The psychology of the film: A connection between movie structure and brain chemistry

Khevna.P.Shah, INN/Bangalore

@Shahkhevna1, @Infodeaofficial

The iconic Black-panther, the oscar-winning Parasite, and the Titanic are still in people’s hearts. Let it be the CGI effects of the Black Panther or the romance between Kate and Jake in Titanic, manages to leave a print in the audience’s heart. So why are very few films manage to capture the public’s attention? Or how is it that they create a feeling of euphoria?

What Makes a Movie Interesting? The Psychology Behind Filmmaking | The  Cornell Daily Sun

The answers to this question lie in a very simple connection between psychology and films or more precisely in movie structure and brain chemistry. What does psychology have to do with filmmaking? So in simple words, the psychology of film is a subfield of psychology that studies the characteristics of the film and its production in relation to perception, cognition, narrative, emotion, and understanding. This concept has been around even before the development of films. During the year 1916, when the economy was unstable when new concepts were being introduced to people, this one-man understood cinema, as well as anyone, ever will. This man was a leading psychologist, who worked in Germany and in the United States, Hugo Munsterberg. He worked alongside the experimental psychologist, Willam Wundth and published various books in applied psychology, naming a few: The Principle of Art Education(1905), Psychology and Crime(1908), Psychotherapy(1909). In this final book, The Photoplay(1916), Munsterberg argued for the psychological and aesthetic distinctiveness of film as a serious art form.  His work fell out of favor with the public due to the increasing criticism of American life and the outbreak of the First World War. Despite, centuries of neglect, The photoplay is generally recognized today as the first genuine work of film theory.

“For the first time, the psychologist can observe the starting of an entirely new esthetic development, a new form of true beauty in the turmoil of a technical age, created by its very technique and yet more than any other art destined to overcome outer nature by the free and joyful play of the mind,” Munsterberg wrote in The Photoplay: A Psychological Study, which marked the beginning of film psychology. Being an avid cinemagoer and professing cinephile, Munsterberg set two tasks for the study of the film: one was to describe the functioning of the psychological mechanisms in the reception of the film, and the other to given an account of film as an artistic medium. In Photoplay the imagination is the psychological faculty that is ultimately played upon by the theatrical movies, and the attention, memory, perception, and emotions are merely just the building blocks, contributing to the film, experience. Gestalt psychologists were the first to point at the role of mental structures in seeing smooth movement, using simple visual forms and displays, crucial elements of filmmaking.

Certain elements such as editing, sequence of events, spatial information, and cinematic techniques influence certain aspects of the films. Cognitive neuroscience research demonstrates that some movies can take considerable control over brain activity and eye movements. Viewing spaces on screen from a stable point of view is important for short-term spatial coding and long-term spatial memory. According to research, long-time viewers of the television show Friends were significantly better at accurately recalling spatial information about the show’s set because the camera never moves away from the “fourth wall”. On the other hand, the long-time viewers of the show “E.R.” were less likely to recall information about the set because the show is filmed from many different angles. Cinematic techniques such as cross-cutting, pan shots, or short/reverse shots play a vital role in the perception of the scene. Camera angles also include the audience’s view of perceiving characters. For example, low angle shots tend to make the character appear strong and powerful and on the other hand low angle shots, seem to make the character look weak and submissive.

Film psychology and psychological movies are quite confusing terms and often interchanged. The former usually deals with the characteristics of films and their relation to attention, perception, and emotion, as discussed above. For example in the movie, The girl on the train, based on Paula Hawkins’s novel, certain scenes are edited into cuts and flashbacks, which alter the normal temporal sequencing of events, creating non-linear narrative structures. But the latter solely focus on the psychological issues around which the movie revolves, taking the example from the same movie, the girl on the train, the protagonist, Rachel suffers from depression, PTSD, and borderline personality disorder.

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

%d bloggers like this: