In the opening scene of The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) exits a plane and enters the terminal at the LA International Airport. When he steps onto a moving walkway, the camera begins to track alongside at the same pace, which keeps Benjamin's position fixed and isolated to the far right of an otherwise empty screen. The opening credits begin to fill the space as we listen to The Sounds of Silence, Simon and Garfunkel's anthem to social alienation. This beginning anticipates the entire movie which tells a story of a newly minted college graduate entering adulthood without any sense of purpose or direction. Benjamin is moving though he doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.
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| The Graduate (1967), Embassy/Rialto Pictures |
Through acting, staging, sound, camera movements, and editing, movies develop a plot that fully engages us. How do filmmakers maintain our attention so that the drama keeps us riveted to the screen? How do editing techniques link events in an often seamless manner? How do movies drive our emotions, instilling suspense, laughter, horror, sadness and surprise along the way? I believe that filmmakers are like magicians who through sleight of mind can manipulate our attention and emotions and create the illusion of being enveloped in a scene. Over the decades, filmmakers have developed techniques that enhance this movie magic, though we have very little understanding of how these techniques actually work.
When it comes to the essence of a movie, my first response is: "It's the story, stupid!" For me, if I don't find the plot interesting or identify with the characters portrayed, my interest soon diminishes. Of course, the way a filmmaker engages us into the plot is determined by a variety of factors: the acting may be superb, the visuals stunning, the editing seamless or interestingly quirky, the drama riveting, or the suspense overwhelming. As a scientist, I try to analyze these rather subjective features by developing a framework for a research program. Toward this end, I've come up with a simple scheme that captures the psychological features of our movie experience, which I call the I-SKE model. The name is an acronym for what I believe are four essential components of our aesthetic response to movies: the intention (I) of the filmmaker and three psychological components of the viewer, sensation, knowledge, and emotion (SKE).
I initially developed the I-SKE model to describe our aesthetic response to visual art (e.g., paintings, photography). In my book, Experiencing Art: In the Brain of the Beholder, I cover the I-SKE model in detail. With respect to movies, filmmakers can play on our audiovisual experience (sensations), make us think about the world in new ways (knowledge), and of course instill a variety of feelings and empathetic responses (emotion). According to the I-SKE model, when these three components are at their heights we experience that "wow" feeling or say as the movie credits roll, "that was fantastic!" These components may also interact and enhance each other.
My goal for these blogs is to consider the ways in which movies impinge on our sensations, knowledge, and emotions, and as a result drive our interest and enjoyment. I will discuss scientific findings that help us understand how movies work. Although we readily consider sensations and emotions as part of our aesthetic response to an artwork, we don't always think that knowledge plays an important role. Yet our personal and cultural background is always in play, and I hope to pay special attention to the influence of prior knowledge on our movie experience.
Through these blog entries and other writings, I hope to encourage scientists to consider investigating not only our movie experience but also how this experience helps us understand ourselves and the way we interact with others and our environment.