Elen Lotman (Baltic Film and Media School; Estonian

Institute of Humanities)

Visual style and it's effect on the perceived empathy towards film

and video game characters

Cinematography and BFM

• Cinematography taught since 2000

• International MA which has a cinematography module

• Numerous internationally renown cinematographers and cinematography teachers

• Participant in 3 layers of storytelling teaching cinematography project and international JMD KinoEyes

• Rein Maran, Arvo Iho, Jüri Sillart, Mait Mäekivi teaching cinematography

Three subprocesses of empathyThe neuroscience of empathy: progress, pitfalls and promiseJamil Zaki and Kevin N Ochsner

• Experience sharing: vicariously sharing targets’ internal states;

• mentalizing: explicitly considering (and perhaps understanding) targets’ states and their sources;

• prosocial concern: expressing motivation to improve targets’ experiences (for example, by reducing their suffering)

Does realism even matter?

• Heidel and Simmel classic animation:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Heider+and+Simmel

• Point-light figures:

http://www.biomotionlab.ca/Demos/BMLwalker.html

Theory of Mind

What do we actually see?

Change Blindness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahg6qcgoay4

Ilya Repin’s They Did Not Expect Him/«Не жда́ ли» (aka An Unexpected Visitor, 1884).

Alfred Yarbus' eye tracking experiment 1965 – free viewing

Alfred Yarbus' eye tracking experiment 1965 – material circumstances

Alfred Yarbus' eye tracking experiment 1965 – how long has the visitor been away

Alfred Yarbus' eye tracking experiment 1965 – spacial layout

Zoï Kapoula, Qing Yang, Marine Vernet & Maria-Pia Bucci

Eye Movements and Pictorial Space Perception: Studies

of paintings from Francis Bacon and Piero della Francesca

Experiments on the difference between

naïve viewer and art trained viewer

Francis BaconStudy of a Dog 1952

There will be blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)

11 adult viewers were shown the video and their eye movements recorded using an Eyelink 1000 (SR Research) infra-red camera-based eyetracker. Each dot represents the center of one viewer's gaze. The size of each dot represents the length of time they have held fixation.

https://vimeo.com/19788132

Generally speaking, in blocking and framing a shot, the most important thing is to make sure the audience is looking where you want them to look.

Robert Zemeckis

Patient SM

Strongly connected through amygdala activation

Space perception Contrast Affiliative emotion felt by the observer -

empathy

Size constancy

Painting from a photo

Peak shift

Tinbergen

Grouping

Grouping

Grouping

Grouping

Contrast

Monocular depth cues

2) Linear perspective:

3) Relative size and elevation:

1) Interposition/occlusion

4. aerial perspective;

atmospheric perspective

(da Vinci)

5. advancing and

receeding colours

6. Texture gradient:

7. Lighting and shading

Motion parallax:

http://psych.hanover.edu/Krantz/MotionParallax/MotionParallax.html

and kinetic depth effect (point-light figures)

English poet and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) - willing suspension of disbelief

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