Final Page CopyChoose a color
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<img src="https://cinemedia.media/wp-content/uploads/BriannaWerder/yellow-1.png" alt="Yellow" width="300" height="300"> <img src="https://cinemedia.media/wp-content/uploads/BriannaWerder/Gray-1.png" alt="Gray" width="300" height="300">
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<center>[[Yellow->Humor Video]] OR [[Gray->Drone]]</center>
You will be given a choice between two colors. Click on the color which you are the most drawn to. You will then be taken to a page with a short video. Watch the entire video clip before advancing to each page where a brief passage will explain the significance of the clip.
[[Begin->Manchester Colors Explained]]<center><font size="28">The Film Viewing Experience: How and Why We as Viewers Respond to Different Elements of Films</font></center>
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<center><font size="10">created by</font></center>
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<center><font size="10">Brianna Werder</font></center>
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<center>CINE 749, Professor Rutsky</center>
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<center>[[Continue->Abstract]]</center><center><i>Abstract</i></center>
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Any film can be studied and analyzed, this much is known to be true. But what good is analyzing a film if there is no mention to its relation to those who are actually watching it? Studying the experience of watching a film is just as important as the study of the film itself. Viewers are not affected by one sole thing in a film, and there is never one same reaction shared among every person when viewing any film. This experimental project looks at different elements of the film-viewing experience and the ways in which we as audience members perceive and are affected by film and video content. Pathways are determined by the participant’s choice, and each pathway leads the person through a short series of explanations about how we watch videos and why we are affected by these videos in certain ways.
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<center>[[Instructions->Instructions]] <center><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/TUKxh9_K73c" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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[[Continue->Humor Passage]]</center><center><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://ytcropper.com/embed/js5cd8f86e49558/loop/noautoplay/" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><a href="/" target="_blank"></a>
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[[Continue->Drone Passage]]</center>“Nobody will deny the existence of humor, since we all easily detect the behavior or feeling it provokes. Still, things are not quite so simple: the feeling is supposed to be the reaction to humor, but can humor ‘‘be there’’ when the feeling is not?” (Vandaele).
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More so than most other emotions, humor is highly subjective. What causes one person to laugh out loud, may cause another person to cry. As with other emotions such as sadness or anger, humor is heavily tied to memory and past experience, thus adding to the nature of its subjectivity. "Airplane!" (1980) was ranked by Forbes as being the funniest movie of all time, generating an approximate 3 laughs per minute. The question above which Vandaele poses leans more on to philosophical side, alongside other philosophical questions involving trees falling in woods while making hypothetical sounds. However, a reworded version of this question may provide more insightful responses: If an event makes one person laugh but 100 other people do not, is it still humorous? The feeling of humor felt by that sole laugher is undeniable, but the presence of humor in the event itself is still up for debate. What Vandaele proposes in his work is a methodology to looking at how humor might be measured in film. When something is laughed at, you must look at certain components of the thing: “the structure of the discursive stimuli; their perception and processing by an individual, who belongs to some group; and the social context within which the stimuli are perceived” (Vandaele). When viewing a film and trying to decide if it is in fact “funny,” these are the elements one should be looking to analyze.
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[[Continue->Red or Brown]]Choose a color
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<img src="https://cinemedia.media/wp-content/uploads/BriannaWerder/Red-1.png" alt="Red" width="300" height="300"> <img src="https://cinemedia.media/wp-content/uploads/BriannaWerder/Brown.png" alt="Brown" width="300" height="300">
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<center>[[Red->Sexual Arousal Video]] OR [[Brown->Dead Animal Video]]</center>
<center><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://ytcropper.com/embed/wJ5cd8fd3619909/loop/noautoplay/" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><a href="/" target="_blank"></a>
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[[Continue->Sexual Arousal Passage]]</center><center><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://ytcropper.com/embed/k_5cd90530b88bb/loop/noautoplay/" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><a href="/" target="_blank"></a>
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[[Continue->ASMR Passage]]</center>“Pornography should interest us, because it’s intensely and relentlessly about us. It involves the roots of out culture and the deepest corners of the self. It’s not just friction and naked bodies: pornography has eloquence. It has meaning, it has ideas. It even has redeeming ideas” (Kipnis).
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The dominance of pornography in Western society, as well as societies across the world and across time, is not an accidental occurrence. No other genre of media is so focused on the human body and the human experience. Kipnis argues that pornography is central to our culture, yet we tend to focus on the idea of a lonesome and shameful individual viewer. While porn involving male and female relationships has always been the primary focus, the internet has opened the door for all types of sexual relationships to be shown to mass porn-watching audiences. Pornography breaks through the societal norms while also somewhat embracing them. “Pornography provides a realm of transgression that is, in effect, a counter-aesthetics to dominant norms for bodies, sexualities, and desire itself” (Kipnis). As a reflection of culture, there is much about a society that can be learned based on the porn that is being produced by and for its people. However, porn also gives those people an outlet to express themselves in ways they cannot publicly do in their society.
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[[Continue->Dark Blue or Pink]]“Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) describes the experience of tingling sensations in the crown of the head, in response to a range of audio-visual triggers such as whispering, tapping, and hand movements... watching ASMR videos increased pleasant affect only in people who experienced ASMR...ASMR [is] associated with reduced heart rate and increased skin conductance levels. Findings indicate that ASMR is a reliable and physiologically-rooted experience that may have therapeutic benefits for mental and physical health” (Poerio).
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Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) videos have boomed in popularity within the last few years on video sharing platforms like YouTube. These videos show people doing simple everyday things like eating or drinking but doing so into a microphone. Other popular types of ASMR videos include things like popping bubble wrap, cracking knuckles, whispering or crinkling plastic. All of these videos are meant to induce both mental feelings of ease and comfort as well as physical reactions such as tingling in the head and extremities. ASMR is not a reaction that everyone can achieve. What causes the tingling sensation in one person may not have any effect whatsoever on someone else. However, those that do experience ASMR may see reductions in feelings of stress and anxiety (Poerio).
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[[Continue->Orange or Dark Red]]Choose a color
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<img src="https://cinemedia.media/wp-content/uploads/BriannaWerder/Dark-Blue-1.jpg" alt="Dark Blue" width="300" height="300"> <img src="https://cinemedia.media/wp-content/uploads/BriannaWerder/Pink-1.png" alt="Pink" width="300" height="300">
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<center>[[Dark Blue->Sad Music Video]] OR [[Pink->Funny Disgust Video]]</center>
<center><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://ytcropper.com/embed/SG5cd8fed36b7fa/loop/noautoplay/" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><a href="/" target="_blank"></a>
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[[Continue->Sound vs. Noise Passage]]</center><center><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://ytcropper.com/embed/sS5cd901d09191d/loop/noautoplay/" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><a href="/" target="_blank"></a>
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[[Continue->Funny Disgust Passage]]</center>“Noise is an all-encompassing category frequently used to describe acoustically undesired sounds. Jacques Attali, Douglas Kahn, Michel Chion, and numerous other sound theorists remind us that noise has political, ideological, and aesthetic ramifications. Attali asserts the historical and rhetorical connections of noise to violence, Kahn notes the correlation of noise to increasing industrialization and its politics, and R. Murray Schafer, Barry Truax, and others associated with the World Soundscape Project stress the ideological ramifications of the acoustic negativity inherent in terms such as “noise pollution.” Detritus, or interference to be disavowed, sounds designated as noise are to be avoided or quelled. Noises are potentially dangerous disturbances in otherwise peaceful and placid sonic environments and, as such, are distinct from those sounds organized into coherent communication, music, or rhythm” (Coulthard 116).
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Audial effects can be categorized depending on how they are received by the listener. Water flowing through a creek may be described by one as a sound in nature, whereas sirens wailing in a city would be categorized as street noise. Both effects are being received in the same way by entering the hearing receptors of people nearby and being processed as information, but they are being mentally processed in different ways. As the quote from Coulthard suggests, those effects which would be categorized as noise are typically those which are unwanted and may cause feelings of stress or anxiety. Interestingly enough, noise is most commonly grouped together with themes of industry or machinery. This suggests a link between feelings of stress and anxiety in people with modern technologies and the industrialized world.
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[[Continue->The Manchester Color Wheel]]“Comedy works because it engages with boundaries, with treasured perceptions, with rules, conventions, and taboos, but there are occasions when the engagement causes offense, even if no offense was intended...what passes as good taste is socially determined by those who have accrued the most economic, cultural, and social capital” (Mundy).
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Comedy and disgust are two words which, under an initial analysis, wouldn’t seem to have any correlation. However, upon further investigation, it would seem that these two emotions are not so separate as they may seem. Successful comedy stems from the idea of breaking away from norms and it relies on the unexpected. This is also true for generating the feeling of disgust. Reaction videos on the internet surged in popularity in the early years of YouTube, and they have remained to be one of the more popular types of videos on the platform. Videos of people reacting to controversial content, like “Two Girls One Cup,” sometimes became almost more popular than the content itself. Society seems obsessed with the idea of watching someone in discomfort as well as being uncomfortable ourselves from time to time. Vomit, fecal matter, snot, these are all things that fall under the realm of disgusting content, and yet we as humans feel a certain identification with these things because they come from our bodies. Even still, we are not familiar with these things coming from other people. This is why such strong reactions occur when watching something like “Two Girls One Cup” because it is unexpected and not something we see in our day-to-day lives. There is a part of us that is fascinated by the unexpected and even sometimes finds humor in it.
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[[Continue->The Manchester Color Wheel]]“Indeed, the drone’s constant and unwavering presence in modern life becomes so ubiquitous that it is perceived as a kind of silence—we become accustomed to its presence as a background for our modernized life, and most of us would never listen to droning as a distinct, identifiable sound" (Coulthard 118).
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The sound of a drone has been described as a low humming or buzzing noise. The sound is consistent which separates it from the sound of a buzzing bee which may go through different high and low frequencies as it flies around. Lisa Coulthard describes extreme film’s use of drone sounds and how it has come to be associated with certain meanings and themes such as psychological dissociation, death, and even technology. “...the drone is a noise fundamentally tied to modernization and industrialization, a correlation noted by a number of sound theorists” (Coulthard 118). Drone sounds now have this association with these themes because of the repetitive nature of their usage in films that depict these narratives. It is a sound that we are so used to, we hardly even notice it filling in the background noise of so many films. Even still, the drone can generate feelings of uneasiness or nervousness (Coulthard).
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[[Continue->Purple or Dark Green]]Choose a color
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<img src="https://cinemedia.media/wp-content/uploads/BriannaWerder/Purple-1.jpg" alt="Purple" width="300" height="300"> <img src="https://cinemedia.media/wp-content/uploads/BriannaWerder/Dark-Green-1.png" alt="Dark Green" width="300" height="300">
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<center>[[Purple->ASMR Video]] OR [[Dark Green->Squishy Sounds Video]]</center>
<center><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JNrZlK-V8Xg" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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[[Continue->Dead Animal Passage]]</center><center><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://ytcropper.com/embed/Ko5cd8fb3e00e36/loop/noautoplay/" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><a href="/" target="_blank"></a>
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[[Continue->Squishy Sounds Passage]]</center>“the death of a real animal within a fictional diegesis produces a ‘charge of the real’ linked to the felt shift in ontological registers and an attendant response of ethical care. There is a powerful reversibility to this form of rupture, however: viewers recognize, suddenly, a real being that once shared their world, but it may easily slide back into symbolizing other forms of violence” (Middleton).
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Many big-budget films being made are relying on computer generated imagery or enhanced visual effects in order to get reactions from audiences; this is the new normal in film. However, because of this, we forget that there is such a great power that comes with realism. Take a film like "Cannibal Holocaust" which uses imagery of real animals being killed and slaughtered. Texas Viewers are able to differentiate between the literal and the figurative, while still being disturbed by the realistic style of the disturbing images. This allows viewers to know how they feel about the issue they are seeing, like the slaughter of animals, because they are feeling it on a bodily level.
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[[Continue->Dark Blue or Pink]]“In terms of sound, the generic exchange transformed the sound track of Alien into a kind of sonic organism, which connected deeply with filmgoers on a conscious and subconscious level... the elements of Foley are deconstructed in terms of their relationship to identity, “excess,” and the body (a critical point of convergence and anxiety within the horror genre), whereas overall sound effects are connected to an examination of anthropomorphism, invisibility, and subjectivity (Whittington).
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Whittington argues that sound design is what sets the ambience for a film (130). What a viewer, or rather what a listener, hears while watching a film injects their minds with expectations. Ambient noises that can be classified as dark and ominous create expectations of doom in the viewer’s mind. Whereas happy and light sounds make the viewer expect a joyful film viewing experience. In the case of the Alien franchise, generating ambience through sound has proved to be highly successful. The sound of flesh ripping open and blood spattering when the alien violently emerges from the character’s bodies creates such a strong affective experience in the viewer because there is a certain level of identity taking place. Humans are made of flesh and blood, and to hear those bodily sounds in conjunction with the graphic imagery on screen leaves a strong impression in one’s mind. However, the genius of the sound in the Alien films is not just with the identification we’re made to feel with the humans, but also with the world around them. As he characters explore the nests and living spaces of the foreign creatures, there are squishing and crunching sounds happening all the time. These bodily sound effects allow viewers to identify with the world around them.
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[[Continue->Orange or Dark Red]]Choose a color
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<img src="https://cinemedia.media/wp-content/uploads/BriannaWerder/Orange-1.png" alt="Orange" width="300" height="300"> <img src="https://cinemedia.media/wp-content/uploads/BriannaWerder/Dark-Red-1.jpg" alt="Dark Red" width="300" height="300">
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<center>[[Orange->Sound vs. Noise Video]] OR [[Dark Red->Disgust Video]]</center>
<center><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://ytcropper.com/embed/F25cd90308d82ee/loop/noautoplay/" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><a href="/" target="_blank"></a>
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[[Continue->Sad Music Passage]]</center><center><iframe width="854" height="480" src="https://ytcropper.com/embed/LH5cd90d514f6fb/loop/noautoplay/" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><a href="/" target="_blank"></a>
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[[Continue->Disgust Passage]]</center>“If it's a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.” -Alfred Hitchcock
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Film as a medium relies heavily on the visual and one’s desire to see content above all else. The Hitchcock quote above speaks to this belief. However, as important as visuality is to film, sound should never be seen as being less vital to generating a mood within an audience. Sound, especially music, can set the tone for a film in ways that visuals simply can’t. Certain songs trigger memories and feelings in certain people, and it can completely alter their film viewing experience. “When we try to recall, recognize or retrieve an episode, a person, a piece of music, a story, a name…the affective quality of the original input is the first element to emerge” (Forgas). Melancholy tunes are perhaps the most influential of all types of music in film because, as Forgas explains, negative experiences are the ones we tend to hold on to the most. It is easier to remember the moments when you’re sad versus the moments when you’re happy.
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[[Continue->The Manchester Color Wheel]]Referring to disgust: “As a culture we most often invoke the term to designate excesses we wish to exclude... Because so much attention goes to determining where to draw the line, discussions of the gross are often a highly confused hodgepodge of different categories of excess” (Williams).
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The human body and its functions, though it is something we are all very much familiar with, is the cause for much of the disgust that we feel. Gore triggers disgust sensors in many because it forces you to look at the human body in ways it was not meant to be seen. A film showing guts being cut out of a person’s intestines and blood spewed across the wall is making viewers see the body inside out. Looking back at the last few decades of mainstream cinema in the U.S., there has been a slowing down of censorship of violence, gore, and images that produce a feeling of disgust in audiences. This has opened up the door for horror filmmakers to be able to make the films they want and still be able to reach wider audiences. This results in an excess of gory, violent, and sexual themes in films, and it has changed the way we react to them because we have become familiar with it and it no longer feels so excessive.
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[[Continue->The Manchester Color Wheel]]The Manchester Color Wheel study, as explained in the beginning of this project, took people classified as either healthy, anxious, or depressed and asked them to choose colors based on their mood, what their favorite is, and what they are most drawn to. They were also asked to rank each color as either positive or negative. “Yellow was most often associated with a normal mood and grey with an anxious or depressed mood” (Carruthers). The majority of those classified as healthy choose a shade a yellow and being representative of their mood. Bright red was considered to be a positive color, while dark shades of red were considered to be negative. All shades of purple, pink, yellow, and orange were considered to be positive, while only the three lightest shades of green were ranked positive as opposed to the darkest shade which was ranked as negative. Colors which were ranked as positive were more likely to be chosen by healthy individuals, whereas the negatively deemed colors were chosen more often by those classified as anxious or depressed.
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<img src="https://media.springernature.com/lw785/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1186%2F1471-2288-10-12/MediaObjects/12874_2009_Article_415_Fig3_HTML.jpg" alt="Positive and Negative Colors">
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This project used the shades used in the Manchester color wheel in order to create pathways which most closely resembled the description of the colors used in the study. Colors chosen more often by unhealthy individuals or which were deemed as being negative lead down pathways with videos that generate typically negative affective experiences such as sadness or disgust. Positive colors lead down pathways for videos meant to create positive feelings such as sexual arousal, relaxation, or humor. Neutral feelings were also added to the positive pathways. The detailed information of the Manchester Color Wheel was not explained prior to the start of the project so as not to influence pathway choice.
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[[Continue->Works Cited]]Bio
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Brianna Werder is an MA Candidate in Cinema Studies at San Francisco State University. She is a producer who has worked primarily in non-fiction and live broadcasts. Her work at San Francisco State has included research in digital media, new media, and social media.
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<center>Works Cited</center>
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Bender, Andrew. “Top 10 Funniest Movies Ever (As Measured In Laughs Per Minute).” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 30 Apr. 2014.
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Carruthers, Helen R. “The Manchester Color Wheel: Development of a Novel Way of Identifying Color Choice and its Validation in Healthy, Anxious and Depressed Individuals.” BMC Medical Research Methodology. BioMed Central Ltd. 2010
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Coulthard, L. “Dirty Sound: Haptic Noise in New Extremism.” The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media. New York: Oxford University Press. 2013.
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Forgas, Joseph P. Mood and Social Memory. Handbook of Affect and Social Cognition. Psychology Press, 2001.
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Kipnis, Laura. “How to Look at Pornography.” Pornography: Film and Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.
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Middleton, J.” Documentary Horror: The Transmodal Power of Indexical Violence.” Journal of Visual Culture. 2015.
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Mundy, John. “Comedy and Cultural Value: From Bad Taste to Gross-Out.” Laughing Matters: Understanding Film, Television and Radio Comedy. Manchester University Press, 2012, pp. 207–230.
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Poerio, G.L., E. Blakey, T.J. Hostler, and T. Veltri. "More than a Feeling: Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) Is Characterized by Reliable Changes in Affect and Physiology." 2018.
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Whittington, W. “Genre Splicing: Horror and Science Fiction.” Sound Design and Science Fiction (pp. 129-145). University of Texas Press. 2007.
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Williams, Linda. “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess.” Film Quarterly, vol. 44, no. 4, 1991, pp. 2–13.
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Vandaele, Jeroen. "Humor Mechanisms in Film Comedy: Incongruity and Superiority." Poetics Today. 2002.
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<center>The End</center>
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<center>[[Start Over->Manchester Colors Explained]]</center>In 2009, researchers in behavioral science and psychology created a color wheel comprised of 38 shades of colors including black and white and called it the Manchester Color Wheel. Participants in the study were asked to choose a color that best represented their mood, a color they chose as their favorite, and a color they were most drawn to. Of the 323 participants, 105 were classified as healthy, 108 as anxious and 110 as depressed. The colors used in this study will be used in this project for the purposes of deciding which pathway the reader will go down.
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[[Continue->Yellow or Gray]]
An alluring intrigue emanates from these digital cyberpunk spaces inside their melancholic aura. There is a certain beauty within the loneliness of the vivid crowded urban space. Everything seems to fade as time gets lost inside the tides of the never-ending nights. Philip K. Dick ponders in Galactic Pot-Healer, “No structure, even an artificial one, enjoys the process of entropy. It is the ultimate fate of everything, and everything resists it.” (pg.103) Layers of distant memories resonate from the brimming bars and shops; effulgent against the night. The only means of escape is to descend deeper into the labyrinths of concrete. The allure of these metropolis extends throughout the digital space like the endless sprawl of these cyberpunk cityscapes. The fading neon light flickers through the incessant rain... This visualization of these Cyberpunk territories is developed through the conception of digital art, games, and ambient soundtracks. Enthusiasts of these works have formed internet communities that are centered around creating and exploring these forlorn digital spaces.
During the early years of modern computing engineers, programmers and computer scientists were among the few groups of people able to access these newly minted machines. Due to their high costs and massive size large corporations, government intitutions and research universities were typically the only places where these machines were found. However, even during these early years of computer technology a numbr of motivated researchers saw the potential in creating games for these devices. While most of these games would not see a larger audience they would lay the foundation for future advancements in electronic gaming in the decades to come.
We will endeavor to be more mindful of memes in the future and we thank those whom have brought it to our attention.⁰⁰Be cool to each other online, and IRL. That is truly the way.
