UCLA Visual Narrative workshop 20-22nd June 2012

I'll be presenting my research on film cognition and eye movements as part of UCLA's workshop on Visual Narrative, June 20-22nd 2012. The workshop will present a wonderful array of approaches to understanding the nature of narrative in visual media including film, TV, comic books and on-line visual media. Other presenters include Elisabeth Camp (Philosophy, U. of Pensylvania), Dorit Abusch (Linguistics, Cornell), Elsi Kaiser (Linguistics, USC), Matthew Stone (Computer Science, Rutgers), and George Wilson (Philosophy, USC).

Register now at the workshop website:

http://gjgreenberg.bol.ucla.edu/visnar/

Real|Reel article

Chloe Penman (@ideaswithlegs) has written a summary of a presentation I gave at Bristol Vision Institute back in January and posted it on the on-line journal, Real|Reel here.

Chloe does a better job at succinctly summarising some of the key aspects of my Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity (AToCC) than I think I could. She also uses some great video demonstrations of some of the key editing techniques (Match-Action, Jump Cuts, 180 Degree Rule) to elegantly expand her points.

If you are interested in reading about AToCC in more detail or related areas of film cognition please check out my recent publications:

• Smith, T. J., Levin, D. T. & Cutting, J. (2012) A Window on Reality: Perceiving Edited Moving Images. Current Directions in Psychological Science.21: 101-106 doi:10.1177/0963721412436809 (print version) (preprint)
• Smith, T. J. (2012) The Attentional Theory of Continuity Editing,Projections: The Journal for Movies and the Mind. 6(1)
• Smith, T. J. (2012) Extending AToCC: a reply, Projections: The Journal for Movies and the Mind. 6(1)

Rear Window Timelapse

Absolutely brilliant reworking of Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) by Jeff Desom so that all the sequences viewed out of the window by Jimmy Stewart's character are morphed together into one continuous time lapse viewpoint using Adobe Aftereffects. It also highlights an interesting mismatch between how we think we perceive the locations depicted in a scene and how they actually appear when spatial relationships are reconstructed. I've studied Rear Window in detail several times and I had no idea that the conservatory in the right of the scene was so close to Jimmy Stewart's apartment.

A Window of Reality: Perceiving Edited Moving Images

A little review article Dan Levin, James Cutting and I put together is now published in Current Directions in Psychological Science.

Have you ever wondered how we watch films? How viewing highly artificial edited sequences that jump about in space and time can be effortless> Why films seem to be getting faster, darker and more agitated? Or why we fail to notice massive continuity errors? Check out the article

Smith, T. J., Levin, D. T. & Cutting, J. (2012) A Window on Reality: Perceiving Edited Moving Images. Current Directions in Psychological Science.21: 101-106 doi:10.1177/0963721412436809 (print version) (preprint)

Edited moving images entertain, inform, and coerce us throughout our daily lives, yet until recently, the way people perceive movies has received little psychological attention. We review the history of empirical investigations into movie perception and the recent explosion of new research on the subject using methods such as behavioral experiments, functional magnetic resonance imagery (fMRI) eye tracking, and statistical corpus analysis. The Hollywood style of moviemaking, which permeates a wide range of visual media, has evolved formal conventions that are compatible with the natural dynamics of attention and humans’ assumptions about continuity of space, time, and action. Identifying how people overcome the sensory differences between movies and reality provides an insight into how the same cognitive processes are used to perceive continuity in the real world.

Cut detection experiment

If you have a spare 45 minutes and fancy reflecting on how you watch movies please take part in my student, Yvonne's on-line experiment:

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/psychologyexperiments/experiments/cutdetection/startup.php?rid=53

You'll be shown a series of film clips from movies and asked to detect cuts. Just press the spacebar every time you see a cut. It's that simple!

Or is it?

Cognitive Film Theory bibliography

I just stumbled across Nick Redfern's wonderful bibliography of Cognitive Film theory on-line and thought I had to share:

http://nickredfern.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/nick-redfern-cognitivefilmtheorybibliography2-04.pdf

This is a great starting point for anybody trying to get a feel for the research area.

UCL Festival of the Moving Image

This Sunday (12th February 2012) I will be giving an intro to my work on film cognition and a live eyetracking demonstration as part of the UCL Festival of Moving Images 2012: http://movingimage.im/

The evening will begin with a screening of Tarsem Singh's The Fall (2006), a beautiful digital fairytale that exemplifies Tarsem's use of digital compositions and mise en scene.

This will be followed by Richard Linklater's rotoscoped philosophical dream journey, Waking Life (2001).



Both films explore issues related to the fantasy of reality (and vice versa) and it will be my task to bridge the two with some demonstrations of exactly how illusory our experience of the real-world is.

The event is free but space is limited so please come along early if you are interested in attending.