Uses Of Film: Psychological Techniques And Nuances In Film

NEPTUNE’S DAUGHTER

Psychological Techniques and Nuances in Film

Priscilla Creswell - PSY 100 - April 2016

It’s not a disguised fact that movies and cinema have come to impact nearly every facet of our culture- our colloquialisms, our views and beliefs, our moods. When you decide to watch a movie, you’re often making that decision based on how you think it will make you feel- if you want to be scared, if you want to laugh, if you want to think, or if you want to have a good cry. What the layman may not truly grasp is how a film can have such a huge impact on them- but the movie industry knows the kind of power they have over people, over consumers. It’s become an art form to be able to accurately and powerfully move an audience in any given way. People study and work for years to balance the delicate skill of subtle manipulation through this visual medium.

There is no single photographic-style image we could possibly use to imagine abstract concepts. Even images that can be drawn can be viewed in the mind’s eye in an infinite number of ways. Film is just the

This perception theory of film is similar to the behaviourist approach to stimulus-response. The presentation of the movie represents the stimulus and the spectator response with the ability to form a perception- in this case, the perception is movement. Hugo Münsterberg highlights the aesthetic qualities film can produce, such as emotion and feelings. Hugo was a german psychologist and a pioneer for applied psychology. He published many works in the United States, one of which was called The Photoplay. He wrote this text after seeing the 1914 film Neptune’s Daughter- he was blown away and decided to analyze the film medium. He compared the film with the workings of the human mind, and was very interested behind the art of moving