tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-120991052024-03-13T01:28:34.377+00:00Continuity BoyA blog about my empirical investigation of film perception.Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.comBlogger91125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-37356956547769373052018-04-26T15:11:00.000+00:002018-04-26T15:11:18.709+00:00ZDOK 18 - Attentional theory presentationI was very honored to be invited by Christian Iseli to present at the Zurcher Dokumentarfilmtagung (ZDOK; Documentary Film Workshop) in Zurich on 22nd March. This gave me a great opportunity to present an overview of my Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity (Smith, 2012; <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/proj.2012.060102" target="_blank">official url</a>; <a href="http://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/6679/1/6679.pdf" target="_blank">free pdf preprint</a>) to filmmakers and hear their thoughts on my cognitive approach.<br />
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A video of my talk is available here:<br />
<a href="https://blog.zhdk.ch/zdok/2018/exploring-the-cognitive-foundations-of-cinematic-continuity-2/">https://blog.zhdk.ch/zdok/2018/exploring-the-cognitive-foundations-of-cinematic-continuity-2/</a><br />
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<a href="https://blog.zhdk.ch/zdok/2018/exploring-the-cognitive-foundations-of-cinematic-continuity-2/" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="295" data-original-width="620" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDJsrIASqlaxtOVXKQlpKCLdcsNEk8b12VGAvDiCs9EcXJxq0CGDyMPRhkK2ns2tnYVdquHFy8PeX0y8BEnCYrzERWmpiySH9V2VMhsyivqs7y3TeOP41DjGJkMG6ZmNBvmYoXrQ/s320/zdok.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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I'd also highly recommend checking out the other talks from what proved to be a fascinating conference (even if it pushed my German skills to the limit!). Of special interest to me was the always fabulous,<a href="https://blog.zhdk.ch/zdok/2018/rhythmic-thinking-svilova-and-vertovs-extended-mind-2/" target="_blank"> Karen Pearlman</a> and a wonderful discussion with one of my favourite editors,<a href="https://blog.zhdk.ch/zdok/2018/gespraech-ueber-die-montage-von-citizenfour/" target="_blank"> Mathilde Bonnefoy </a>on her work on the Edward Snowden documentary, <i>Citizen Four</i> and her longstanding work with Tom Tykwer on various films including <i>Run Lola Run:</i><br />
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<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en-GB&q=https://blog.zhdk.ch/zdok/zdok-18_archiv/&source=gmail&ust=1524838873843000&usg=AFQjCNG8rPnPO-etGuY_m30-pe_T3N5bHg" href="https://blog.zhdk.ch/zdok/zdok-18_archiv/" style="background-color: white; color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;" target="_blank">https://blog.zhdk.ch/<wbr></wbr>zdok/zdok-18_archiv/</a><br />
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p.s. Thanks to Christian Iseli, Miriam Loertscher and Kristina Jungic for organising my visit and the fantastic real-time translators.Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-6769089063896688052016-03-07T16:09:00.000+00:002016-03-07T16:09:37.919+00:00IMC Bootcamp Video - Eye-tracking in the wild and in film<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
On Tuesday 24th November, 2016 I was lucky enough to be invited by Katrin Heimann and colleagues from the Interacting Minds Centre (IMC) at Aarhus University, Demark to take part in their <a href="http://interactingminds.au.dk/events/single-events/artikel/imc-bootcamp-on-attention/" target="_blank">bootcamp on Visual Attention</a>. The IMC is an incredible interdisciplinary research institute investigating issues of social cognition and related phenomena from a variety of perspectives. The visual attention bootcamp was a great success and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the work and approaches of the other speakers. </div>
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I had the pleasure of ending the day with a summary of my research on film viewing. In the talk I touched on issues of how to run eye tracking experiments with dynamic stimuli, how to use computer vision to analyse film content, the evolution of cinema and its relationship with visual cognition, an overview of my Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity (AToCC; Smith, 2012; available <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/tim-smith/documents/ATOCC_timjsmith_final_plusrefs_plusfigs.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>), and how individual differences manifest in where we look and what we think whilst watching movies. The resulting video is great and provides a great overview of my work.</div>
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Check it out and let me know what you think via Twitter @timothy_j_smith. </div>
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<br />Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-73368822355376941492015-07-30T11:38:00.002+00:002015-07-30T11:38:21.538+00:00Movies in your brain - The Academy of Motion Pictures event<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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(This is a terribly belated write-up! But better late than never.)</div>
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Last July (29-30th, 2014) I was very privileged to be asked to host a two night event in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), Linwood Dunn Theatre in Los Angeles. I had been approached for my work on the cognitive science of film viewing as AMPAS were interested in hosting an event that would bring together filmmakers with scientists to explore, for the first time the way viewers process images, events and stories experienced on the silver screen. Of course, I jumped at this opportunity as it would give me the chance to pick and choose who I considered some of the most interesting filmmakers working today along with some of the most brilliant and inspiring cognitive scientists and orchestrate the discussion I had always dreamed of. </div>
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The title of the event was "<b><a href="http://www.oscars.org/events/movies-your-brain-science-cinematic-perception" target="_blank">Movies in Your Brain: The Science of Cinematic Perception</a></b>" and attracted a sold-out audience of Academy members, general public, scientists and filmmakers. The structure for the two nights was:</div>
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<b><u>Night 1</u></b></div>
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The event consisted of film clips, discussions and presentations from:</div>
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<b>Walter Murch </b>(film editor/sound designer/director; <i>Apocalypse Now, The English Patient and The Godfather Part II</i>)</div>
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<b>Jon Favreau </b>(actor/producer/director; <i>Iron Man, Chef, The Jungle Book</i>)</div>
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<b><a href="http://psych.princeton.edu/psychology/research/hasson/" target="_blank">Prof. Uri Hasson</a></b><i style="font-weight: bold;"> </i>(Princeton U., expert in film perception, social cognition, and neuroimaging)</div>
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<b><a href="http://people.psych.cornell.edu/~jec7/" target="_blank">Prof. James Cutting</a> </b>(Cornell; expert in visual perception, cognition and the evolution of film form)</div>
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Night 1 also involved a live audience experiment testing Walter Murch's ideas about blink entrainment during <i>The Conversation</i> and how he believes he can guide an audience's attention and shape their perception during a film by using composition, editing and sound design. AMPAS have created a short video which captures some of this discussion between myself, Walter Murch and Jon Favreau.</div>
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During Night 1 we also conducted an eyetracking experiment on the Monaco sequence from Favreau's <i>Iron Man 2.</i> This data was gathered as participants arrived at the event using a Tobii TX300 tracker, quickly rendered into a heatmap video which shows where the densest concentration of viewer gaze is during the video and then I had the joy of discussing this data with the director responsible for creating the film, Jon Favreau. His insights into how this <a href="http://www.journalofvision.org/content/13/8/16.full" target="_blank">synchrony of attention</a> was created was surprising and often very funny.</div>
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<b><u>Night 2</u></b></div>
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<b>Darren Aronofsky (</b>director/writer; <i>Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, Black Swan, Noah</i>)</div>
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<b>Ari Handel </b>(screenwriter/producer/neuroscientist; <i> The Fountain, The Wrestler, Black Swan)</i></div>
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<b><a href="http://pages.wustl.edu/dcl/jeff-zacks" target="_blank">Prof. Jeff Zacks</a> </b>(Washington U.-St. Louis; expert on event perception, neuroimaging and author of <i><a href="http://flickerthebook.com/" target="_blank">Flicker: Your brain on Movies</a>; </i>see a great video on Jeff's work <a href="https://vimeo.com/119810634" target="_blank">here</a>)</div>
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<b><a href="http://fmri-tlv.org/research/talma/talma.html" target="_blank">Prof. Talma Hendler</a> </b>(Tel-Aviv; expert in neuroscience, emotion, social cognition, and empathy in the movies)</div>
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Night 2 increased our insight into the what is going on in the brain of viewers whilst watching a movie. As provocation for delving into the extremes of cinematic experience we featured the work of Aronofsky who's films often push the boundaries of audience emotions by using tropes from horror, thrillers and deep portrayals of psychological distress and disorder (such as schizophrenia in <i>Black Swan</i>). Hendler, in conjunction with Uri Hasson ran a neuroimaging study on the final 15 minutes of <i>Black Swan</i> in an fMRI scanner. The data illustrated how audiences both experienced extreme distress at the shocking sequence, empathised with Nina, the main character played by Natalie Portman as she undergoes a psychological and physical break down but also control their emotional responses as a form of psychological self-defense. The research showcased in this demo is truly stunning and paves the way for future work into the neural mechanisms of rich cognitive and emotional cinematic experience. You can find a video on Hendler's work <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNT-Xa07f_0" target="_blank">here</a>. </div>
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Darren Aronosfky and Ari Handel's responses to the science demonstrated a great insight into their craft and how they explicitly make directorial and scriptwriting decisions to either elicit a shared, universal experience in their audience or create moments of fracture in which audience members take something unique and idiosyncratic from their movies. The AMPAS clip below beautifully captures this discussion with myself and Jeff Zacks.</div>
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The event ended with the presentation of a short test film the Aceademy Tech Council had created as a dramatic demonstration of the multiple possibilities of high frame rate (HFR) filmmaking. A single-shot, silent short entitled “<a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/09/cinema-science-frame-rates/" target="_blank">The Affair</a>” was filmed with identical camera moves and identical performances more than 30 times at different frame rates: 24fps (the cinematic standard), 48fps, 60fps, 120fps and several speeds in between. Four frame rates (24, 48, 60 and 120fps) were presented to the audience. The leap between each was both fascinating and divisive, with a show of hands revealing how much further we all have to go before deciding what the experience of watching and absorbing a movie will mean in the future.</div>
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The two nights were a stunning success and I really can't do them justice describing them here. AMPAS have provided a great write-up on their website (<a href="http://www.oscars.org/events/movies-your-brain-science-cinematic-perception" target="_blank">here</a>) and we were very fortunate to have the science of the event featured by Wired on-line as a series of articles (<a href="http://www.wired.com/tag/cinema-science/" target="_blank">here</a>). If you want to get a sense of what was discussed I would immediately direct you to these existing articles.</div>
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I have to thank AMPAS for hosting this event, the AMPAS staff (Academy Governor, Bill Kroyer; Maryrose McMahon, Joe di Gennaro and their crew), the filmmakers with taking time out of their busy schedules to blow our minds and the scientists for sharing their work and inspiring me and the audience. I hope this will be the first of many such events the AMPAS and other such societies host in the future. </div>
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Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-33063322514110031732015-06-16T16:50:00.005+00:002015-06-16T16:50:49.717+00:00Poster on using low-cost eye trackers for film cognition experiments (SCSMI 2015, London)The Society for the Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image (SCSMI) <a href="http://scsmi-online.org/conference" target="_blank">annual conference </a>is about to kick off at Birkbeck. All our preparations are ready and we're really looking forward to hosting old and new colleagues for this exciting international event. Check out the programme for some very interesting events and if you want to pop along you can book a day ticket here: <a href="http://scsmi-online.org/conference/registration-information">http://scsmi-online.org/conference/registration-information</a><br />
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Tomorrow evening, my student, Jono Batten and I will be presenting a poster and giving a demo of some recent low-cost ($140-$99) commercial eye trackers that have appeared on the market over the last year. Whilst intended as gaming peripherals and interface devices they offer researchers interested in getting into eye tracking but unable to afford the massive price tage of most science-grade systems a potential way in. We have tested and investigated these new low-cost eye trackers in considerable depth and in the poster we present a review of which trackers you should consider for particular experiments.<br />
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As I will likely be running around hosting the conference during the session I've also included the poster here.<br />
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Some of the links mentioned in the poster are here:<br />
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<b>Eye Tracking Hardware</b><br /><ul>
<li><b>Science-grade</b></li>
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<li>SR-Research Eyelink: <a href="http://www.sr-research.com/eyelink1000plus.html">http://www.sr-research.com/eyelink1000plus.html</a> </li>
<li>Tobii TX300: <a href="http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-tracking-research/global/products/hardware/tobii-tx300-eye-tracker/">http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-tracking-research/global/products/hardware/tobii-tx300-eye-tracker/</a></li>
<li>SMI Red-m:<a href="http://www.smivision.com/en/gaze-and-eye-tracking-systems/products/redm.html" target="_blank"> http://www.smivision.com/en/gaze-and-eye-tracking-systems/products/redm.html</a></li>
<li>Tobii X2-60: <a href="http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-tracking-research/global/products/hardware/tobii-x2-60-eye-tracker/">http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-tracking-research/global/products/hardware/tobii-x2-60-eye-tracker/</a></li>
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<li><b>Low-cost</b></li>
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<li>Tobii EyeX (*not intended for science applications*): <a href="http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-experience/eyex/">http://www.tobii.com/en/eye-experience/eyex/</a></li>
<li>EyeTribe $99 tracker: <a href="https://theeyetribe.com/">https://theeyetribe.com/</a></li>
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<b>Eye Tracking Software</b><br /><ul>
<li>Free experimental design and analysis eye tracking software: Ogama <a href="http://www.ogama.net/">www.ogama.net</a> </li>
<li>Free eye movement parsing software (e.g. converting raw data into fixations, saccades, etc)</li>
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<li><a href="http://www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/research/grafix/">http://www.cbcd.bbk.ac.uk/research/grafix/</a></li>
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<li>Free heatmap visualisation software</li>
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<li>CARPE: <a href="http://thediemproject.wordpress.com/">thediemproject.wordpress.com/</a> </li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOreRAKs19z3mTCIxYe1DtFVfjZYxpKDnTy5KV6rsYtsrg20Mu_NRpMLEKsxDEyQXI8DtLpx_M9v1AlpvMPRK6nSryrlxzXbVa9K6Er809zuEtpg0URLqA_SAzWqk8bv3-VkZ2Kg/s1600/SCSMI15_lowcostET_poster.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="452" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOreRAKs19z3mTCIxYe1DtFVfjZYxpKDnTy5KV6rsYtsrg20Mu_NRpMLEKsxDEyQXI8DtLpx_M9v1AlpvMPRK6nSryrlxzXbVa9K6Er809zuEtpg0URLqA_SAzWqk8bv3-VkZ2Kg/s640/SCSMI15_lowcostET_poster.png" width="640" /></a></div>
Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-38047817578574088982014-12-24T11:07:00.000+00:002014-12-24T11:09:33.920+00:00Laptop vs. IMAX: An eyetracking experimentAs part of BBC Radio 4's Cells and Celluloid Christmas special on the science of film I conducted an experiment investigating the impact screen size had on viewing behaviour. Using head-mounted eyetracking equipment (<a href="http://eyetracking-glasses.com/" target="_blank">SMI Glasses</a>) I recorded the eye movements of Francine Stock and Adam Rutherford as they watched <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0486321/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Fly Me to the Moon 3D (2008)</a> either in the Science Museum's IMAX or on a 13 inch laptop.<br />
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Full discussion of the experiment will be available on the BBC iPlayer here:<br />
<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04vj1x8">http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04vj1x8</a><br />
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As you will see from the video, the IMAX screen filled the entire field of view of the head camera (>60 degrees) where as the laptop screen only filled less than half of the image even when it was viewed at a typical viewing distance (~60cm), This difference in viewing angle meant that the gaze had to explore more of the image in the IMAX presentation producing a greater number of saccades into the periphery. The difference in gaze exploration of the image can clearly be seen in the scatter plot below. All the gaze to the laptop (green crosses) is tightly centred relative to the head camera whereas the gaze during the IMAX viewing (blue circles) is higher (possibly due to the viewer being positioned in the back row of the auditorium) and covers much more of the image.<br />
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These data give us an initial indication of how the viewing behaviour between small screen film viewing and large format (such as IMAX) may differ but to check whether these results are robust we would need to conduct a more thorough empirical investigation using exactly the same section of a movie and a larger number of viewers. A lot has been claimed about the "immersive" effect of large-screen viewing and these sorts of studies can begin to identify exactly what these differences might be in terms of viewer experience. There have not been enough real-cinema studies for us to be able to draw strong conclusions but those studies that have been conducted indicate that even when the amount of visual field occupied by a screen and the amount of light reflected off the screen is equated between a home cinema presentation and a large screen (e.g. at the cinema) our knowledge that the screen is physically larger creates an increased experience of immersion <a href="http://i-perception.perceptionweb.com/journal/I/article/i0475aap" target="_blank">(Troscianko, Meese & Hinde, 2012).</a> More research is needed to identify exactly what aspects create the "cinematic experience" and to predict what the future holds for this experience given the increased competition for our attention.Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-55787632900774379472014-06-26T09:47:00.004+00:002014-06-26T09:47:57.602+00:00EPSRC 3.5 year PhD studentship: Eye guidance in real-world scenes (UK students only)Can't recommend this opportunity more highly. This is a chance to work with two pioneers of active vision (Nuthmann) and computer vision (Fisher) in one of my favourite cities on the planet!<br />
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Dear students,<br /><br />A (last-minute) fully funded(!) PhD studentship is available to work with Dr. Antje Nuthmann (principal supervisor) and Prof. Bob Fisher (co-supervisor) at the University of Edinburgh. </div>
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<br />Details can be found here: <a href="http://www.ppls.ed.ac.uk/students/postgraduate/PGFunding.php#EPSRC" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">http://www.ppls.ed.ac.<wbr></wbr>uk/students/postgraduate/<wbr></wbr>PGFunding.php#EPSRC</a><br /><br />Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.<br /><br />Best wishes,<br />Antje Nuthmann</div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">http://nuthmann.de/antje/Site/Welcome.html</span></div>
Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-28575618648734997172013-11-03T15:44:00.002+00:002013-11-04T12:29:48.293+00:00BIMI study day: Cognition at the Movies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUYKy4ZRBmvZ3K74PoA3e84Vry6XfJs6C4IjaenHsFPV0DVh-bPVb1f619HuNujujwKIF9YU9QK9IBGWn1ioNMtBySgI3hB9IrcAkVnXwKstA66Ydw_7djmds47gPLoqiOjLwzvA/s1600/BIMI_eye.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUYKy4ZRBmvZ3K74PoA3e84Vry6XfJs6C4IjaenHsFPV0DVh-bPVb1f619HuNujujwKIF9YU9QK9IBGWn1ioNMtBySgI3hB9IrcAkVnXwKstA66Ydw_7djmds47gPLoqiOjLwzvA/s400/BIMI_eye.tiff" width="400" /></a></div>
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I am proud to announce the first 'Cognition at the Movies' study day hosted by myself and <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/arts/research/birkbeck-institute-for-the-moving-image" target="_blank">Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI)</a>.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">Saturday November 9th 10am to 6:30pm (B35, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;">Birkbeck,</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX; number 1 on the map </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px;"><a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/downloads/centrallondon.pdf">http://www.bbk.ac.uk/downloads/centrallondon.pdf</a></span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt;">Since cinema’s inception filmmakers and theorists have been interested in the relationship between film and its audience. How do directorial decisions influence what we see on the screen and how does a viewer’s prior beliefs and interests influence how they experience a film? Cognitive Science, the interdisciplinary investigation of mental phenomena using theories and techniques from neuroscience, psychology and philosophy has recently begun to be applied to these questions of film cognition. This workshop will bring together film theorists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers in an exploration of the relationship between film and its audience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 17px;">Keynote presentation ‘</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 17px;">by Prof Torben Grodal (Copenhagen) author of </span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 17px;">Moving Pictures </i><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 17px;">and</span><i style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 17px;"> Embodied Visions.</i><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-6f975072-1e85-b0b1-9bef-6760b68152f8"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The lecture will first provide a short description of how muscles and action is important for the embodied brain and for our experience of narratives. The basis for the standard narrative reflects the Brain’s PECMA flow: Perception, Emotion, Cognition, and Motor Action. Characters and viewers want to modify some states of the world by motor action, including verbal actions. The lecture will then discuss the embodied brain’s three ’bail out’ mechanisms where the modification of the world by action is supplanted with self-modification: Crying, as in sad melodramas, laughter, as in comedies, and freeze reactions as effects of sublime submission to the exterior world. The lecture will especially focus on comic entertainment and discuss the processes that allows the brain to evaluate something as ’not real’, as ’not a cause for action’ and redirect the arousal from a given scene from tense world-directedness to laughter. It will finally discuss the social nature of comic entertainment and those mammalian play-functions that serve as facilitators for the reality status evaluations in comic entertainment that makes it possible to experience shame, failure and other negative events with a strongly positive hedonic tone.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 17px;">Event is free but please register as spaces are limited: </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 14px;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 17px;"><a href="https://cognitivism.eventbrite.com/" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://cognitivism.<wbr></wbr>eventbrite.com/</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Schedule:</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">9:30-10 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Registration </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10-10:15 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Welcome and Introduction</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">10:15-11 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Prof. Ian Christie (Birkbeck) </span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">- </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Psychology in the dark: just what is it we want to know?</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">11-11:45 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Dr. William Brown (Roehampton) - </span><span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">He(u)retical Film Theory: Cinema and the Brain</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">11:45-12:30 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Prof. Sheena Rogers (James Mason U.) - </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Towards Transcendence: Cognitive Components of the Sublime in Art </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">12:30-1:30 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Lunch break</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">1:30-2:30 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>KEYNOTE: Prof. Torben Grodal (Copenhagen) - </span><span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Comic Entertainment, Film, and the Embodied Brain</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">2:30-3:15<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Dr. Paul Taberham (Kent-Canterbury) - </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Avant-Garde Film in an Evolutionary Context</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">3:15-4:00<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Prof. Murray Smith </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Kent-Canterbury) - </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Murder Ballads</span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4-4:15 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Coffee break</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: lime; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4:15-35<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> Steve Hinde (Bristol) - </span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: 1.15; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A Study of Attention while People Watch Movies</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">4:35-5<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Parag K. Mital (Goldsmiths) - </span><span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Resynthesizing Perception</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5-5:45<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Dr. Tim J. Smith (Birkbeck) - </span><span style="line-height: 17px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Cinematic Universality: Do I see the same movie you see?</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">5:45 - 6:30 <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Discussion</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">6:30 + <span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Wine reception</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 14px; white-space: normal;">For further information email </span><a href="mailto:tj.smith@bbk.ac.uk" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 14px; white-space: normal;">tj.smith@bbk.ac.uk</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 14px; white-space: normal;"> </span></span></div>
<br />Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-64324904117302360302013-10-01T22:26:00.001+00:002013-10-02T07:27:06.991+00:00Where’s Walter? How the finale of Breaking Bad used your eye movements to build suspense.<br />
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<b>Where’s Walter? How the finale of Breaking Bad used your eye
movements to build suspense.</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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By Dr. Tim J. Smith and Rebecca Nako<o:p></o:p></div>
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WARNING: If you are a fan of Breaking Bad and have not yet
watched the finale do not read on. Spoilers ahead!<o:p></o:p></div>
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So it is all over. The season finale of Breaking Bad has
been eagerly devoured by fans in America and across the world. We now know the
fate of the anti-hero, meth-cook extraordinaire, Walter White and the extended
group of characters both good and evil. The final episode is a masterful end to
an exceptionally crafted series that has always found the perfect balance of
intensity, humour and nuanced plot. It also serves as a wonderful demonstration
of how the loyal Breaking Bad viewers have often been complicit in the creation
of the tension. As Walt’s character develops across the series he becomes a
menacing figure who’s actions are less and less predictable. Unlike some of the
gangster characters he encounters (and usually defeats) he is not prone to
irrational outbursts or sudden violence.
Walt’s menace comes from his intellect and cool planning. We know his actions
are morally wrong but throughout the series we continue to empathise for Walt
and see the action <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/09/27/224437071/point-of-view-how-so-many-rooted-for-breaking-bads-walter-white">from
his perspective</a>, rooting for him to succeed. This is perfectly exemplified
in the season finale in which the action builds slowly to an ultra-violent
crescendo in which Walt’s ingenuity triumphs over those who have wronged him
and his family. The slow scenes that build to this climax show us how he first
gets his own back on the Schwartz’s, the couple who he believes profited off his early
ideas, Lydia, Walt’s meth distributor, and then says goodbye to his wife,
Skyler. Each scene is incredibly tense to watch but, unlike most mainstream TV
or Cinema the tension is created by the viewers, not typical cinematic devices.
The action is often framed in shots
that linger on the screen for an uncharacteristically long amount of time for
TV. Hidden within the shot, unbeknownst to either the viewer, the characters or
both, is the menacing figure of Walt. The director is creating tension by
playing a game of ‘Where’s Walter?’ with the viewer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For example, in the sequence in which Walt confronts Lydia,
Walt seems to appear from nowhere in the café after Todd, the new meth cook
arrives. Walt’s appearance behind Lydia and Todd shocks the audience but not
through a traditional use of sudden cut to close-up or dramatic change in accompanying
music. The shock comes from the viewer surprise that they didn’t notice
him in the scene earlier. However, if we look back at two earlier shots of the café,
Walt can clearly be seen sitting off to the side.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When we first watch this sequence our interest is in Lydia
and her conversation with Todd. Due to physiological limits in what we can
attend to and see at any one moment we have to choose where to fixate in the
scene. By predicting our interest in Lydia, the director (Vince Gilligan, the creator of the series) ensures that our eyes
linger near her and do not locate Walt in the periphery. There are many
techniques for influencing where people fixate in a film, as I have discussed
in length elsewhere <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/tim-smith/documents/9-Smith_psychocinematics_inpress.pdf">(Smith,
<i>Psychocinematics, </i>2013)</a> but one
of the strongest is <i>to make the viewer
want to look somewhere</i>. If the viewer is complicit in their choice of
fixation location they will be even more surprised when it is revealed that
they failed to see something. This is a technique of subtle misdirection that
magicians have used for centuries and we have recently shown can operate in
magic tricks even when visual cues are used to try and force the viewer to look
at the source of the trick <a href="http://www.perceptionweb.com/abstract.cgi?id=p7377">(Smith, Lamont, & Henderson, <i>Perception</i>, in press)</a>.
In this scene from Breaking Bad, the director uses this <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inattentional_blindness">inattentional
blindness</a></i> to play with the viewer and reward the active viewer who
discovers Walt before Lydia and Todd do. Along with this episodes <a href="http://jasongendler.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/breaking-bad-season-5-episode-16-felina.html">dense
use of back-references to earlier plot point</a>s, subtle character cues and symbols
(such as Jesse’s box), this game of hide-and-seek with Walt serves to reward
the committed viewer with a sense of discovery and enrichment of what will be
their final glimpse of this world. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
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The impact of this knowledge on how people watch this scene
is evident if you record their eye movements. Using a Tobii TX-60 eyetracker, I
recorded the eye movements of two participants watching the café scene. One
participant had never seen Breaking Bad before (Yes, I ruined the whole of
Breaking Bad for her by showing her the finale!). The other participant was an
avid fan who had already watched the finale the night before. If we visualise
their eye movements as red dots on top of the video (see below) we can see how
their eyes and their attention shift across the screen. Each red dot signifies
the location of the viewer’s gaze during one sample of the eyetracker (1/60<sup>th</sup>
of a second). When the gaze clusters together in one place their eyes are in a
fixation. When the gaze suddenly jumps to a new location they are performing a
saccade. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/WgwHf2gWTyU" width="420"></iframe>
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At the beginning of the clip we can see how both the
experienced (bottom video) and novice viewer (top video) track Lydia’s bag as
she drags it through the café and then saccade up to her body and face once she
sits down in the next shot. If we were to plot the two gaze patterns on top of each other we would see a striking degree of coordination between the two viewers. This synchronisation of attention across viewers is characteristic of how we watch most TV and film. Although we think we are highly idiosyncratic in how we watch a program most of the time the director is ensuring we all look in the same place at the same time as I demonstrated by eyetracking multiple viewers watching <i>There Will Be Blood</i> <a href="http://continuityboy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/guest-blog-on-davidbordwellnet.html">here</a> and <a href="http://continuityboy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/smooth-pursuit-on-bbc-breakfast.html">here</a>.<br />
<br />
After Lydia is seated at the table the camera then cuts across the table to reveal the
rest of the café to Lydia’s left. Immediately following the cut, the
experienced viewer saccades directly to Walt seated in the background. The
novice viewer only looks at that part of the frame once the waiter enters the
shot and blocks our view of Walt. After watching this clip the experienced
viewer stated that he had not known Walt was in this shot until watching the
scene during the experiment. His direct saccade to Walt suggests that knowing
Walt would appear in the scene at some point had primed his attention and made
it easier for him to find him earlier than the novice viewer.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The camera then cuts to Lydia and a series of close-ups of
her face and the Stevia sweetener which will later play a critical role in the
scene. We then cut back to a longer shot of the café in which Walt is now
lurking discretely. At this point both viewers saccade directly to him even though he hasn’t yet moved and the main
action is still taking place in the rear of the shot. Both viewers now know
Walt is present in the scene and about to approach Lydia and Todd who are still
unaware of this presence. This mismatch between what the viewer knows and what
the characters know creates tension about what will happen next.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An even more
impressive use of camera positioning to create tension occurs later in the
episode when we overhear a phone conversation between Skyler and her sister,
Marie. The sequence begins with a slow camera pan across Skyler’s new apartment
as the phone rings and the answerphone picks it up. We see Skyler smoking at
the kitchen table. Our view of the kitchen is complete except for a small patch
occluded by a column at screen centre (image above). The slow pan of the room
and this final long shot suggests that Walt is not in the scene. However, after
several cuts back and forth between Skyler and Marie as Marie informs Skyler of
Walt’s presence in town the viewer begins to get the impression that Walt may
be either coming for Skyler or already be hiding somewhere in the scene. After
Skyler hangs up, the camera cuts back to the earlier long shot and we again see
that the scene is empty. This belief is trashed as the camera slowly moves into
the scene and Walt is revealed behind the column. We were denied knowledge of Walt’s
presence in the scene by the director due to the clever choice of camera
position. The tension we feel after discovering Walt’s presence is due to the
mismatch between what we have known up until that point and what Skyler must
have known all along: Walt is present in the room. What will Walt do next and
why is Skyler hiding his presence from Marie? Our sudden awareness of Walt
creates a flurry of questions and an interest in how the scene develops.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1AeAhGmr-fWuUVray_cRVnSSWI2kEdHj4TS8WH_0g4WfhHSetNbPziDSwRvpXD2R286gkyXdewg64cRbQKpybGSGj9GP5g9Mi58xjAbLSP_TVuTLe_bG8gErxp0jQ24cxOwBtJg/s1600/Skyler2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1AeAhGmr-fWuUVray_cRVnSSWI2kEdHj4TS8WH_0g4WfhHSetNbPziDSwRvpXD2R286gkyXdewg64cRbQKpybGSGj9GP5g9Mi58xjAbLSP_TVuTLe_bG8gErxp0jQ24cxOwBtJg/s400/Skyler2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br /></div>
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Watching the eye movements of our two participants viewing
this scene reveals the strong influence knowledge of Walt’s presence has on our
experienced viewer’s eye movements. Both viewers begin the scene by saccading
around the apartment, fixating and tracking objects as they are revealed by the
panning camera. As soon as the column behind which Walt is hiding comes into
view the experienced viewer (bottom video) becomes obsessed with this boring
piece of architecture. His gaze dwells on the column and saccades around its
edges, trying to find some evidence of Walt. By comparison, the novice viewer saccades
directly to Skyler and focuses on the phone conversation.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/oQGv1Tu4ML0" width="420"></iframe>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>After the conversation finishes and the camera cuts back to
the long-shot (02:19) the experienced viewer immediately saccades to the column
and then saccades back-and-forth between the column and Skyler, waiting for
Walt’s reveal. The novice viewer glances briefly at the column but mostly
concentrates on Skyler. It is only once the camera begins moving in that her
attention to the column increases and finally peaks once she catches a glimpse
of Walt’s jacket sticking out behind the column. The novice viewer is actively
viewing the scene; trying to check that Walt isn’t present given the suspicion
Marie has just created but she can only see what is visibly present in front of
her. The experienced viewer perceives Walt behind the column in the very first
shot due to his memory from previously watching the scene. The experienced
viewer’s gaze interrogates the column seeking out confirmation of Walt’s
presence even though for the majority of the scene all you can see is a bland wood column.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These example scenes demonstrate how film and TV can create suspense
by withholding information from either the viewer (e.g. Walt’s presence in the
kitchen with Skyler), the characters (e.g. Lydia and Todd’s knowledge of Walt’s
presence in the café) or both. Often such suspense is created by not cutting to
a detail that we desperately want to see. However, such techniques can often
appear heavy handed and position the director at odds with the viewer. In the
scenes discussed above the director cleverly plays around with what the viewer
can and cannot see whilst always giving us the impression that we have access
to the full scene. This false belief makes Walt’s eventual reveal all the more
powerful. This is further evidence for why Breaking Bad was such exquisite TV.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
*If you are interested in seeing more examples of how our
expectations about a dynamic scene can influence where we look check out my
recent study published in <i><a href="http://www.perceptionweb.com/abstract.cgi?id=p7377">Perception</a>.</i> This
study used a simple <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rtos__8bg0">card
trick</a> to bias participant’s gaze towards one part of the screen whilst the
trick occurred in plain sight elsewhere on the screen. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBpUpXNW844">Eye tracking revealed</a>
that participants completely fail to look at the location of the trick during
the first viewing due to their own belief about what is relevant. During a
second viewing all participants <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SeKNe8xLgE">look in the right place</a>
and see how the trick worked. These findings (and the Breaking Bad examples
above) are completely at odds with most current theories of how attention is
guided in dynamic scenes which state that basic visual features such as motion
guide attention (see my article on the topic <a href="http://www.journalofvision.org/content/13/8/16.full">here</a>; Smith & Mital<i>, JoV</i>, 2013).<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
** CAVEAT: The two participants tested above may be extreme
examples of how a novice and experienced viewer might watch these sequences and
a full empirical study would require a larger sample of participants in each
group. Effects such as the bias of the experienced viewer’s gaze to the column are
unlikely to be absolute but may prove to be statistically significant if the
gaze was quantified across more
participants. The precision of the eyetracking, the synch of the audio during playback and the image quality is also not adequate for a full
empirical study (hence why the gaze sometimes seems to be offset from objects
in the scene). However, this quick and dirty demonstration allows us to quickly
analyse the scenes whilst the episode is still fresh in people’s minds.<o:p></o:p></div>
Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-6904228414332821492013-07-17T09:55:00.001+00:002013-07-17T09:55:07.581+00:00Melbourne's Eye Tracking and Moving Image Research GroupThe application of eye tracking technology to questions of moving image spectatorship has risen in popularity over the last couple of years. Aided by the dropping cost of eyetracking hardware and the ease of use of presentation and analysis software eyetracking is becoming practical for researchers across a broad range of disciplines.<br />
<br />
For example, the recently formed <a href="http://cstonline.tv/sherlockian-eyes">Eye Tracking and Moving Image Research Group</a> lead by Sean Redmond and Jodi Sita in Melbourne has two central goals:<br />
<br />
" bringing the group together; we wanted to utilise eye tracking technology more centrally in the analysis and examination of the moving image; and we wanted to draw together scholars and practitioners from the Sciences, and the (Creative) Arts and Humanities so that different modes of enquiry and theoretical and methodological apparatus were placed in the same analytical arena."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://cms.cstonline.tv/resizeimage.php?width=350&height=222&image=http://cdn.cstonline.tv/assets/image/user_94/Eyes%20searching%20for%20narrative%20information%20Crop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="http://cms.cstonline.tv/resizeimage.php?width=350&height=222&image=http://cdn.cstonline.tv/assets/image/user_94/Eyes%20searching%20for%20narrative%20information%20Crop.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
I very much welcome groups like this and hope their research proves fruitful and informative. Only by spreading the research questions across a broad range of researchers can we hope to tackle the complex questions of spectatorship and by sharing research methods/techniques we can avoid each of us reinventing the 'eyetracking and film' wheel. To that end I hope my recent publications on the topic can serve as a useful starting point for researchers beginning to apply eye tracking to these questions:<br />
<br />
<ul style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19.5px; list-style-type: square; margin: 0px 0px 0px 3em; padding: 0px;" type="disc">
<li style="line-height: 1.75em; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><strong>Smith, T. J.</strong><strong> </strong>(2013) Watching you watch movies: Using eye tracking to inform cognitive film theory. In A. P. Shimamura (Ed.),<i>Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies</i>. New York: Oxford University Press. (<a class="internal-link" href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/tim-smith/documents/9-Smith_psychocinematics_inpress.pdf" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #313a57; text-decoration: none;">pdf</a>)</li>
<li style="line-height: 1.75em; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px;"><strong>Smith, T. J. </strong>(2012) The Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity, <i>Projections: The Journal for Movies and the Mind. 6(1), </i>1-27. (<a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/tim-smith/documents/ATOCC_timjsmith_final_plusrefs_plusfigs.pdf">pdf</a>)<i><i></i></i></li>
</ul>
<br />Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-4085894804845177852013-06-06T10:01:00.000+00:002013-06-06T10:01:25.205+00:00Reaction videos capture the heart (and twisted soul) of Film/TVVideos of viewer reactions to film and TV have been cropping up on Youtube for several years and I have always been fascinated with how they capture what, for me is the heart of the the cinematic experience: the power to manipulate our minds and emotions. Watching a grown adult shriek, cry, and laugh in response to artificial patterns of light and sound on a screen demonstrates the power film and TV have over us and why we seek it out as a source of entertainment, escapism, and emotion that in everyday life would be considered too extreme or dangerous.<br />
<br />
I've been meaning to post on this topic for a while but had to act this week in response to the TV event that was the Game Of Thrones 'Red Wedding' (series 3, episode 9). For fans of the books, the events of this episode came as no surprise as they had already been traumatised by the shocking and brutal events when reading the third book in the series, 'The Storm of Swords'. <b>*spoilers* </b>For the fans of the TV series, subtle manipulation of plot events and characters by the producers of the series meant that fans of the show had no way of knowing the duplicitous nature of Walder Frey and what was about to happen in the episode. As the Stark's celebrate the wedding of Edmure Tully to one of Walder Frey's daughters they are brutally slaughtered by the Frey's and the Bolton's, swarn bannermen of the Starks who have secretly made an allegiance with their enemies, the Lannisters. Three of the main characters of the series are brutally killed in a matter of minutes: Robb Stark (the King In the North), his mother, Catelyn and Robb's new bride, Talisa who was pregnant with their first child. The brutality and graphic nature of the murders is shocking even to readers of the books who knew what was going to happen. For viewers of the series without prior knowledge of the events, the murders were..... well judge for yourself <b>*end of spoilers*</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b><br /></b>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/78juOpTM3tE" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
The facial reactions, gasps, screams, and comments directed to the screen and to the person filming (who had obviously read the books and knew what was going to happen, filming their friend's/partner's/parent's reactions with sadistic glee) show how involved they are in the series and the characters. For a brief moment at least, they are as moved by the deaths of these fictitious characters as they are to the news of a friend's death. Emotionally, they are across the fourth wall.<br />
<br />
Some other classic reaction videos are the reaction of children to the reveal at the end of Empire Strikes Back that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father:<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ZbV5hn_ET0U" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
Not surprisingly most of the videos that are used to elicit these shocking reactions are either horrific, shocking, pornographic or sometimes all three at the same time. This brings me to the reaction videos that started the whole craze: People's reactions to '2 Girls 1 Cup'. I'm not going to say anything about the original video as it is too vile to mention but there are several reaction videos on-line from which you can infer the general events of the stimulus. Here are selection:<br />
<br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_SsUTLAhbWE" width="420"></iframe>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/_MsJgcOUs7o" width="420"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
The whole gamut of human emotions are right there in those videos.Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-64982255855740784232013-03-21T10:52:00.004+00:002013-03-21T10:52:59.735+00:00Film reflected in the human eye<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="375" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/58101686" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br />
<br />
Simply beautiful!<br />
<br />
I could spend days watching the human eye move in response to film.....Oh, that's right, I do!Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-52905794282227410662013-03-08T12:38:00.003+00:002013-03-08T12:38:44.595+00:00Park Chan-Wook on crosscutting<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/10/14/1255538931533/park-chan-wook-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/10/14/1255538931533/park-chan-wook-001.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Interesting interview with <b>Park Chan-Wook</b> about STOKER on <a href="http://www.aintitcool.com/node/61340">aintitcoolnews.com</a>. here are some excerpts on his distinctive visual style.<br />
<br />
"But it's not always the case that you can explain everything with words. For instance, "Why do I want to use the color red here? Why do I want the camera to move forward here?" Sometimes I make those decisions because I just feel that that would be the best thing to do here. But after I'm finished making the film and watch it later on, I realize why I made those choices. Take the crosscut for instance. I always thought that decision made no sense because of some musical explanation or reason. That is to say, there is a rhythm to the way scenes are crosscut, and I just like the rhythmic nature of using crosscut. However, later I realized, having seen the film again, what I really wanted to express by using these crosscuts is the concept of fate. In other words, crosscut mixes different individuals' past and present, reality and fantasy. Crosscutting is an effective way to weave these together, and the result that I was looking for in doing so is saying, "It is all a fabric, part of a bigger fate."<br />
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Discussing a beautiful transition between Nicole Kidman's hair and a field of grass:<br />
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"That particular transition didn't really take much in the way of deliberation. It's something that easily came out, so much so that I can't even remember the thought process that brought me there. It was almost instinctive. All throughout the film, I decided to use crosscutting technique. Once I decided on that, I promised myself that I will have one principle that I will abide by, and t<b>hat principal was each shot, and how they move on to the next - whether the cuts would crash or whether the cuts would continue on smoothly - how each shot transitions into the other shot in these crosscut sequences, it needs to be something very well designed.</b> So I applied many techniques to achieve this, be it match cut, dissolve, what have you. It's born out this base principle. But I did think that this particular transition was particularly important because it was a transition from a mother moment going into a father moment."<br />
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STOKER is an audiovisual masterpiece that perfectly continues Chan-Wook's style into Hollywood. At times the aloofness of the characters, lack of explanation and depth of character can make it seem cold and distancing but I personally marvelled in the film's style and this more than made up for its problems of pacing and failure to thrill (which is ironic considering how Hitchockian it feels!).<br />
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The style is opitimised by this wonderful trailer recut to DJ Shadow<br />
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<br />Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-24381100072075308042013-01-31T15:21:00.004+00:002013-01-31T15:21:53.397+00:00Using Superpowers in Virtual Reality to Encourage Prosocial Behavior<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/wnQgDsdy7zg" width="560"></iframe><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">From <a href="http://news.discovery.com/tech/gear-and-gadgets/virtual-superheroes-more-heroic-real-life-130130.htm">DiscoveryNews</a></span><br />
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After their VR experience, participants were taken out of their head-mounted-display masks and asked to have a seat. While the experimenter fumbled with the VR equipment, she “accidentally” knocked over a cup of 15 pens sitting on a table near the participant’s chair.</div>
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Researchers found that participants who experienced the power of flight in virtual reality were not only quicker to help pick up the pens than their helicopter-riding counterparts, they also picked up more pens. Of the six participants that didn’t help, all were in the helicopter condition. The task of ‘helping the diabetic child’ showed no main effect; only the superpower of flight did."</div>
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This is a very nice controlled, empirical design that for once discusses the positive potential of playing computer games.</div>
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Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-33274646237784339812013-01-28T12:36:00.003+00:002013-01-28T12:36:56.932+00:00Walter Murch on the collaborative creation of continuity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"Your job [as an editor] is to anticipate, partly to control the thought processes of the audience. To give them what they want and/or what they need just before they have to "ask" for it- to be surprising yet self-evident at the same time. If you are too far behind or ahead of them, you create problems, but if you are right with them, leading them ever so slightly, the flow of events feels natural and exciting at the same time." </div>
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Walter Murch, In the Blink of an Eye (2001; 2nd edition; page 69)</div>
<br />Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-51691420348579175282013-01-25T12:42:00.002+00:002013-01-25T12:42:51.664+00:00Steven Spielberg on attentional synchrony<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Tom Shone interviewing Steven Spielberg about Lincoln in Sunday Times Culture magazine 20/01/13</div>
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"He still goes to see movies - picks an out-of-the-way cinema, sneaks in with his wife or kids after the lights have gone down, then disappears again as the credits roll. He always takes an aisle seat and buys no food or drinks for himself. He's just there for the film, or, more specifically, the film and its audience. He loves feeling the heat rise in the cinema during an especially exciting action sequence, or after a gag has rocked everyone back in their seat.</div>
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Spielberg- "You walk into an air-conditioned, freezing theatre and, about 20 minutes in, it starts to get really hot. People start making noise and having a good time. You're lifted by it. The first thing that happens is, people stop eating. They even stop swallowing."</div>
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At this point, the third-person plural drops away. "<b>And all of us go into a kind of lock step where, if we were watching a tennis match, you'd see that perfect synchronicity of heads going left-right, left-right. The same thing in a movie theatre, when the movie is working and the audience is galvanised, almost hypnotised, all watching the same things, all knowing where to look at the exact same time...it's a wonderful thing. There is nothing greater than that.</b>"</div>
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<a href="http://vimeo.com/13940654">sport wimbledon baltacha 1280x704 web</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/visualcognition">TheDIEMProject</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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<br />Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-42616236260645493452013-01-14T14:57:00.001+00:002013-01-15T19:15:25.367+00:001+3 yr MRC PhD studentship on Autism, home eyetracking and cultural differences (Japan/UK) available<script src="http://player.ooyala.com/iframe.js#pbid=dcc84e41db014454b08662a766057e2b&ec=Bvcng0ODoBlhj1YXx5s8ZS8Qa5WGCx0l"></script>
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I am very pleased to be able to announce that Dr Atsushi Senju and myself have a fully funded PhD studentship starting October 2013. Details below.<br />
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The project will be utilising similar home eyetracking technology to that recently demonstrated by Tobii at CES. See the video above for a sneak peek.<br />
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We are pleased to offer a full 1+3 year MRC Industry CASE PhD studentship entitled "Going Global: Application of Portable Eye-tracking Technology to Study the Effect of Cultural Norms on the Development of Social Cognition". The studentship will be based at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London, and be conducted in conjunction with Acuity ETS Limited & the Institute of Psychiatry. The studentship will cover course fees at the usual level for UK and EU studentships and a stipend in accord with research council rates.</div>
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Much of what we currently know about the developmental disorders comes from Western cultures, and few multicultural studies have been conducted. A major barrier is that the equipment for neurocognitive assessment is often expensive, heavy and requires dedicated lab space, which prevents the assessments being practicable to run in many countries, areas and communities. To overcome this challenge, we will develop a software suite with a portable and affordable eye-tracker, and use it to conduct a series of cross-cultural eye-tracking studies on social cognition in typically developing children and children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The successful PhD candidate will take a leading role in this project, including (1) identifying a suitable eye-tracker, developing a software suite, and testing it in the UK, (2) taking this eye-tracker suite to Japan and running the same experiment with Japanese children, and (3) testing children with ASD in both the UK and Japan.</div>
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Graduates in experimental psychology or related subjects with a good first degree are encouraged to apply. Experience in some of the relevant research areas and/or methodology (e.g. developmental psychology, autism research, eye-tracking methodology, software development) will be an advantage. Programming experience (e.g. Matlab, Java, C++) or willingness to learn is an advantage. We also expect the candidates to have a high motivation and enthusiasm to the project, good communication and person skills.</div>
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The student will receive four year training (1-year MSc and 3-year PhD) in theoretical, methodological, practical and commercial aspects of eye-tracking system. Both the academic supervisors (Dr Atsushi Senju and Dr Tim Smith) have strong track record in eye-tracking research, which will complement the industrial supervisor (Mr Scott Hodgins) from dedicated developers and distributors of eye-tracking system and from the clinical perspective (Prof. Tony Charman). Academic supervisors will also provide training of theoretical background in developmental cognitive neuroscience, autism research and cross-cultural study, development of original research design, programming of stimulus presentation and data acquisition, data recording from infants, children and clinical population, data analyses, and writing-up scientific papers and dissemination to non-academic user communities. The industry supervisor will train the student on the theory & use of eye-tracking in the first instance, and supervise the development of cognitive assessment software suite and the integration of the software suite to the portable eye-tracker.</div>
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The Centre for Brain & Cognitive Development (CBCD) at Birkbeck, University of London, has an outstanding track record in training phd students. Our excellence in training has just been rewarded with the designation “Marie Curie Centre of Excellence for doctoral training” which places us in the top 5% of life science training centres in the EU. Further, our national training record is reflected in the recent award of the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher Education 2005 for “Neuropsychological work with the very young”. Acuity ETS is the leading independent eyetracking systems vendor in the world. Acuity is the biggest customer of two of the leading eyetracking manufacturers. Acuity actively strives to encourage collaboration between clients, and to share best practice across the client base.</div>
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Further details about the project may be obtained from:</div>
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Dr Atsushi Senju <a .senju=".senju" bbk.ac.uk="bbk.ac.uk" href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=12099105"></a></div>
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Dr Tim Smith <tj .smith=".smith" bbk.ac.uk="bbk.ac.uk"></tj></div>
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Further information about PhDs at Birkbeck, University of London is available from:</div>
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<a class="external-link" href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/phd/psychology/RRRPSYCH.html" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #496082; text-decoration: initial;">http://www.bbk.ac.uk/study/phd/psychology/RRRPSYCH.html</a></div>
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Application forms and details about how to apply are available from:</div>
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<a class="external-link" href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/prospective/" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: dotted; border-bottom-width: 1px; color: #496082; text-decoration: initial;">http://www.bbk.ac.uk/prospective/</a></div>
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Francesca Carter (f.gumbs@bbk.ac.uk)</div>
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Candidates must supply a CV, full transcripts of their qualifications and a statement of no more than 500 words indicating what skills and academic and professional experience you can bring to this project and why you consider you would be the best person to undertake this research. If possible, this should include evidence of your knowledge of the relevant literature in the field.</div>
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The deadline of application is 1 March 2013. Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed in late March.</div>
Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-65310370307803340782012-12-20T20:13:00.001+00:002012-12-20T20:13:53.718+00:00The vision science of 48fps<br />
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Given the recent release of Peter Jackson's <i>The Hobbit</i> in High Frame Rate (HFR) 3D there has been a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of moving from the entrenched 24fps to 48fps (or even the 60fps proposed by James Cameron). I recently weighed in on the vision science behind the perception of higher frame rates for Tested here:<br />
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<a href="http://www.tested.com/art/movies/452387-48-fps-and-beyond-how-high-frame-rates-affect-perception/">http://www.tested.com/art/movies/452387-48-fps-and-beyond-how-high-frame-rates-affect-perception/</a><br />
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The article is a nice summary of the topics the journalist and I discussed but his personal dislike for HFR overshadows several of my points about why I think the move to 48fps or higher is necessary and will become the standard in cinema. To understand the problems with the current 24fps filming and projection process you need to understand how we are able to see a rapidly presented series of still images as a continuous moving sequence. Here is a passage from an encyclopaedia entry I wrote on film perception a few years ago:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">Smith, T.J. (2010) Film (Cinema) Perception. </span><a href="http://www.psy.ed.ac.uk/people/tsmith2/pdfs/Film_Cinema_timjsmith_preprint.pdf" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) !important; border-bottom-style: solid !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; color: rgb(67, 105, 118) !important; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px; text-decoration: initial !important;"><img alt="PDF icon" src="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/tim-smith/resolveuid/d42e9903c378368d996bb45ee2a87a38" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;"> In E.B. Goldstein (ed.)</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;"></i><a href="http://www.uk.sagepub.com/books/Book229708" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204) !important; border-bottom-style: solid !important; border-bottom-width: 1px !important; color: rgb(67, 105, 118) !important; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px; text-decoration: initial !important;"><i>The Sage Encyclopedia of Perception</i></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">.</span><br />
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<i><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">"</span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 22.75px;">Movies consist of a series of still images, known as frames projected on to a screen </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">at a rate of 24 frames per second. Even though the frames are stationary on the screen and </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 22.75px;">are momentarily blanked as a new frame replaces the old we experience film as a </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">continuous image containing real motion. The two perceptual phenomena contributing to </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">this experience are persistence of vision and apparent motion. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">Persistence of vision refers to the continued activation of visual neurons after visual </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">stimulation has been removed. During film projection the light is obscured as the frame is </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">changed. If this only happened 24 times a second (Hz) there would be a noticeable </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">flicker. To avoid this flicker each frame is blanked three times by a shutter. This creates a </span></i><i style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 22.75px;">presentation rate above the critical flicker fusion rate of 60Hz. Above this rate persistence </i><i style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 22.75px;">of vision ensures that the blank is masked by continued activation of visual neurons and </i><i style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 22.75px;">we perceive the projected image as continuous.</i><br />
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<i><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 22.75px;">The motion we perceive in film is apparent because it is based on static visual </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">information not real motion. It is commonly believed that the apparent motion perceived </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">in films is beta movement. Beta movement is perceived when a simple object such as a </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">line is alternately presented at two different locations around 10 times a second. The two </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">lines are perceived as a single line moving smoothly between the two locations. Due to </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">the slow rate of presentation and the large distances covered, long-range apparent </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">motions such as beta movement are thought to be processed late in the visual system and </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">require inferences based on knowledge of real motion and the most likely </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">correspondences between objects in the image sequence.</span></i><br />
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<i><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 22.75px;">Beta movement, along with other long-range motion phenomena such as apparent </span></span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">rotations and transformations may occur during film perception but they cannot account </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">for the majority of motion perceived in film. The 24Hz presentation rate used in film is </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">too fast for long-range motion and film frames are too complex, making the task of </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">identifying corresponding objects in subsequent frames very difficult. Instead, apparent </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">motion in film is due to the same short-range motion system used to detect real motion. </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">Motion detectors in the early visual system respond in the same way to the retinal </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">stimulation caused by real motion and by rapidly presented (>13Hz) static images that </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">depict only slight differences in object location. This processing occurs very early in our </span><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;">visual system and does not require perceptual inferences. The directness with which film </span></i><span style="color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 22.75px;"><i>is processed results in an experience of motion that is indiscernible from real-motion.</i>"</span><br />
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As you can see there are two processes involved that allow us to see a series of frames as motion: persistence of vision and apparent motion. Frames need to alternate faster than ~60 times per second (i.e. Hz) if we are going to perceive constant luminance, i.e. not perceive a flicker. Old film projectors reached this threshold by using a shutter to present each frame twice (=48Hz) or three times (=72Hz). Modern digital projectors don't have a shutter as the images is constantly present and doesn't need to accommodate the next frame being registered in front of the lens so instead they present each frame 3 times ("triple flash"=72Hz). This is sufficient to remove the flicker but when we move to stereoscopic 3D digital projection we encounter a problem with the amount of light presented during each frame. Most 3D projectors (such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealD_Cinema">RealD</a>) alternate the left/right eye images, with each being presented at 24fps (24fps x 2 eyes = 48Hz). Each of these left or right images are subsequently flashed 3 times creating a total flicker rate for stereo 3D movie of 144Hz (72Hz per eye)! This ensures that we don't see the flicker in either eye even though they are alternately blind to the image.<br />
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Unfortunately, due to the radial polarisation needed to ensure only the left image is seen by the left eye and the right image by the right eye the amount of light reaching the viewer's eyes is significantly less than a traditional 2D presentation. This creates a murkier image and makes it harder to perceive apparent motion as our eyes cannot create the correspondence between moving objects in each frame. This problem is exaggerated by the film being photographed at 24fps per eye. Moments of high camera or object motion create motion blur in the image as the camera's shutter is open too long. This motion blur makes the edges of objects hard to locate and decreases our perception of apparent motion, making the image appear to jump across the screen instead of flowing smoothly. Given that this motion stuttering is happening alternately between the two eyes it makes it difficult for our visual system to fuse the 3D image, resulting in a loss of depth perception and eye strain.<br />
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The solution to both problems of light loss and motion stutter in a stereo 3D movie is to increase the frame rate. I'm not sure whether the new HFR/48fps projectors use a double or triple flash but whichever they use the rate of presentation per eye will exceed the critical flicker fusion rate (double flash = 96 Hz; triple = 144Hz per eye). Because each frame is a sharper image with less motion blur the left and right images registered by our eyes will be brighter, clearer and easier to fuse in depth to perceive 3D. Camera and object motion will be clearer as we are better able to perceive apparent motion between the crisper edges of objects and the overall effect should be less cognitive load on the viewer and less eye strain.<br />
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The bizarre irony of Peter Jackson's decision to move to 48fps in an attempt to get 3D cinema closer to reality is that it has revealed the artificiality of the Hobbit. As I say in the<a href="http://www.tested.com/art/movies/452387-48-fps-and-beyond-how-high-frame-rates-affect-perception/"> Tested article</a>, like the move from SD to HD the increased in information on the screen makes the imperfections of the image easier to see. The move to 48fps may not be increasing the spatial resolution of the image but by increasing the temporal resolution (i.e. frame rate) it makes each pixel easier to see and each face prosthetic and matte backdrop easier to notice. Suspension of disbelief is harder in the quiet sequences at the beginning of the Hobbit and it is only when the action picks up in the final act when the higher frame rate and 3D really gel. Many reviewers have reported growing used to the 48fps as the movie progresses and have noted that the chase sequences at the end of the movie are easier to see, more fluid and result in less eyestrain than typically experienced in 3D movies. It is only when Jackson presents a combination of filmed live-action, sets and digital characters or backdrops together on the screen at the same time and gives the viewer time to interrogate the image that viewers seem to have issue with the higher frame rate. We would only really know the impact of the 48fps on filmgoer experience by performing a controlled psychological test on audiences. Viewers would have to be naive to which frame rate presentation they were seeing and various aspects of their experience of the film monitored. Only then could we see if it actually had an impact on their experience without any pre-existing bias against it or resistance to new technologies getting in the way.<br />
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Personally I believe the creative potentials of stereo 3D is massive and only starting to be tapped with movies like Scorsese's <i>Hugo</i> and (apparently, although I'm yet to see if) Ang Lee's <i>Life of Pi. </i>If higher frame rates encourage more filmmakers to experiment with 3D without having to worry about viewer eye strain and discomfort I think it is a great step forward.<br />
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p.s. Merry Christmas :)Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-40814849416171491462012-12-11T20:49:00.002+00:002012-12-11T20:49:29.094+00:00Sight & Sound video essayKevin B. Lee (@alsolifelike) posted a video essay for Sight & Sound on the evolution of Paul Thomas Anderson's steadicam work which discusses my eyetracking work on There Will Be Blood and the DIEM project <a href="http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/video-steadicam-progress-career-paul-thomas-anderson-five">here</a>. You can view the video here:<br />
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GGI5mVH6pg&feature=player_embedded">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GGI5mVH6pg&feature=player_embedded</a><br />
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The video essay discusses the careful use of staging and choreography to introduce the viewer to spaces and characters critical to several of Anderson's films including Hard Eight and Boogie Nights. The use of steadicam in all of these sequences varies from the bravura long and complex sequences of Boogie Nights and Magnolia to subtle uses in There Will be Blood and Punchdrunk Love. This analysis reveals the many ways in which steadicam can create affinity or conflict between what the viewer wants to see and how the camera moves relative to the characters in the scene. This affinity was clearly demonstrated in my analysis of the eye movement behaviour during the table-top sequence of There Will be Blood (as posted on David Bordwell's blog <a href="http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2011/02/14/watching-you-watch-there-will-be-blood/">here</a>). By choreographing the camera moves to natural attentional cues such as dialogue switches, character movements and the introduction of characters in from the side of the frame the filmmaker can make a reliable prediction about where most viewers are likely to be attending.<br />
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As discussed in the video essay, eyetracking film viewers gives us a direct line to the viewer experience of a film and can be used to validate filmmaker intentions for such sequences. It also provides us with ways to test hypotheses about how production decisions can influence the resulting viewer experience. With the decreasing cost of steadicam equipment and digital production in general the use of such techniques is becoming more and more common. But what this video essay, and my eyetracking research shows is that such sequences will result in viewer disorientation and confusion unless they are carefully designed with viewer sequential attention in mind. For example, our recent paper in Journal of Vision (<a href="http://www.journalofvision.org/content/12/13/3.full">http://www.journalofvision.org/content/12/13/3.full</a>) shows how viewer attention can be altered for the same sequence of close-up shots just by excluding audio. I have recently reviewed the influence of such factors and compositional decisions in general in a journal article and book chapter:<br />
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<strong style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">Smith, T. J.</strong><strong style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;"> </strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">(in press) Watching you watch movies: Using eye tracking to inform cognitive film theory. In A. P. Shimamura (Ed.),</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">Psychocinematics: Exploring Cognition at the Movies</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">. New York: Oxford University Press.</span><br />
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<strong style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">Smith, T. J. </strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">(2012) The Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">Projections: The Journal for Movies and the Mind. 6(1), </i><span style="background-color: white; color: #3d3d3d; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 22.75px;">1-27. (<a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/tim-smith/documents/ATOCC_timjsmith_final_plusrefs_plusfigs.pdf">pdf</a>)</span><br />
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There have been very few empirical studies looking specifically at the influence of steadicam shots on gaze behaviour but one recent study by Wang and colleagues (<a href="http://www.journalofvision.org/content/12/1/16.full">http://www.journalofvision.org/content/12/1/16.full</a>) showed how powerful such shots could be for creating similarity in gaze across viewers. Using long steadicam clips from Russian Ark and Children of Men, the authors showed that introducing cuts and scrambling the order of frames within the steadicam sequences disrupted gaze behaviour but the control of each shot over viewer attention was so strong that viewers were able to very quickly reorient to the disordered sequences and re-attend to the centre of interest. This study shows that by using a carefully choreographed steadicam shot, the director can give the viewer the illusion of freedom to roam a continuous shot whilst actually constraining where they look when, creating continuity of attention within the frame and across viewers.<br />
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<br />Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-11283385650324120902012-10-16T08:27:00.000+00:002012-10-17T09:56:22.684+00:00Guest post: Camera Views of Candidates’ Debates Could Play Key Role in Winning Style<br />
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This week our blog hosts a guest post from <a href="http://www.k-state.edu/psych/research/loschky_lester.htm">Lester Loschky</a> (Cognitive Psychologist) on the recent US presidential and VP debates and how subtle directorial decisions may impact our impressions of the candidates. (Tim J. Smith)</div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><b>Camera Views of Candidates’ Debates Could Play Key Role in Winning Style</b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">by Lester Loschky</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I will make a claim that many people may
find counter-intuitive: The camera views of the US Presidential candidates in
their debates could prove important in determining who “wins” those
debates. But before you close your
browser window on this seemingly crazy idea, read on, and see if you don’t find
it more persuasive. There is a lot of
research, and a lot of punditry that backs it up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Those following the current US Presidential
election campaign know that the impact of the Presidential debates has assumed
a greater importance than any in recent memory.
<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-romneys-presidential-debate-poll-20121008,0,3488366.story">President
Obama’s poor performance relative to Governor Mitt Romney in their first debate
apparently led to his losing a commanding 5 point lead in the general election
polls in the period of a week</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">In addition, most of the commentary on that
debate has shown that it was particularly the “style” of each of the candidates
that was particularly important. The <a href="http://blog.nj.com/njv_john_farmer/2012/10/farmer_no_debate_over_the_impo.html">importance
of style</a> is consistent with what has been said about other important US
Presidential debates of the past. For
example <a href="http://interactives.kxan.com/photomojo/gallery/4560/1/top-presidential-debate-moments/1960-nixon-sweats-in-the-spotlight/">Richard
Nixon’s sweating</a> and five o’clock shadow compared to JFK’s cool demeanor in
the 1960 debates, and <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/12-cringe-worthy-debate-moments/story?id=17367100#.UHxWmIUWXSQ">Al
Gore’s superior seeming sighs</a> compared to W’s folksy manner, have both been
credited with influencing the outcomes of their respective elections. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I would like to point to one particular
point of style that was very apparent in the first Obama/Romney debate—namely
eye contact with the camera. <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/03/barack-obama-keeps-mitt-romney-on-defensive-in-first-presidential-debate.html">Howard
Kurtz noted</a> “stylistically, Romney came on strong, showing a confident
command of facts and figures even as he tried to moderate or distance himself
from some of his proposals. <i>He also made
direct eye contact with the camera while Obama often seemed to be looking down</i>
[emphasis added], never adjusting his intensity and acting like he was at a
garden-variety news conference” <span class="bylinebyline-style-a">(</span><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/contributors/howard-kurtz.html">Howard
Kurtz, </a>Oct 3, 2012 10:35 PM EDT). Thus, Obama’s lack of eye contact with the
camera during his debate may have been a factor is his losing of the debate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Importantly, this issue also came up in the
Vice Presidential debate between Vice President Biden and Congressman
Ryan. However, in that debate, it can be
argued that it was due to the ABC Debate Director’s decision as to which views
of each candidate to show to the TV audience.
Specifically, the camera views in the Biden versus Ryan debate Closing
Statements favored Ryan. Biden was shown
looking at the wrong camera for the entire 1:19 of his final remarks but Ryan
was show looking at the right one (see the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mihHYVw7jc">Youtube embedded video clip</a> below and a couple of screen captures from
the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/videogallery/72852327/News/Biden-Ryan-Final-debate-statements" target="_blank">c</a>lip). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Qs3rI9u4Z1HvWx-36m9QdlmF-n60OIlogwzIgHBQaAe-DDaEFVKd-nh-ng70mCPQIMYQfFZgyPJd7sUZqcVGR8xDw14notR9hp_xiiZ9Y0fV4i-OsFTT0ZhhtPeig5bdQKvE6Q/s1600/debate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6Qs3rI9u4Z1HvWx-36m9QdlmF-n60OIlogwzIgHBQaAe-DDaEFVKd-nh-ng70mCPQIMYQfFZgyPJd7sUZqcVGR8xDw14notR9hp_xiiZ9Y0fV4i-OsFTT0ZhhtPeig5bdQKvE6Q/s640/debate.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">This is odd, because there is a red light
on the camera you are supposed to look at, and Biden must know this very
well. So why was Biden looking at the
wrong camera? It seems implausible that
Biden could not see the red light on the camera he was supposed to look at, or
that he intentionally looked at the wrong camera, or he chose to address his comments to the chair of the debate. Most importantly, the ABC Debate Director in
the control room was the person who ultimately chose how Biden
was presented to the national TV audience.
If it was argued to have been due to a lapse of attention by the
Director, and the person below the Director who was in charge of pressing the
button that selects the camera view to show the TV audience, then it was an
extremely long lapse of attention, since the camera shot on Biden lasted for 79
seconds (i.e., 1:19), at the single most important (final) portion of the
debate. However, we can assume that the
Director of the debate in the control room was a consummate professional, since
s/he was chosen as Director for this very high stakes debate. Thus, we can also assume that it was not a
simple mistake due to a lapse of attention. This means that it had to have been a
conscious decision. If so, it is a big
problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Specifically, research has shown that <a href="http://pss.sagepub.com/content/16/3/236.short" target="_blank">failure to
make <span class="il">eye</span> <span class="il">contact</span> reduces the
likeability of a person</a> (Mason, Tatkow et al. 2005), and <a href="http://www.amsciepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/07.11.21.28.PR0.110.2.663-676" target="_blank">makes a speaker less persuasive</a> (Yokoyama & Daibo,
2012). Thus, the Debate Director's choice of camera view for Biden's
closing statement made him less likeable and persuasive (he wouldn't look you
in the eyes), and made Ryan more likeable and persuasive (he looked you in the
eyes). Again, assuming this was not a
simple mistake, for the reasons give above, put it into the realm of a “plausibly
deniable” political “dirty trick” of the sort that Richard Nixon’s staff was
famous for in the Watergate scandal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Of course, one could argue that the camera
view choice was a small thing, for only 1:19 of the Vice Presidential debate,
which common wisdom says will not change the course of an election. The counter argument to that is that the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/11/usa-campaign-idUSL1E8LAFBO20121011?type=marketsNews">V.P.
debate was argued to be critical in determining the momentum of the
Presidential election campaign</a>, and that the Closing Statement is the last
thing that viewers see in the debate, and should therefore be most memorable. This is based on the extremely well-known
phenomenon of the <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1977-12065-001">“recency
effect” which research has shown also affects long-term memory for things such
as memory for US presidents</a> (e.g., name all the US presidents you can
remember in reverse chronological memory—most people’s memory is best for the
most recent Presidents)(Roediger & Crowder, 1976). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">More importantly, what if the same
"mistake" happens tonight in President Obama's or Governor Romney’s closing
statement? These simple directorial
decisions may impact our perception of each candidate in subtle ways that
cumulatively effect our overall confidence in them and their politics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Lester Loschky<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Cognitive Psychologist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-37603246110901735172012-04-13T08:55:00.002+00:002012-04-13T09:01:43.907+00:00UCLA Visual Narrative workshop 20-22nd June 2012<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoQeeXIphEtyB6fRiUeJUf-pRqv3ey9EGRABsRGGu0zbXV-OckbBIZjgBzJwh0HgbMpBttz6MowWmnk_cyUOwHsf4kksatW0d1UAzjPco8Z74qbYuqXp4AzeLKiiZ48uqgw6AdZg/s1600/visnarr.gif"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 178px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoQeeXIphEtyB6fRiUeJUf-pRqv3ey9EGRABsRGGu0zbXV-OckbBIZjgBzJwh0HgbMpBttz6MowWmnk_cyUOwHsf4kksatW0d1UAzjPco8Z74qbYuqXp4AzeLKiiZ48uqgw6AdZg/s400/visnarr.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730807887014643362" /></a><br />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).<div><br /></div><div>Register now at the workshop website:<div><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA"><a href="http://gjgreenberg.bol.ucla.edu/visnar/" target="_blank">http://gjgreenberg.bol.ucla.edu/visnar/</a></span><div><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB;mso-bidi-language:AR-SA"><!--[endif]--></span></div></div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-7770846633618147632012-04-10T10:47:00.002+00:002012-04-10T11:01:39.384+00:00Real|Reel article<a href="http://realreeljournal.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/gorillas1.gif?w=710" style="font-weight: normal; "><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 200px;" src="http://realreeljournal.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/gorillas1.gif?w=710" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><div style="font-weight: normal; "><br /></div>Chloe Penman (@ideaswithlegs) has written a summary of a presentation I gave at <a href="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/vision-institute/" style="font-weight: normal; ">Bristol Vision Institute</a> back in January and posted it on the on-line journal, Real|Reel <a href="http://realreeljournal.com/2012/04/09/huntinggorillas/" style="font-weight: normal; ">here</a>.<div style="font-weight: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-weight: normal; ">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.</div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-weight: normal; ">If you are interested in reading about AToCC in more detail or related areas of film cognition please check out my recent publications:</div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><br /></div><div><ul type="disc" style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 3em; list-style-type: square; color: rgb(61, 61, 61); font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: -webkit-auto; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><li style="font-weight: normal; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.75em; "><strong><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: left; ">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 (</span><a href="http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/21/2/107.abstract" style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration: none; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: left; ">print version</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: left; ">) (</span><a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/tim-smith/documents/CDPS-11-0079_timjsmith_preprint.pdf" style="color: rgb(153, 153, 153); text-decoration: none; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: left; ">preprint</a><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 20px; text-align: left; ">)</span> </strong></li><li style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.75em; ">Smith, T. J.<strong style="font-weight: normal; "> </strong>(2012) The Attentional Theory of Continuity Editing,<i style="font-weight: normal; ">Projections: The Journal for Movies and the Mind. 6(1)</i></li><li style="padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 1.75em; ">Smith, T. J.<b style="font-weight: normal; "> </b>(2012) Extending AToCC: a reply, <i style="font-weight: normal; ">Projections: The Journal for Movies and the Mind. </i> <i>6(1)</i></li></ul></div><div style="font-weight: normal; "><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-6838404266969649312012-04-03T23:07:00.003+00:002012-04-03T23:13:20.679+00:00Rear Window TimelapseAbsolutely brilliant reworking of Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) by <a href="http://www.jeffdesom.com/hitch/">Jeff Desom</a> 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.<div><br /></div><div><br /></div><br /><br /> <iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/37120554" width="400" height="300" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-23232118414085243342012-03-23T13:21:00.003+00:002012-03-23T13:30:30.543+00:00A Window of Reality: Perceiving Edited Moving Images<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNr8kjmHXCnNARi6mgm-c3DZ123N5YqnSY3QRSzKE_NYNOLyTy5-u2NYMj2CWBF6tyyqKGvMieKXsi6N0aGvWl52iJ8UkJSO4qqYstiljHcmqzliA5a0KrI-w_wlNR9SR5kFPgjw/s1600/CDPS_frontpage.JPG"></a><div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; ">A little review article Dan Levin, James Cutting and I put together is now published in Current Directions in Psychological Science.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; ">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 </div><div style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 100%; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><br /></div><div><span >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 (<a href="http://cdp.sagepub.com/content/21/2/107.abstract">print version</a>) (<a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/our-staff/academic/tim-smith/documents/CDPS-11-0079_timjsmith_preprint.pdf">preprint</a>)</span></div><div><span ><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: rgb(64, 56, 56); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">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.</span> </div><div><span style="color: rgb(64, 56, 56); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: rgb(64, 56, 56); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNr8kjmHXCnNARi6mgm-c3DZ123N5YqnSY3QRSzKE_NYNOLyTy5-u2NYMj2CWBF6tyyqKGvMieKXsi6N0aGvWl52iJ8UkJSO4qqYstiljHcmqzliA5a0KrI-w_wlNR9SR5kFPgjw/s400/CDPS_frontpage.JPG" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5723084116940138562" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal; font-size: medium; text-decoration: underline; display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 308px; height: 400px; " /><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></span></div><div><span style="color: rgb(64, 56, 56); font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; text-align: justify; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><br /></span></div>Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-63928626347909906652012-02-14T14:38:00.003+00:002012-02-14T14:40:25.590+00:00Cut detection experimentIf 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:<div><br /></div><div><a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/psychologyexperiments/experiments/cutdetection/startup.php?rid=53">http://www.bbk.ac.uk/psychology/psychologyexperiments/experiments/cutdetection/startup.php?rid=53</a> </div><div><br /></div><div>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! </div><div><br /></div><div>Or is it?</div>Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12099105.post-91267162422619266022012-02-12T12:55:00.003+00:002012-02-12T12:58:41.755+00:00Cognitive Film Theory bibliographyI just stumbled across <a href="http://nickredfern.wordpress.com/about/">Nick Redfern</a>'s wonderful bibliography of Cognitive Film theory on-line and thought I had to share:<div><br /></div><div><a href="http://nickredfern.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/nick-redfern-cognitivefilmtheorybibliography2-04.pdf">http://nickredfern.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/nick-redfern-cognitivefilmtheorybibliography2-04.pdf</a> </div><div><br /></div><div>This is a great starting point for anybody trying to get a feel for the research area.</div>Tim J. Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17427294622270772696noreply@blogger.com1