Leitmotivik in der Filmmusik

The influence of film music on the perception and experience of the visual worlds shown in a film can hardly be overestimated. But how can this effect, which film musicals leitmotifs exerts on both visual attention and emotional experience during multimodal film reception, be researched? To what extent do they direct visual attention, influence the emotional evaluation of film scenes and physiological emotional responses? In individual case studies of three film excerpts from commercial feature films, Henning Albrecht makes this complex interaction tangible and comprehensible in elaborate AOI analyses ("areas of interest") using modern eye-tracking methods.

New Mediation, New Films, New Experiments

This chapter presents the authors’ view of the future, discussing new digital technologies and mediations and their impact on film and its reception. The subheadings are: “New positioning,” a discussion of the future of film and cinema in the light of new and emerging technologies and the few empirical studies addressing these issues; “Digital presences,” an overview of how the authors’ model can help in formulating new theoretical and empirical approaches; “Death by chat,” an analysis of the film Unfriended with a discussion of how new mediations of filmic content reshape the spectator’s relation to film; “A new film grammar,” which introduces action cams and their impact on film viewing; and “Goodbye to the screen?” which envisions how the new filmic mediation may generate a new form of film reception.

Subtitles and cinematic meaning-making: Interlingual subtitles as textual agents

This theoretical paper adopts the point of view of the audience of subtitled films and outlines a theory of subtitles as communicative agents within the participation structures of film reception. Based on examples from three Swiss fiction films – Heidi (2015), Heimatland (2015) and Der Goalie bin ig (2014) – the following communicative effects are found and illustrated: uniformity, authorisation, foregrounding, aestheticisation, foreignisation. These effects are conceptualised in terms of Constitutive Communication theory and textual agency (Cooren. 2004. Textual agency: How texts do things in organizational settings. Organization 11(3). 373–393. doi:10.1177/1350508404041998), which describe that by communicating with audiences, subtitles animate into being other participants in film discourse and contribute to what viewers take away in terms of characters, stories, the cultural aspects they represent and the source culture(s) from which the text is perceived to communicate.

Introduction

This introduction chapter outlines the theoretical framework of the book, and the methodological potential of the act of “screening,” when exploring the interplay between image and idea, politics and culture, film talent and audience in postwar Hong Kong film culture. While concepts of reflecting and viewing imply a unidirectional relationship between film and subject, the author argues that “screening” focuses more on the processes through which cinema contributed to the building of Hong Kong’s postwar community and identity. By using the double meaning of “screening” as both revealing and concealing, the author argues that postwar Hong Kong cinema—which in this book include 1950s and 1960s official documentary films, leftist family melodrama, and youth films— both conceals the anxieties of the British colonial government during the Cold War, and exposes the different narratives constructed by local filmmakers about what it means to be Chinese citizens during the postwar period. This introduction also takes into consideration the importance of postwar Hong Kong audiences, both real and implied, whose spectatorship was negotiated at the intersection colonialist and nationalist “address” and a familial and localized “reception.” This study has implication for the fields of Hong Kong, Chinese cinema, Cold War, and film reception studies.

The influence of film music on moral judgments of movie scenes and felt emotions

Music can modulate perceptions, actions, and judgments in everyday situations. The aim of this study was to investigate a potential influence of music on moral judgments in the context of film reception. In the course of an online experiment, 252 participants were assigned to three different experimental conditions (no, positive, or negative music). Participants were requested to assess actions shown in two 2–3-minute audio-visual film excerpts with regard to their perceived moral rightness and to report induced emotions after watching the film clips. Afterwards, they were asked to complete the MFQ-30 questionnaire measuring the foundations of their moral judgments. Results revealed that in one of four cases (i.e. happiness in film excerpt 1), music had a significant effect on recipients’ emotions and also indirectly influenced their moral judgment. In three of four cases, however, the intended emotion induction through film music did not succeed, and thus a significant indirect influence of music on moral judgment was not found. Furthermore, associations between moral foundations, perceived rightness of action, and induced emotions were observed. Future lab studies are indicated to investigate potential moderating influences of the experimental environment on emotion induction through film music.

Film Reception by Means of New Media or How the Film Escaped from the Cinema

The biggest change in film reception occurred in the moment when the film audience began to watch films over the Internet, or with devices that can connect to it, i.e. computers, laptops and smartphones. The paper redefined notions of contemporary audience and different horizons of expectations, and a new horizon of expectations has been established, and that is the horizon of device expectations. Also, we have redefined the conative function i.e. the empty spaces function, individual and social reception of the film, while the theory of production relations in the case of the production of art has been applied to the film industry. The paper applies to the film received through social networks requirements of all characteristics of new media, which is also a novelty in scientific thinking.

Off to the Pictures: Cinema, Fiction and Interwar Culture

The chapter outlines the critical and contextual foundations for the case study chapters that follow, establishing in greater depth the three interlocking contexts of moviegoing, print culture and modernity in interwar Britain. It offers an overview of the interrelationship between key framing contexts that inform the coordinates of the study, considering British cinema culture alongside the interwar publishing industry for women’s writing, read in relation to the changing texture of women’s everyday lives in British modernity alongside a more detailed consideration of the intersections between critical explorations of film reception and intermediality.