Projections

When audiences watch a movie, we can examine the similarities among their brain activity via inter-subject correlation (ISC) analysis. This study examines how the strength of ISC (how similarly brains respond) varies over the course of a Pixar short film: specifically comparing this across the exposition, rising action, climax/fall out, and resolution sections of the story. We focus on ISC in the mentalizing network, often linked to social-cognitive processes that are essential to narrative engagement. We find that ISC rises from exposition to the climax. Moreover, we explore this shared response across age groups, finding that ISC is present across age groups, albeit weak in younger children. This approach offers new insights into the brain basis of engagement and story structure.

The success of a film depends not only on the quality of individual elements in the film but also on cultural factors that may influence the viewers’ reactions. In this study, we investigated the role of these factors by presenting Spanish and Finnish participants films produced in Finland, Spain, or the United States. Emotional reactions were assessed online through a response system synchronized with the films and offline through questionnaires. Results indicated that overall emotional reactions of the two audiences were very similar, suggesting a high degree of universality. However, we also found differences in the way the two audiences reacted to some specific sequences within the films. Qualitative analyses suggested that these differences are related to some cultural dimensions (e.g., collectivism). We interpret the data as supporting both universality and cultural mediation where cultural variation might be more evident in films varying in narrative structure, genre, or cultural origin.

When watching a film, we engage with much more than combinations of moving images. We combine what we see with what we hear, and what we hear often aids in the construction of a story. Although some researchers endorse the ways sound guides viewer expectations, there is still a need to explain the ways images, sounds, and other available cinematic modes interact to construct meaning. This article engages with research on embodiment, cognition, and multimodal artifacts to reveal how sound aids in the construction of film narratives by focusing on examples where sounds take the primary role in constructions of narrative meaning. Additionally, by discussing recent theories on cognition and multimodality, this article shows how sounds can evoke conceptual and narrative information in ways that stabilize our understanding of cinematic representations through the joint contribution of all of the available modes.

Ana Hedberg Olenina. Psychomotor Aesthetics: Movement and Affect in Modern Literature and Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020, 416 pp., $36.95 (paperback), ISBN: 9780190051266.

Jennifer O'Meara. Engaging Dialogue: Cinematic Verbalism in American Independent Cinema. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018, 218 pp., $29.95 (paperback), ISBN: 9781474420624.

Malcolm Turvey. Play Time: Jacques Tati and Comedic Modernism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019, 304 pp., $30.00 (paperback), ISBN: 9780231193030.

Neil Cohn. Who Understands Comics? London: Bloomsbury, 2020, 240 pp., $42.75 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-3501-5603-6.