As a film minor, I see cinema as one of the most complex art forms. It combines both sight and sound, requires years of work and collaboration from many people, and still succeeds in telling a story like any other medium. Given that, its effect on our brains must be remarkable. This curiosity led me to neurocinematics, a field that is still emerging but endlessly fascinating.
Imagine sitting in a movie theater—maybe alone, with a friend, a partner, or your family. Around you is a room full of strangers, yet you all share more than just the experience of watching together. Chances are, you’re blinking at nearly the same moments, your eyes are following similar patterns, and your brain activity is strikingly alike.
So what does this actually mean? Does it imply that my brain activity will always mirror that of the stranger sitting next to me whenever we watch a movie? Not exactly. Certain films employ deliberate cinematic techniques—such as strategic cuts and camera angles—that guide the audience’s attention to the same focal points. These films hold a stronger grip on viewers, resulting in remarkably similar patterns of brain activity and eye movement (Hasson, 2008). In contrast, other films, whether by design or not, exert far less control. When that happens, the audience’s neural responses and viewing patterns vary much more from one person to the next.
Uri Hasson, a neuroscience professor at Princeton University, and his team used the first 30 minutes of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in their study. Four participants watched the clip inside an fMRI scanner with no extra tasks, so their brain responses could be recorded in a natural viewing setting. This approach differed from traditional fMRI experiments, which usually test with simple stimuli like a single image or word and require subjects to respond during the scan. By letting people simply watch a film, Hasson’s team created a setup closer to real movie-watching. A key part of the study was inter-subject correlation (ISC) analysis, which measures how similar people’s brain activity is while watching the same movie. The results showed that the participants’ brains responded in strikingly similar ways, suggesting that films can guide and synchronize audience brain activity to a notable degree.
Middle Right: Improv show “Curb Your Enthusiasm”
Right: clip of reality
So lets apply this to various movies. A movie with an intense bank robbery scene will generate almost 70% correlation in brain activity among the audience (Miller, 2017). Everyone is extremely focused on the robbery scene, their minds and eyes are not wandering. However, a clip of reality, such as ppl watching in Washinhton square park only generates 5% synchronization in brain activity because there are no special cuts or angle to make a central point of focus for the audience.
The neuromarketing firm MindSign conducted a project using fMRI brain scans on subjects who watched Avatar trailers. Like many modern big-budget films, Avatar appears to have been heavily shaped by neuromarketing trailer testing. This process often combines EEG—short for electroencephalography, a technique that measures brain activity through sensors on the scalp—with other biometric methods to track and record viewers’ responses to different scenes and sequences.
Unlike mainstream neuromarketing companies, MindSign has a niche focus on movies and trailer testing. Its founders used to work for Dreamworks and Sony and own one of the few fMRI machines used in the neuromarketing field. There is plenty of debate and rhetoric among competing firms about the best technologies for brain measurement. fMRI is considered reliable and brain in-depth but the machines are bulky, expensive, and preclude a real-world shopping context. NeuroFocus, which bills itself as the world leader in neuromarketing, employs EEG devices that are worn as headsets by viewers in the theater for movie and trailer screenings (see below). EmSense distributes a “lighter” version of these headsets to panels of respondents which results in a larger sample of test subjects.
So what does neurocinema moving forward? Its a very new field of study There are many different views on this new technology, both negative and positive. Some might say it includes ethical risks regarding mental privacy and manipulation Some producers are excited about this technology, predicting that it will be able to increase viewer satisfaction and promote better movie marketing (Randall, 2012). They think this new technology could figure out what interests their audience most and help create better viewing experiences. Additionally, this technology might offer insight as to how to create a better advertisement that will draw more viewers to the movie theater for a particular movie (Randall, 2012).
Source:
https://www.fastcompany.com/1731055/rise-neurocinema-how-hollywood-studios-harness-your-brainwaves-win-oscars
https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/artsbrain/2020/04/25/neurocinematics-your-brain-on-movies/