you saw okay now think about the way it
made you feel did it make you laugh or
cry did make you anxious or angry
regardless of how that film made you
feel I think we’re all pretty familiar
with the ability of films to manipulate
our emotions but what you might not
realize is the ability of films to
manipulate the way we perceive
audio-visual content
my name is grant brighter I’m a film
major a psychology major and in
neuroscience and chemistry double minor
as you can probably surmise by my messy
combination of degrees I am interested
in the intersection between film studies
and cognition currently I’m working on
experimental research that uses brain
imaging and eye tracking technology to
try and understand how people process
films but in general the research I
conduct involves analyzing films and
then applying psychological principles
to understand how they function and what
I have found is that films represent
something very unusual psychologically
speaking while most of us find film
viewing to be an effortless almost
mindless experience film viewing is in
fact an extremely unnatural cognitive
process take a look at this video I’m
guessing what you saw was a woman
walking through a door and then
teleporting to the middle of a yard now
we certainly don’t see anything like
this in our day to day experience so why
would we perceive the events in this
video in this manner these days we see a
lot of big-budget blockbuster movies
that are completely drenched in CGI and
these types of films it’s not unusual
for us to see images of people magically
teleporting to new locations but in this
video clip
there’s no CGI we also don’t have some
sort of fantastical narrative to
motivate this perception we simply have
to juxtaposed images in spite of being
too unique distinct images our mind
unites them together into a seamless
narrative what’s going on here the
answer lies within a phenomenon that
pervades popular narrative films you
know the sort of stuff you typically see
when you go to the local movie theater
see there’s a common thread that unites
these types of films whether it’s avatar
or the notebook or Finding Nemo they’re
all constructed in an almost identical
manner that is to say the individual
shots of these films are all stitched
together according to the exact same set
of principles the same set of greed upon
rules that dictate the Assembly of
movies it’s part of practice known as
continuity editing continuity editing
encompasses a variety of film editing
techniques that are designed to help the
viewer maintain a coherent sense of
space and time within a film’s narrative
one example of a continuity technique is
called the match on action this is a
technique in which a movement is begun
in one shot and then completed in the
next here’s an example we see one
continuous motion but know how the pie
begins moving forward in one shot and
then collides with its target in the
next shot
they’re disjointed images person winding
up with pie then close up of pie and
face yet we accept that the disembodied
hand in this second shot belongs to the
person winding up with the pie in the
previous shot though logically it can’t
be proven I mean they’re completely
separate images but see that’s the power
of continuity editing it allows our mind
to unite distinct images into a seamless
narrative in this case someone shoving a
pie into my face our mind processes this
type of edits so intuitively that even
when there’s a strange anomaly our mind
still processes films in accordance with
our expectations about this technique
that’s part of why we think we’re
watching this woman transport to a new
location our mind is accustomed to the
use of continuity editing to delineate
and there
and thus it expects the sequence of
images to present us with a logical
progression of character and of story
because of the continuation of motion
from shot to shot so even though the cut
jumps from one location to another our
mind still presents us with a coherent
narrative now if I showed you an image
of the woman or walking through the door
and then a shot of her just kind of
standing in the yard you probably be
more likely to see these two shots for
what they are distinct separate images
but the continuation of motion engages
our expectations of narrative that’s
causing our minds to produce a narrative
anomalous though it may be that unites
the two shots the end result is
teleportation now it’s important to
understand that continuity editing is
not the only type of film editing out
there in avant-garde cinema and in many
of the famous films that came out of the
Soviet Union different styles of film
editing are employed to express stories
these include cutting in a rhythmic
pattern or throwing images together into
a chaotic montage continuity editing is
simply what we encounter most frequently
it’s employed overwhelmingly not just in
the movies we watch but also than the
television shows we watch too it’s
engrained in our visual culture and just
like any other part of our culture
whether it’s the food we eat or the
clothes we wear there’s nothing natural
about it it’s something that we’ve been
conditioned to and most of us have been
undergoing this conditioning our entire
lives so what would it be like to watch
a continuity style movie for the first
time as an adult well two scientists
decided that they are going to find out
in 2010 and again in 2015 scientists
Stephen Sean and Sarma Nilda are hiked
out to a remote region in southern
Turkey where they found adults who had
never seen a movie before in their life
they then showed these adults various
video clips that
straighted certain continuity editing
techniques they also showed these same
clips to another group of adults of a
similar distribution of age gender
education level and cultural and
geographic background who have been
watching film clips for 10 to 20 years
when they compared these two groups
interpretations of the video clips they
found very different interpretations of
what was going on one example of a video
clip that they showed looked something
like this
where we see the exterior of some
building followed by a shot in some
interior space now this is an editing
technique known as the establishing shot
otherwise known as the beginning to
every scene in every sitcom ever and
this is by design you see the
establishing shot is typically used at
the beginning of a new scene to cue the
viewer to the fact that the story has
shifted to a new location as such is
typically assumed that the action going
on in the second shot is whatever is
occurring in the building depicted in
the previous shot indeed this is how
experienced film viewers in the study
interpreted this type of edit
however in experienced film viewers came
to a completely different understanding
what was going on so when experienced
film viewers saw this type of clip
here’s what they said I saw a house and
person sitting in it but when
inexperienced viewers saw it they
responded ok there’s a house there’s
someone sitting in a room they see these
two shots as being unrelated so when
asked which house the person was sitting
in in experienced film viewers would say
I don’t see a house or if they were a
little sassy they might say well I don’t
know her personally so how do I know
where her house looks like
it seems as though film experience is
affecting how these clips are being
interpreted it seems as though
inexperienced film viewers aren’t making
the same assumptions or conclusions that
experienced film viewers are in this
study that used another video clip that
looks something like this this is
another continuity editing pattern
called the shot reverse shot you
typically see this sequence when two
people are having a conversation in a
film experienced viewers typically
interpreted these final two shots of the
film as alternating camera angles
between two people as they continue to
sit and stare at each other however once
again in experienced film viewers had a
completely different understanding of
what was going on when the video cut two
shot three here inexperienced viewers
thought that the person is shot two
walked away or disappeared they also
thought that in these final two shots
rather than perceiving alternating
camera angles they sensed that the
individuals were turning towards the
camera in experience film viewers were
coming to completely different
conclusions about the spatial
relationships and even the behaviors of
the characters in the scene so this
provides further evidence that our
experience with continuity editing is
affecting the way we perceive continuity
editing and this makes sense in light of
other research that suggests our
experiences with media affect the way we
perceive stories in 1920 there was a
british psychologist named Frederick
Bartlett who widest see what would
happen when he had British subjects read
a story from a culture unlike their own
so he had his bridge test subjects read
an old Native American legend
specifically in Elgin of tale that
incorporated concepts and a narrative
structure that were unfamiliar to a
British audience
what he found was that the story details
the British subjects remembered
accurately were those that correlated
most closely with their previous
experiences with storytelling that is
the stories of a British literary mill
you story details that were unfamiliar
to them were adjusted or omitted so
their recollection this story fit
narrative conventions established by
their British culture their experiences
with media as established by their
culture exerted some sort of influence
on their understanding of the story what
this study indicates is that the mind is
not passively taking in information it’s
actively manipulating it in that sense
your brain is kind of like a little kid
with a play-doh set because just like
how a little kid will stuff the play-doh
into various molds that come with the
set our brain stuffs the play-doh of
reality into certain molds as well
except these molds can’t be purchased at
the toy store for $19.99 these are molds
that are produced by our experiences so
when the media continually feeds us the
same editing techniques again and again
those editing techniques become another
mold in our existential play-doh set and
this is how continuity editing ends up
influencing the reality we perceive on
screen sometimes this can be used to
chances are you saw a bunch of different
clones of the same guy looking at each
other of course these were just
individual shots of the same person
taken one after the other that were then
aligned in such a manner that our mind
sutures them all together into one
coherent story in this case we again
have our familiarity with a continuity
editing technique being taken advantage
of this one is called the eye line mash
an eye line match occurs when we have a
shot of a person looking in a certain
direction followed by another shot of a
different person or an object now it’s
typically assumed that the object or
person in that second shot is whatever
the person in the first shot is looking
at what you see here is a prototypical
example of the of the eye line match but
it’s pretty much the same sequence of
images that we saw repeated again and
again in the video that we just watched
except instead of looking at another
person or object this guy is being set
up so that peers as though he’s looking
at himself in the chiffon and Eldar our
study a more simplistic example of the
island match was he used kind of like
the one you see here but even then they
were still finding intriguing
differences between the interpretations
that the two groups studies were having
that is the inexperienced versus the
experienced viewers experienced viewers
pretty much always interpreted this clip
the way we interpret it whatever that
thing in the second shot is that’s
what’s being observed by the person in
the first shot now inexperienced viewers
often saw this same relationship but
there are some times where they didn’t
instead seeing no relationship between
the two shots so it indeed appears as
though our experience with continuity
editing is causing us to make certain
assumptions about the way films are
structured and the way they’re meant to
be interpreted repeatedly seeing the
same continuity editing techniques
are causing us to interpret movies in
the same standardized way even when they
don’t totally fit the continuity formula
what this suggests is that our
perceptions are being crafted by the
media we’re exposed to now I think we
understand how this is true in terms of
the way the media influences our ideas
from which issues are important to what
we know about those issues but what our
cut what our conditioning to continuity
editing suggests is something far more
subtle than that what this suggests is
that the media influences not just our
ideas about information it also
influences the very mechanics by which
we take in and process that information
the media hardwires us to foresee the
world in a certain way so if this is the
effect that movies can have on us what
effect do other forms of media have on
our cognitive processes like the
internet and virtual reality
technologies and is this impact just
enough to create some neat optical
illusions or can it indirectly influence
the way we develop our worldviews now I
can’t speak for these other forms of
media but I can say that continuity
style film is fundamentally influencing
our perceptual processes so the next
time you go to the theater for what you
think is just a mindless diversion
remember that movie you’re watching can
influence the way you think thank you
you [Music]