Seriously, an interesting concept. Don't know if it'll ever usurp the H'Wood Money Grubbers.
On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 6:54 AM, Martin Baxter <martinbaxt...@gmail.com>wrote: > (thinking of time-travel action flicks with bevies of hot women pairing up > with technonerds...) > > > On Sun, Apr 4, 2010 at 10:46 PM, brent wodehouse < > brent_wodeho...@thefence.us> wrote: > >> >> >> >> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/movies/movies-that-make-you-love-them/article1521282/ >> >> Movies that make you love them >> >> Filmmakers are searching out new ways to mine your celluloid sweet spot >> >> Liam Lacey >> >> From Saturday's Globe and Mail >> >> In the future, instead of going to movie theatres and staring at giant >> screens, perhaps we will attach a cable to our computers, plug it into the >> sides of our skulls - and get lost. >> >> That could be the eventual outcome of “neurocinema,” an emerging >> technology that promises to shape films to maximize brain excitement, >> allowing Hollywood studios to know exactly what you want better than you >> do. As columnist Scott Brown sardonically noted in Wired magazine last >> month: “Movie houses will become crack dens with cup holders, and I’ll lie >> there mainlining pure viewing pleasure for hours.” >> >> The concern that movies may take over our brains goes back at least to >> 1931 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which featured an entertainment >> system called “the feelies” inspired by Huxley’s horror at watching his >> first sound movie. Novels made into such movies as The Parallax View and A >> Clockwork Orange show heroes brainwashed by film. But could brain research >> also make films better? >> >> Neurocinema is an offshoot of neuromarketing, a term coined by Dutch >> marketing expert Ale Smidts in 2002. It, in turn, is a branch of >> advertising research that uses brain-imaging techniques, including the >> functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (or fMRI, which measures >> blood flow to parts of the brain) and electroencephalography (EEG, which >> measures electrical activity) to peer into our brains - and, more >> specifically, into “the subconscious thoughts, feelings and desires that >> drive purchasing decisions” as branding guru Martin Lindstrom writes in >> Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy. >> >> It’s no longer the stuff of science fiction: Coca-Cola, Unilever, >> Campbell’s Soup and Levi Strauss have used brain scanning to develop >> advertising strategies, and marketing jargon is full of excited talk about >> finding the “buy button” in consumers’ heads. >> >> Neuromarketing buzz has influenced the move industry, too. More than a >> year before Avatar hit screens, James Cameron boasted that fMRI machines >> would show the brain was much more active while watching his 3-D film than >> while taking in a conventional movie. This month’s South by Southwest >> festival in Austin played to the film-geek crowd with a panel called Big >> Brother in Your Brain: Neuroscience and Marketing. >> >> And last fall, such media outlets as Wired, CNN and National Public Radio >> carried the story of a San Diego company called Mindsign Neuromarketing, >> which announced it was revolutionizing films by using an fMRI machine to >> test scenes from a horror movie called Pop Skull. >> >> But on closer inspection, it didn’t take a brain scientist to diagnose a >> bad case of neuro hype. The test involved only one subject, a 24-year-old >> woman who watched two scenes from the movie, three times. According to >> film producer Peter Katz, this was the first step in a brave new >> filmmaking world where filmmakers “will be able to track precisely which >> sequences/scenes excite, emotionally engage or lose the viewer’s interest >> based on what regions of the brain are activated. From that info, a >> director can edit, reshoot an actor’s bad performance, adjust a score, >> pump up visual effects and apply any other changes to improve or replace >> the least compelling scenes.” >> >> Most brain-movie research to date makes more modest claims. For example, >> in 2004, Professor Uri Hasson and his New York University colleagues >> showed five subjects different scenes, lasting about 30 minutes, of the >> Sergio Leone 1966 western, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and discovered >> “the brains of different individuals show a highly significant tendency to >> act in unison.” >> >> No big surprise there. But later, in a 2008 test, the same researchers >> looked into how moviegoers experience different films. This time, The >> Good, The Bad and the Ugly aroused about 45-per-cent similar brain >> reaction among the subjects. By contrast, the loosely structured TV comedy >> Curb Your Enthusiasm hit only 18-per-cent common brain activity, while an >> episode of the vintage television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents scored a >> whopping 65-per-cent uniformity, confirming the Master of Suspense’s claim >> that he played his audience like an instrument. >> >> After Hasson’s initial experiment, Hollywood executives commissioned >> Steven Quartz, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology, >> to try to improve the effectiveness of movie trailers. Quartz claimed to >> have discovered an area of the brain, at the base of the orbitofrontal >> cortex, that indicates “how much people are anticipating a movie when they >> are watching a trailer or how much liking they have.” >> >> Other researchers are dubious. Neurologist Richard Restak, author of The >> Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety is Changing How We Live, Work, >> and Love, points out that a large area of the brain not reacting in >> Quartz’s experiments included the prefrontal cortex, the area important >> for critical thought. >> >> “There are other reasons to doubt that brain science is somehow going to >> eliminate the highly personal and inherently subjective nature of movie >> preferences,” argues Restak, who warns that “complex multidetermined >> behaviours can’t be rigidly localized to specific locations in the brain.” >> >> Leading film theorist David Bordwell wrote a column on his blog called >> This is Your Brain on Movies [http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=300] - >> Maybe, trying to sum up the current state of informed guesswork. >> Specifically, he addresses how we can watch a suspense movie - a Hitchcock >> film, for example - and re-experience anxiety even when we know the >> outcome. Watching movies, he argues, is as much about automatic brain >> triggers as the more conscious business of understanding the story. >> >> Even the idea of understanding a story, on a neural level, is puzzling. >> What do we mean by what Samuel Taylor Coleridge called the “willing >> suspension of disbelief”? Norman Holland, author of Literature and the >> Brain, and of a regular Psychology Today blog, This is Your Brain on >> Culture [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/is-your-brain-culture], >> believes getting lost in a fictional experience (whether a movie, book or >> game) involves putting a hold on our reality-check mechanism. We train >> ourselves to inhibit “those frontal-lobe systems that prompt us to action, >> and they stop assessing the reality of what we are perceiving.” >> >> As evidence, he points out how damage to the frontal lobes can really >> screw up our movie viewing: Damage to dorsolateral circuitry, which >> regulates executive function and working memory, makes us just not care >> enough to enjoy films. On the other hand, damage to the orbitofrontal >> region can make the movies too real and intense. >> >> Holland believes that fiction, and art in general, is an exalted form of >> play, a view supported by “evocritic” Brian Boyd in his recent book, On >> the Origin of Stories. Boyd argues that art is our brain’s best >> evolutionary adaptation. Art is derived from play, the way that higher >> animals enjoyably rehearse activities that they might later use in serious >> situations. Art helps our species to develop co-operation, group identity >> and creativity, and to hypothesize about the minds of others. >> >> True, making art that moves us is more complex and elegant than strapping >> someone down into a doughnut-shaped magnet and trying to read their >> brains, but the intention is similar. >> >> >> > >
