Shot scale matters: The effect of close-up frequency on mental state attribution in film viewers

Bálint, Katalin; Blessing, Janine Nadine; Rooney, Brendan

doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2020.101480

Cited by 12 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 91 publications

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“…Because media have form, one can tease apart how they engage audiences in particular tasks, what those tasks are and how specific elements of that form influence the biological processes and psychological experience of viewers in a predictable and therefore useful way for scientific study. Close-ups effectively engage social processes such as empathy ( Bálint et al. , 2020 ; Lankhuizen et al.…”

Section: A Media Primer For Naturalistic Neurosciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Leveraging the power of media to drive cognition: a media-informed approach to naturalistic neuroscience

Grall

Finn

2022

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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So-called “naturalistic” stimuli have risen in popularity in cognitive, social, and affective neuroscience over the last 15 years, However, a critical property of these stimuli is frequently overlooked: Media—like film, television, books, and podcasts—are fundamentally not natural. They are deliberately crafted products meant to elicit particular human thought, emotion, and behavior. Here, we argue for a more informed approach to adopting media stimuli in experimental paradigms. We discuss the pitfalls of combining stimuli that are designed for research with those that are designed for other purposes (e.g., entertainment) under the umbrella term of “naturalistic” and present strategies to improve rigor in the stimulus selection process. We assert that experiencing media should be considered a task akin to any other experimental task(s), and explain how this shift in perspective will compel more nuanced and generalizable research using these stimuli. Throughout, we offer theoretical and practical knowledge from multidisciplinary media research to raise the standard for the treatment of media stimuli in neuroscience research.

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Section: A Media Primer For Naturalistic Neurosciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Leveraging the power of media to drive cognition: a media-informed approach to naturalistic neuroscience

Grall

Finn

2022

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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“…Camera distance , also called shot type, is typically defined in relation to a human subject, and ranges from extreme close-up to close-up, medium close-up, medium shot, medium-long shot, long shot, and extreme long shot (Bordwell et al, 2016). Experimental research has shown that closer shots facilitate elaboration about the mental life of the subject (Bálint et al, 2020) and polarize affective perception, emphasizing either the negativity or the positivity of the impression (Mutz, 2007; Reeves et al, 1992). However, a closer look at the literature suggests complex effects when message content is considered.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is particularly true for camera angle studies, where stimuli range from monologues, lectures, or newscasts (Avery & Long, 1976; Baranowski & Hecht, 2018; Mandell & Shaw, 1973; Reeves et al, 1992; Tiemens, 1970), to representations of everyday events (Kraft, 1987; Sevenants & d’Ydewalle, 2006), and images of objects (Meyers-Levy & Peracchio, 1992). Although some studies on camera distance have used more emotionally complex stimuli (Bálint et al, 2020; Canini et al, 2011; Mutz, 2007), they have typically used few or single message designs, with the exception of Canini et al (2011), who did include messages from a larger emotional spectrum but found a reversed relationship between closeness and emotional arousal. Although previous research has used emotionally neutral stimuli, there is no theoretical reason to doubt that camera distance and camera angle effects should also occur for pictures covering a large emotional and content range, while it is possible that some differences could manifest.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Danger, Sex, and Everything Else

Cores-Sarría

Hale

Lang

2022

Journal of Media Psychology

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Abstract. This study tests the effects of camera distance and camera angle on emotional response across four categories of pictures covering a large emotional range (positive and negative miscellanea, erotica, and threat), using the International Affective Picture System (IAPS) –a large database of emotionally evocative photographs. We content analyzed 722 images for the content category and camera framing (distance and angle), employing these as independent factors in analyses, and used the IAPS’ pre-existing normative average ratings of emotional valence, arousal, and dominance as dependent variables. As hypothesized, affective responses were generally increased by closer framing and high and low angles (compared to straight angles), but the content of the picture played an important role in determining effect strength and direction. In particular, closeness increased arousal for all picture groups but had the opposite effect on positive miscellaneous pictures, straight angles decreased the emotional response for the two miscellanea groups, and low angles increased the emotional response for threatening pictures. This study is the first to show that previously found camera framing effects apply to pictures of high emotional intensity (e.g., erotica and threat). We suggest that future work should consider formal manipulations alongside message content.

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“…The importance of shot scale lies in the fact that, among cinematic techniques which are relevant to viewers’ responses [2] , it affects both low- and high-complexity responses in viewers, with a strong potential to influence how fictional narratives are processed and experienced [3] , [4] , [5] . Recent findings indicate that the shot scale impacts viewers’ responses related to character engagement, such as theory of mind [6] , [7] , [8] emotion recognition [9] , and empathic care [10] . Shot scale assessment has been systematically related to viewers’ rating on film mood and narrative engagement [11] .…”

Section: Data Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

CineScale: A dataset of cinematic shot scale in movies

Savardi

Kovács²,

Signoroni

et al. 2021

Data in Brief

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We provide a database containing shot scale annotations (i.e., the apparent distance of the camera from the subject of a filmed scene) for more than 792,000 image frames. Frames belong to 124 full movies from the entire filmographies by 6 important directors: Martin Scorsese, Jean-Luc Godard, Béla Tarr, Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Ingmar Bergman. Each frame, extracted from videos at 1 frame per second, is annotated on the following scale categories: Extreme Close Up (ECU), Close Up (CU), Medium Close Up (MCU), Medium Shot (MS), Medium Long Shot (MLS), Long Shot (LS), Extreme Long Shot (ELS), Foreground Shot (FS), and Insert Shots (IS). Two independent coders annotated all frames from the 124 movies, whilst a third one checked their coding and made decisions in cases of disagreement. The CineScale database enables AI-driven interpretation of shot scale data and opens to a large set of research activities related to the automatic visual analysis of cinematic material, such as the automatic recognition of the director’s style, or the unfolding of the relationship between shot scale and the viewers’ emotional experience. To these purposes, we also provide the model and the code for building a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture for automated shot scale recognition. All this material is provided through the project website , where video frames can also be requested to authors, for research purposes under fair use.

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Shot scale matters: The effect of close-up frequency on mental state attribution in film viewers

Cited by 12 publications

References 91 publications

Leveraging the power of media to drive cognition: a media-informed approach to naturalistic neuroscience

Leveraging the power of media to drive cognition: a media-informed approach to naturalistic neuroscience

Danger, Sex, and Everything Else

CineScale: A dataset of cinematic shot scale in movies

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