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To find out what exact moment in a horror movie truly makes you frightened has so far been fairly undiscovered. The only method to measure the degree of fright up to now was relying on “focus group testing that involves viewers filling out questionnaires after watching a test screening. The problem with this approach is that often audiences find it difficult to accurately remember and articulate how they felt about certain sequences.” But this imprecise approach is unacceptable for film producer Peter Katz,…
“Pop Skull” producer Katz wants to identify precisely how frightened his audience is down to an exact moment in a scene! "I wanted to understand how we can make a horror film quantifiable," Katz told CNN, explaining the inspiration behind the experiment. "On the timing, I wanted to see just how precise we can get." To do that, Katz decided to start working together with researchers using MRI scans of brain function, providing filmmakers with a perfectly accurate picture of how their audience really feels. This should help spotting movie scenes that don’t work and turn them into true entertainment.
For a start, Katz and his team scanned the brain’s activity of one woman while she was watching a sequence of Katz’s movie. More precisely, the researchers analyzed to what degree the woman’s amygfala – the part of the brain linked to several emotions including fear – was activated. This is how they were able to pinpoint the exact moment she was thrilled with fear the most. Even though, at this point the method needs to be developed and improved; to a great extent it is currently too expensive and time-consuming. Some even argue that by scanning people’s brains, the true art of making a movie isn’t what it used to be. Katz believes that in today’s social networking world, people have more influence on success/flop of a movie than ever before and this is why filmmakers should take advantage of this new opportunity to collect real, honest audience opinions
"Now more than ever you want to make sure that people are satisfied. You can kill a film over Twitter."
Let Peter Katz himself explain to you:
Follow the full article:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/28/brain.scans/index.html?iref=newssearch
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