Though focus groups and test marketing of films is old news, a hybrid version with brainwave scans is truly bizarre. I think something that distinguishes a film as a kind of art versus a mere cultural commodity is the sensibility and aesthetics of the filmmaker. Granted, block busters require dollars and investments to recouped, but if we begin to monitor brainwave responses to films to test whether or not they are emotionally viable, what’s next?
This adds a new twist to Benjamin’s proclamation that aesthetics can lead to fascism.
Neurocinema Aims to Change the Way Movies are Made | GeekDad | Wired.com:
GeekDad: How do you see the fMRI technology changing how films are made?
Peter Katz: Movies could easily become more effective at fulfilling the expectations of their particular genre. Theatrical directors can go far beyond the current limitations of market research to gain access into their audience’s subconscious mind. The filmmakers will be able to track precisely which sequences/scenes excite, emotionally engage or lose the viewer’s interest based on what regions of the brain are activated. From that info a director can edit, re-shoot an actor’s bad performance, adjust a score, pump up visual effects and apply any other changes to improve or replace the least compelling scenes. Studios will create trailers that will [be] more effective at winning over their intended demographic. Marketing executives will know in a TV spot whether or not to push the romance- or action-genre angle because, for example, a scene featuring the leads kissing at a coffee shop could subconsciously engage the focus group more than a scene featuring a helicopter exploding.
GeekDad: Explain how the subconscious mind can better determine how we actually feel about what our conscious mind is interacting with and how that applies to film.
David Hubbard: If an audience already knows what they feel, fMRI is an expensive way to confirm the obvious. The magic of fMRI is that it shows what the brain is doing even if the viewer isn’t aware of it or can’t articulate it. We are comparing R-rated trailers to PG-13 trailers and discover that gore and sex and cursing sometimes activate the fear-anger-disgust area and sometimes it doesn’t. Let’s see what these scenes do to the brains of the MPAA when they’re deciding what’s socially acceptable; if they’re not excited, why should we [be]? FMRI makes it easy to see what’s boring.
