Using depth of field to guide attention and convey narrative structure

利用景深引导注意力并传达叙事结构

• 批准号: 1942742
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Royal Holloway University of London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-1942742
• 关键词: Using; depth; field; guide; attention

Ever since the 1910s, when Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov experimented with the effect film editing has on the audience's emotional reactions to different sequence of images, film editing has attracted scholarly attention in Film Studies as well as in Psychology. In his seminal book In the Blink of an Eye (1995), American film editor and sound designer Walter Murch proposes the most important criteria for an 'ideal cut' are 'emotion', 'story' and finally 'rhythm'. As Valerie Orpen argues in Film Editing: The Art of the Expressive (2003), 'this insistence on emotion challenges the impression that editing is a pragmatic and rational craft', whereas in fact montage 'favours emotion to attain a specific end: to make the audience react'. This interdisciplinary PhD project draws on the fields of sensory neuroscience, in particular, the experimental study of eye movements, and Film Studies, notably cognitive film theory (Bordwell 1989; Carroll 2008; Persson 2003), and here in particular the study of visual perception, narrative comprehension and affective response in relation to film editing. The novelty of the proposed interdisciplinary approach promises to yield original insights that will expand the knowledge and understanding in both disciplines. It expands the new discipline of psychocinematics by looking at how audiences perceive (and thus how filmmakers can use) a new element of film grammar- the ability to vary depth of field within in a shot which has been developed by our industrial partner Cinefade.Cinefade is a novel camera accessory that allows filmmakers to vary depth of field in one shot in film at constant exposure. Gradual transition between a deep and a shallow depth of field can be used to accentuate a moment of extreme drama or make a client's product stand out in a commercial. Depth of field in film is a powerful device of cinematic storytelling. In the past, filmmakers were limited to choosing either a shallow or deep depth of field that stays consistent throughout the shot unless lighting or aperture changed. A variable depth of field has creative potential to express a shift in the subject's emotional state and also to guide a viewer's eyes. The technology adds a new possibility to the grammar of cinema. In Watching you watch movies: Using eye tracking to inform film theory, Tim Smith points out "Filmmakers have hypothesized about viewer behaviour for decades and several aspects of film craft such as mise en scène, cinematography, staging, and editing are directly motivated by where viewers are expected to look. However, up until very recently there has been virtually no empirical investigation of viewer gaze behaviour." He and others have begun to use eye tracking to analyse how viewers watch films. The heuristics developed by filmmakers in practice were not empirically testable until the development of eye tracking technology made it possible to capture eye movements at a high temporal and spatial precision synchronized to the film events.The proposed project builds on these insights in order to establish how applying the technique of depth of field manipulation enabled by Cinefade's technology influences the spectator's interpretation of the film's narrative. In particular, we aim to establish how exactly the rhythm and timing of cuts and the changes in depth of field can be utilised to achieve particular narrative effects. This project sets out to test:1. How Cinefade's new camera technology, which facilitates filming with variable depth of field, can be deployed to control the spectator's gaze. 2. How a variable depth impacts upon the spectator's emotional response to the film's narrative. 3. How variations in the depth of field can be deployed to achieve specific narrative effects in films.

自从1910年代，苏联电影制片人列夫·库列绍夫（Lev Kuleshov）试验了电影剪辑对观众对不同图像序列的情感反应的影响，电影剪辑就引起了电影研究和心理学的学术关注。在他的开创性著作《眨眼之间》（1995年）中，美国电影编辑和声音设计师沃尔特·梅瑟提出了“理想剪辑”最重要的标准是“情感”，“故事”，最后是“节奏”。正如瓦莱丽·奥彭（Valerie Orpen）在《电影剪辑：表现的艺术》（2003）中所指出的，“这种对情感的坚持挑战了剪辑是一种务实和理性的工艺的印象”，而事实上蒙太奇“有利于情感达到一个特定的目的：让观众做出反应”。这个跨学科的博士项目借鉴了感觉神经科学的领域，特别是眼动的实验研究，和电影研究，特别是认知电影理论（Bordwell 1989;卡罗尔2008; Ewesson 2003），这里特别是与电影编辑有关的视觉感知，叙事理解和情感反应的研究。所提出的跨学科方法的新奇有望产生原始的见解，将扩大这两个学科的知识和理解。它通过观察观众如何感知（以及电影制作者如何使用）电影语法的一个新元素来扩展心理电影的新学科-在镜头内改变景深的能力，这是由我们的工业合作伙伴Cinefade开发的。Cinefade是一种新颖的相机配件，允许电影制作者在恒定曝光的情况下在电影的一个镜头中改变景深。景深和浅景深之间的逐渐过渡可以用来突出极端戏剧性的时刻，或者使客户的产品在广告中脱颖而出。电影中的景深是电影讲故事的有力手段。在过去，电影制作人只能选择浅景深或深景深，除非灯光或光圈改变，否则在整个镜头中保持一致。可变景深具有创造性的潜力，可以表达主体情绪状态的转变，也可以引导观众的眼睛。这项技术为电影的语法增添了新的可能性。看你看电影：蒂姆·史密斯（Tim Smith）利用眼动追踪来为电影理论提供信息，他指出：“电影制作者几十年来一直在假设观众的行为，电影工艺的几个方面，如场景、摄影、舞台和编辑，都直接受到观众期望观看的地方的影响。然而，直到最近，几乎没有观察者凝视行为的实证研究。“他和其他人已经开始使用眼动追踪来分析观众如何观看电影。电影制作人在实践中开发的视觉技巧并没有经验上的可检验性，直到眼动追踪技术的发展使得以高时间和空间精度捕捉与电影事件同步的眼动成为可能。拟议的项目建立在这些见解的基础上，以确定如何应用Cinefade技术实现的景深操作技术影响观众对电影的解释。叙事特别是，我们的目标是建立如何准确的节奏和时间的削减和景深的变化可以用来实现特定的叙事效果。本项目旨在测试：1. Cinefade的新摄像机技术，它有助于拍摄可变景深，如何可以部署来控制观众的目光。2.不同的深度如何影响观众对电影叙事的情感反应。3.如何运用景深的变化来达到电影中特定的叙事效果。