, many of these independent films eventually appear on Netflix cues next to those with more classic Hollywood forms. While some argue that Hollywood may not yet be undergoing such a permanent shift, the adventuresome viewer with a well-used streaming account is certain to feel it now.
As one examines herophobic films featuring protagonists on aimless journeys saturated with aheroic agency, once may ask if the classic hero has begun to languish within our collective consciousness. Critics and scholars are invited to pay close attention to the long-term social consequences of this new monomyth—cultural narratives that replace the orthodox heroic protagonist with the aheroic model. These are heroes who, at best, do nothing at all of consequence and take no moral stand. At worse, they find redemption in unapologetic rage and revenge—bringing back to their community not an elixir, but a poison. These are stories by filmmakers who substitute a coherent and pro-social teleology with a fragmented journey toward meaninglessness and destruction.
In this session, we will examine a selection of notoriously aheroic protagonists in independent films screened at top-tier festivals over the last several years.
In movies belonging to the so-called ‘Berlin School’ information is withheld on purpose. The resulting information gaps are disruptive for the viewer. They complicate the reception, but at the same time the left-out information can increase the viewer’s cognitive processing. In an empirical study, 50 persons saw a movie of full length. Electromyographic measurements, changes in heart rate, and eye tracking data are related to scenes of the movie, in which information is intentionally withheld in different ways.
Televisual Aesthetics: Audiovisual Spaces, Moods and Symbolic Meanings in Complex TV-Series
Since the success of 'complex TV-series' (Mittell 2015) both in popular culture and in academic discourses, a lot has been said about their specificities in creating multifaceted characters (e.g. Bruun 2016), sophisticated plots (e.g. Mittell 2015), and differentiated strategies to involve viewers cognitively and emotionally into their diegetic worlds. Thereby a major focus has been on narrative aspects: complex networks of plot lines on the global scale of a series' and the related dynamics of informing and engaging viewers for TV-characters - to just mention two relevant research issues. Obviously such elements also affect the style of a series: e.g. the connection of different plot lines and different spatio-temporal dimensions in a story by audiovisual blending, editing, flashbacks or flash forwards; or the creation of complex characters by offering different internal and external perspectives of them in vision and sound. Although audiovisual styles are the very medium of a narrative, it has been rather neglected for a long time. It is only for some years, that TV studies began to shed more light on the specificities of audiovisual styles in complex TV series (e.g. Nannicelli 2012; Jacob/Peacock 2013; Cardwell 2013). Instead of just transferring our knowledge of cinematic poetics on television, a new line of research is discovering the very specifics of complex televisual styles.
The paper intends to follow up on this current line of research. After a short recapitulation of some relevant results and observations in this discourse it will discuss the specific role of spatial aesthetics for complex televisual styles. As has been shown in single case studies (e.g. in Jason/Peacock 2013; Guffey 2014), the stylistic creation of audiovisual spaces is a key element to involve viewers into challenging diegetic worlds. Viewers are confronted with spatio-temporal structures in a TV narrative first of all by perceiving, experiencing and interpreting the spaces that frame a character's actions and expressions. Hence the styles of televisual spaces are the very medium of cognitive, affective and symbolic meanings.
After a more general outline of this research perspective, a specific focus of the paper will be on the aesthetic interplay of spatial atmospheres, moods, and symbolic meanings in single TV series. Following Plantinga (2014), cinematic moods can imply moral perspectives on a character. As will be shown, also in TV series spatial atmospheres of audiovisual spaces can imply "moral moods" that relevantly guide viewers cognitive and emotional evaluation of a character. This is equally true for other, more symbolic meanings, anchored in the narrative of a storyworld. - The stylistic, emotional and symbolic elements of televisual spaces will be analyzed both on the local scale of single episodes and on the global scale across the serial world. It will be discussed how the global dynamics of televisual spaces can result in varying, contrasting, diverging and ambivalent creations of recurring spaces, relevantly contributing to the viewers experience of complexity.
References
Bruun, Margrete 2016. The Antihero in American Television. London/New York: Routledge.
Jacobs, Jason, and Steven Peacock (ed.) 2013. Television Aesthetics and Style. London: Bloomsbury.
Mittel, Jason 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York et al. :New York Univ. Press.
Nannicelli, Ted 2012. "Ontology, intentionality and television, aesthetics", in: Screen 53:2, 164-179.
Plantinga, Carl 2014. "Mood and Ethics in Narrative Film" In Cognitive Media Theory, ed. by Ted Nannicelli, and Paul Taberham, 141-157. New York/London: Routledge.
What aspects of audiovisual media are responsible for the viewers' subjective perception of duration? What behavioral and neural mechanisms activated by audiovisuals are responsible for the perception of temporality? What are the functions of different styles of film editing in managing subjective time perception? This paper presents the theoretical premises and the results of the pilot phase of a research aimed at exploring the audiovisual spectator’s subjective perception of time. The methodological framework adopted for this research is that of "Neurofilmology", a method that combines theoretical research, textual analysis and experimental findings. Relying on a phenomenological approach to time consciousness and on a neurophenomenological approach to the experience of narrative time, we discuss the role of complex neural mechanisms of subjective judgments of time duration. In order to delve into these issues, we also share and discuss the first results of a laboratory experiment conducted at the Università Cattolica of Milan in cooperation with a team of neuro-psychologists.
Film narration entails certain taboos and restrictions, including the obvious ones that are tied to story development from its set-up to rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution, and to the necessity to keep a spectator immersed in a film’s action. Despite the fact that “action is the fundamental narrative element” (Chatman 1975: 213), the cinematic story occasionally “holds its breath” (B. Eichenbaum) and as if takes a pause. Films may contain digressions that slow down the plot development. These cinematic lacunae are not ellipses, however, the lack they create in film narration inform the audience that a communication is intended and trigger the mental process of filling blanks, lacunae, and indeterminacies.
What cognitive mechanisms underlie the capacity to fill the gap with a satisfying interpretation? Where do we look while filling the gap or going through an episode in which a character passes from one place to another without the movement contributing much to plot development? What do we pay attention to and what do we ignore? Does the film really “hold its breath”? What does eye tracking tell us about watching cinematic lacunae? What is the meaning of ‘ligature’ episodes, besides being a means to keep coherence? The paper explores the narrative gaps and cinematic lacunae when film narrative balances on the verge of its existence. In the focus of attention are experimental film narratives by Andrei Tarkovsky, Alexei Balabanov, and Alexander Sokurov.
This presentation will make a case for 'transformative continuity' in audiovisual scenes with camera movement without (overt) editing, examples of which I will discuss.
I will focus on cognitive-embodied and in particular attentional and immersive aspects and effects of transformative continuity, linked to the notion of absorption. I will argue that, instead of retaining attention by means of (classical or post-classical/ intensified) continuity editing, the effect created through transformative continuity is one akin to hypnosis: the over-anchoring of attention to one object- of superimposed, or unfolding images. By focusing attention on the same plane which however opens up to multiple planes and unfolds through layering, the function of transformative continuity is not primarily one of disambiguation and space-time coordination in a naturalistic (diegetic) environment, but one of increased ambiguity that qualitatively alters the engagement of the viewer with the image.
High frame rates (HFR) have raised many questions and generated controversial discussions among filmmakers and critics about the cinematic look and the potential of digital innovations. An artistic research project was conducted to test the effects of HFR on visual exploration, presence and emotional reactions. A fictional short film was shot in 96 frames per second (fps) and produced in three frame rates (24* / 48* / 96 fps, *frame rate conversions in postproduction) for a cinematic experiment. These three film versions were presented to 49 participants while their eyes were tracked. All spectators filled out a questionnaire after each film version and described their emotional and cognitive reactions. The analysis of the eyetracking results revealed a significantly higher number of fixations for the high frame rates. This result replicates an earlier experiment with test sequences in HFR. Open questions for filmmakers and for future research projects on HFR will be discussed.
Voice-over narration and subjectivity in serial television drama. An exploration of narratorial functions, subjective access, and narrative engagement
Short Abstract
Our paper explores how voice-over statements in recent serial television dramas like Dexter and Mr Robot may be analyzed within a cognitive framework, asking how voice-over commentaries affect our conceptual and emotional engagement with a character’s subjective experience of the unfolding events. In contrast to voice-over narration in classical Hollywood cinema (as described by Sarah Kozloff), we assume that voice-over statements in contemporary television create rather ambiguous blends of traditional narratorial devices and subjective access points to the minds of the central characters, and explore how this affects our perspective on the represented world.
Abstract
Over the last decades, an increasing number of serial television comedies and dramas have relied on voice-over narration as a dominant element in their narrative logic (e.g., My So- Called Life, Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother, Dexter, House of Cards, Mr Robot). A closer look at the voice-over commentaries in Dexter (Showtime, 2006-13) and Mr Robot (USA network, 2015-) suggests that they create a very subjective and ambiguous level of narration that crucially shapes our engagement with these shows.
In the past, voice-over narration in moving images has been discussed mainly under a structuralist perspective, focusing on the status of the speaker in the ontological structure of a given narrative (see Kozloff 1988 for the most prominent discussion). However, the voice- over commentaries in Dexter, Mr Robot and possibly other shows are difficult to pin down in this framework. Realized in the first person and through the voices of the characters, they are clearly homodiegetic, but their overall status in the narrative remains ambiguous since they seem to oscillate between a range of different narrative functions: They exhibit backstory information (like a classical narrator), but also verbalize characters’ subjective responses to particular experiences in a highly idiosyncratic way (which suggests a more immediate representation of character thought). As a performative element, Dexter’s witty comments seem to address an implicit narratee, while Elliot Alderson’s voice in Mr Robot explicitly addresses the viewer in the second person, as his imaginary friend. But in contrast to many embedded narrators in classical Hollywood cinema, the on-screen characters are never introduced as frame narrators that talk to a specified, “surrogate” audience within the represented world (cf. Kozloff 1988, 50). According to our first intuition, then, the voice-over commentaries in Dexter and Mr Robot create a rather ambiguous blend of narratorial devices and subjective access points to the minds of the central characters.
Our paper explores how these voice-over statements may be analyzed within a cognitive framework, where the audiovisual narrative provides cues for the mental (re-)construction of a storyworld by the audience. As its central element, this mental model includes a character experiencing the events (e.g., see Herman 2009). On this basis, we ask how voice-over commentaries affect our conceptual and emotional engagement during the process of narrative comprehension. Drawing on work by Jens Eder and Murray Smith, we assume this centrally involves our mental access, imaginary proximity (Eder 2010), and sympathetic allegiance (Smith 1995) to and with the central character.
Furthermore, we assume that the interpretation of voice-over statements draws mainly on two types of generalized knowledge and mental architecture. Firstly, we assume that voice- over statements may cue communicative situation models. As Sarah Kozloff has shown, frame narratives in classical Hollywood cinema often establish confessional settings with “audience surrogates,” e.g., a courtroom with a jury (Kozloff 1988, 50). Although the status of voice overs in television remains much more ambiguous, their interpretation may involve the activation (or priming) of similar communication models. Secondly, we ask how voice-over statements relate to the specific story situation represented on the screen. Cognitive narratology suggests that relevant story events involve a character’s emotional reaction to incidents that disrupt “normalcy” (Hogan 2011). In this regard, we ask how voice-over statements contribute to our understanding of emotional episodes, or whether they highlight other dimensions of narrative meaning-making.
In our talk, we further evaluate the literature on subjectivity and engagement to flesh out an analytical framework that explores possible theoretical categories of voice-over in serial television. In close readings of Dexter and Mr Robot, we will then explore how different types of voice-over statements contribute to an understanding of the narrating character’s subjective mental perspective and thus influence our conceptual and emotional engagement with the unfolding narrative.
As a first working hypothesis, voice-over narration in serial television often seems to create a somewhat paradoxical situation, creating an imaginary proximity to and sympathetic allegiance with the central characters, but at the expense of increasing the distance to the represented world and the character’s social environment. For example, Dexter’s ironic voice-over commentaries often suggest his emotional detachment from the immediate moment, while Elliot Alderson’s statements in Mr Robot explicitly point to the factual unreliability of what we are seeing. This suggests a less immediate engagement with canonical emotion episodes on the micro-structural level of narrative comprehension, in favor of a closer allegiance at a higher level of comprehension, focusing on the characters’ conscious elaboration on their experiences, actions, and perspectives on the world.
References
Eder, Jens (2010). Understanding Characters. Projections. The Journal for Movies and Mind, 4(1), 16-40.
Herman, David (2009). Basic Elements of Narrative. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hogan, Patrick Colm (2011). Affective Narratology. The Emotional Structure of Stories. Lincoln: University of Nebraska.
Kozloff, Sarah (1988). Invisible Storytellers. Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film. Berkley: University of California.
Smith, Murray (1995). Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion, and the Cinema. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
I will argue that when spectators say, or think, that they can understand a morally flawed character, such as Walter White from “Breaking Bad”, they are not referring to a simulatory process of mind reading, or shared emotions, as most contemporary theories of empathy would have it. Instead, I propose that what we mean when we use expressions like “I can understand that Walter lied to his family” or “it’s understandable that he went into drug trafficking” is that the character’s reasons for acting, at least in part, justify or excuse his action, while, all things considered, we remain critical of the action from our own point of view. However, to arrive at the acknowledgement that I, too, can accept at least some of the other’s reasons as good ones, I have to focus my attention on what drove him to act as he did in the first place, rather than just appraise that action from the point of view of how it affects my own concerns (my goals, my moral principles etc.). It is this seemingly trivial stepping out of my egocentric perspective on the world, and mental focusing on the other that makes the process of understanding an empathic act, according to my theory. Hence, I reject the view that empathy requires me to imagine something about myself. Secondly, I will show how this theory about empathy on the level of action and motivation can contribute to the solution of the sympathy for the devil paradox.
On Tuesday Corona bar & billiard will welcome us after the hard days work, for socializing and enjoying inspiring after-talks with drinks. Everyone is instructed to head to Corona Bar, earlier or later. Some of us will get there from the conference dinner.
Corona bar has achieved almost a cult status only in a few decades. Corona bar, founded by Kaurismäki brothers, is a New York-style relaxed streetbar with a pool-hall. Corona serves coffee, refreshments and probably the best toasts in Helsinki, every day of the week and all around the year.
In this presentation I argue against the standard picture of empathy in horror films: that audiences tend to empathize with the fear of psychologically rich and morally positive characters. Instead I propose that the preponderance of scary scenes in horror films elicit non-empathetic fear in audiences. Audiences are most apt to empathize with characters’ fear when it occurs in unfrightening scenes in non-horror films. I note briefly in conclusion that audiences may empathize with horror film character feelings other than fear, like sadness or love.
Following Our Senses in the Dark: On Leviathan (2012) and the Embodied Fabula
Abstract
A product of the Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL), Leviathan (Castaing-Taylor & Paravel 2012) presents a fascinating new take on the documentary that leaves us ‘with only our senses to follow in the dark’ (Coldiron 2012, par. 2). Despite Leviathan’s lack of mainstream appeal it would be possible to perceive the film in relation to Tim Recuber’s (2007) concept of the ‘immersion cinema’, as representing a ‘new set of technological and aesthetic criteria in which sensory experience and the physical immersion of the spectator within the medium are of paramount importance’ (p. 321). Following Recuber, immersion cinema contains an ‘overemphasis on physical experience [that] creates passive consumers who pay to plug in to visceral thrills without, necessarily, any meaningful interaction with the film’ (p. 325). Eventually, such spectacles, following Recuber, ‘do effectively grab our attention, but their immediacy and sensationalism tend to divert that attention away from contemplation or discussion’ (p. 327).
Given that Leviathan does not invite the spectator to engage in neither inference-making nor schematic categorization, it would be tempting to perceive the film as not only affective but also non-cognitive. Yet, quite contrary to the argument raised by Recuber, I maintain that Leviathan through its bodily-sensorial appeal, Ernst Karel’s cacophonous sound mix, its extended use of GoPro-cameras to destabilize quotidian perception, and its lack of linear narrative sequencing or discursive clarity engages its spectators with a specific affect-laden mode of cognitive reflection. Assigning meanings to the estranged audiovisual imagery of Leviathan requires considerable cognition, yet this cognitive activity is intimately connected to how the film agitates corporal-visceral thrills. The film’s ‘cognitive-affectivity’ thus challenges a tendency to antagonize cognition and affect, which can be found in both classical cognitive narratology through the idealization of cognition as sufficient condition for narrative comprehension (e.g., Bordwell, 1985, 2008), but also in the categorization of affect as immediate, non-cognitive, and bodily autonomous responses to the images thus detached from their representational and narrative dimensions (e.g., Massumi, 2002; Shaviro, 2010).
Granted, Leviathan might not invite for cognitive reflection in the ‘cold’, ‘computational’, or cognitive-analytical sense that has dominated cognitive science until recently, yet the film’s strong focus on (destabilizing) bodily, perceptual, and spatial orientation, does not mean that it escapes cognition entirely. Instead, by subverting habitual perceptual orientation the film demonstrates how intimately cognition is connected to factors such as proprioception, sensorimotor integration, visual scanning, and affect modulations (cf. Antunes, 2016; Gallese & Guerra, 2012). To better capture the cognitive-affective dimension of Leviathan and cinema more generally, this paper suggests the concept of the ‘embodied fabula’.
As a description of the mental construction of the cinematic world, we might differentiate between a ‘computational’/analytical (i.e., based on logical inferences, information-processing, schemata application, hypotheses-testing, etc.) and an embodied (affective, emotional, proprioceptive, empathetic, sensorial, etc.) fabula. Whereas the former structures our perception of the ongoing events with the aim of (re)constructing causal-linear narrative sense, the latter engages with the cinematic events in an online, enactive, affective, cognitive, and embodied manner. Although both are fundamentally cognitive only the embodied fabula encompasses corporal-affective, emotional, sensorial, activities as central for a basic cognitive comprehension of the cinematic events.
Thus, unlike its cognitive-analytical counterpart, the embodied fabula does not limit narrative comprehension to the restricted sphere of ‘cold’, ‘computational’ cognitive activities such as inference-making, the testing of various hypotheses, schemata application, and a causal-linear reconstruction of events. Building upon embodied, enactive, and situated approaches within the cognitive sciences and neuroscience, the embodied fabula is an analytical tool, which attempts to understand how narrative comprehension rely upon the whole arsenal of cognitive, emotional, motor-active, and corporal-affective responses. While the analytical fabula is apt for discussions of textual, discursive, investigative aspects of narration, the embodied fabula has been designed to examine how the events are felt, sensed, or experienced.
The embodied fabula therefore marks a film-analytical attempt to incorporate into our conceptual toolbox the current trend within the cognitive sciences and neuroscience to bring perception and action together and to think cognition in embodied, enactive, affective, and situated terms. The embodied fabula broadens the scope of the fabula such that it chimes with our current understanding of cognition as emerging out of its nonlinear, dynamic, and complex interrelations with – rather than operating in isolation from – affective, emotional, perceptual, proprioceptive, and motor-active processes. Trying to understand Leviathan in purely affective terms would clearly be a mistake, yet the film evidences the necessity to rethink the cinematic spectator as embodied and situated in the cinematic universe or ‘world’ crafted by the film (cf. Yacavone, 2015) rather than as a cognitive, analytical, and computational processing of information about this world.
The talk first discusses basic techniques of visual aesthetics, abstraction, exaggeration, and complexity reduction. It then uses these techniques to analyze facial expressions, gaze direction, and body language in animated films, their emotional effects and how these expressions are afforded by brain structures in somato-sensory cortex and the tempero-parietal junction. It discusses how and why animated films are ultra-social but also have elements pertinent to animal survival mechanisms of hiding, tracking, trapping, observing, fighting and fleeing. Finally it briefly mentions the role of violation of ontological categories and the role of metaphor in cartoons.
In this talk we are interested in what ways the theory of affordances could enrich our understanding of the skillful technique of editing in creating narratives/meaning in film. Affordance theory comes from James J. Gibson’s work where Gibson (Gibson 1979) argued in favor of direct perception: we pick up information from the environment in relation to our own possible actions, i.e. the environment offers us action possibilities. Editing technique on the other hand shows skillful actions in creating meanings. What we are suggesting is to describe the way affordances create or motivates narratives for the audience. We especially focus on the notion of social affordances: i.e. we understand the actions of others in relation to how we can interact with them. Following J. J. Gibson’s view, we take affordances in broad terms and situate them with a notion of “a rich landscape of affordances”, a conceptual framework in which affordances are not limited to motor skills but considered in terms of rich and varied abilities in sociocultural practices (Kiverstein & Rietveld 2014).
This paper will explore the concept of ‘personal imagining’ in relation to the viewer’s cognition while watching horror films that utilise the diegetic camera as a narrational and aesthetic strategy. By looking at the cinematographic techniques in a range of scenes from found footage horror films, I will establish how the viewer is encouraged to have very specific imaginings about what is occurring behind the camera in off-screen space.
I will build on the ideas of Gregory Currie and Noël Burch and particularly Currie’s claim that the viewer does not simply imagine the events of the film occurring, but in the case of point-of-view shots, imagines seeing the events from that particular perspective. I believe that viewers of diegetic camera horror films are forced to imagine seeing (personal imagining) because their perception of the film is limited to what Edward Branigan calls a continuing point-of-view shot.
About the Session
In this session, we will discuss the development and piloting of an interview guide that can/will shape our investigation of the ways in which filmmakers use mental imagery in their filmmaking process. Previously, our investigations focused on creative and interpretive artists working in other art forms. We interviewed artists working alone—primarily visual artists. We also focused on artists working within an ensemble process: actors and directors, choreographers, and musicians.
For this first stage of a proposed larger study, we focused primarily on filmmaking students and emerging professionals. (These subjects are working almost independently and they take all the roles: the directors/camera persons/editors of their films.) We explored with these subjects how they use their own storehouse of mental images as important sources for their films. We discussed visual, kinesthetic, tactile, auditory, and aural images and how each subject retrieved, manipulated, and modified these image. We also spoke about the essential oscillation between internal image and external transformation.
Interestingly, at this stage of our investigation, it seems that a large percentage of our subjects do believe that their stored images (retrieved consciously or retrieved through dreaming or meditation) drive their work. As they are creating their film, they constantly oscillate between the stimulating image and the one they see before them through the camera lens. As they experiment with the various aspects of the elements of film, they return to the stimulating image to add details. As they expand their experiences, these young artists hope to work within a team and find other artists who can both respect their process and add to their film. As our work progresses, we intend to interview subjects who are cinematographers and editors.
We particularly encourage members of filmmaking teams to attend our session and share their ideas about imagery and the filmmaking process. Our goal is to fine tune our interview guide, begin interviews with professional filmmakers (directors, cinematographers, and editors), and to publish our findings in a series of research-based articles, as well as write a trade book geared more toward the general public. (The work with actors and directors morphed into a text book entitled Creative Drama and Imagination: Transforming Ideas into Action that focused on how to use mental imagery in conducting creative drama activities with young people ages six through fourteen.
Please talk to us at the end of the session if you would like to be interviewed for our book.
Ego Cure, directed by Synes Elischka, is a narrative virtual reality short film unconventionally mixing together a new technical approach of stereoscopic 360 video, CGI animation and interaction between the viewer and the art piece (enactive cinema) –stretching the limits of filmmaking.
In this VR experience you, the viewer, are a part of the struggle of a contemporary dance choreographer to create a contemporary masterpiece – at odds with a handful of disinterested dancers, her unpleasant producer and the otherworldly curator – while at the same time facing her own inner demons. The movie is set in a world where the commodification of art has come to its technological conclusion: if an artist is unable or unwilling to provide a commissioned art piece, the investor has the right to extract it from their unconscious mind – using the EGO CURE device
“Having been part of a contemporary dance collective since 2009 (originally as a filmmaker/media-artist but pretty soon pushed to perform alongside professional dancers) a lot of the things happening in the script are based on my own experiences and observations.” – Synes Elischka
Ego Cure is Aalto University ELO Film School co-production with Oblomovies.
The film is part of a research project to study the mechanics of virtual reality in filmmaking, creating tools for high quality Cinematic VR. The film utilizes the Enactive Avatar, a technology creating a living, reactive photorealistic CGI character based on a real-life person.
Director: Synes Elischka
Producer: Mikko Asikainen
Script: Synes Elischka & Tom Saxman
Watch a preview of the making of here.
This presentation traces the history and aesthetic experience of the convention that characters in Hollywood musicals spontaneously burst into song without realistic motivation. The convention emerged in 1929 and largely vanished by 1960. Illustrated with clips from The Jazz Singer, Love Me Tonight, Top Hat, and other films, the presentation studies how filmmakers developed novel conventions that exploited the aesthetic possibilities of song in cinema.
Screen acting is a form of embodied and situated activity. Our research project aims to provide an account of how actors’ believe their mind and body to be creatively coordinated during a performance in the interest of achieving verisimilar effects, and how this capacity is developed through performance training. Because performances are always directed towards an audience, we also examine the apprehension of actors’ labour. Our reception study seeks to identify subjects’ criteria for making evaluative claims about a performance’s reality effects – i.e., the degree of plausibility with which an actor instantiates a character.
Previous neuroscientific studies suggest that observing human action activates motor and mirror neuron areas in the brain and has a role in creating empathy. Empathy, in turn, has been linked to identification and identification to the spectator’s enjoyment of the movie. The presentation discusses theories, hypotheses, and ideas related to an upcoming doctoral study about the role of handedness in this process.
In this talk, I present the results of my doctoral thesis about brain activity during movie viewing measured with magnetoencephalography (MEG). I briefly present the basics of MEG and advantages of studying brain activity in naturalistic experimental settings, as well as results and methodological advances of our work. Using movies as stimuli helps us understand sensory and cognitive brain processes of our everyday life. Here I will describe what we have discovered about the brain using Maya Deren’s movie “At Land”.
In light of the current popularity of antiheroes in both film and television, this paper will contemplate why we want to engage with antiheroes to begin with. Looking at the paradoxical attraction of antiheroes that are not only like “one of ourselves”, but also provide us with an enjoyable morally challenging experience, I will argue that the importance of the correlation between empathy and moral evaluation may be stronger than oftentimes thought.