Designing a New Method of Studying Feature-Length Films
An Empirical Study and its Critical Analysis
in Projections
Abstract
Measuring viewers’ experiences of films has become a critical issue for filmmakers because all kinds of audiences now have access to new releases from all over the world. Some approaches have focused on the cognitive level of the experience, while others have emphasized the structure of films. Additionally, some have used quantitative objective methods to examine audience reactions to short film sequences, while others have applied qualitative approaches to study feature-length films. However, an integrated method that combines the features of these approaches is needed. In this article, we describe a new method that combines quantitative and qualitative data to study viewers’ experiences of different structural features of films. This method involves an online subjective response mechanism that can be used to capture and measure the experiences of different target audiences as they watch movies of different lengths.
Contributor Notes
Jose Cañas-Bajo is currently a Project Researcher with the Menestys Group at Aalto University in Finland. He recently obtained his PhD at the University of Jyväskylä. His research focuses on viewers’ emotional experiences with audiovisual products in different cultures. Currently, he is working on a project on cross-cultural factors of full-scripted film experiences from an appraisal theory of interest perspective. He aims to identify the factors and the properties that make a feature film successful in different cultural contexts. E-mail: jose.canasbajo@aalto.fi
Teresa Cañas-Bajo is a Doctoral Candidate in the Vision Science Program at the University of California, Berkeley,). Her research interests include visual perception and eye movements. Her doctoral work is supported by a Fulbright scholarship. E-mail: tere93@gmail.com
Eleni Berki is a Senior Researcher at the University of Tampere and an Adjunct Professor of Software Quality and Formal Modeling at the University of Jyväskylä. Her current teaching and research focus is on computational/sociocognitive meta-modeling, cybersecurity, privacy, and trust, and free/open-source software as social learning/innovation. She has worked in the UK, China, Finland, and Greece. E-mail: eleni.berki@uta.fi
Juri-Petri Valtanen is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Education at the University of Tampere, Finland. His PhD thesis is entitled, “What Is the Problem? The Meaning of Problem in Problem-Based Learning Context.” His research and teaching interests include problem-focused education, problem-finding and problem-solving processes, question asking, and value and quality improvement. E-mail: valtanenjuripetri@gmail.com
Pertti Saariluoma is a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Jyväskylä. He wrote his doctoral thesis about experts’ thinking at the University of Turku in 1984. He has studied and worked at the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, Carnegie Mellon University, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). E-mail: pertti.saariluoma@jyu.fi
Projections
The Journal for Movies and Mind
