When we sit down in a movie theater and see a film for the first time, we think we know how we react to that film. In reality, we have no clue as to how our brains are actually processing the images we are seeing on screen. Most of what we think we know is what we've been conditioned to know. We know to be scared at the scary parts, laugh at the funny parts and feel sad at the sad parts. Our inability to correctly communicate how films make us feel has skewed focus groups and created a standard template in the film industry as to how to make a movie.

Now, the fairly new practice of neuromarketing – where MRI technology is used to determine a shopper's preferences and actual brain reactions to a particular product or idea – is being applied to the film industry, starting with the horror genre.

MindSign Neuromarketing is leading the charge in applying neuroscience to feature films, with assistance from film producer Peter Katz. They are calling this new hybrid of neuromarketing and how it applies to film, rather than commercials or movie trailers, neurocinema.

Recently they finished their first full test with results that could change the way films are made. Yes, someone had to lie still in an MRI machine. The objective of the research, specifically, was to determine the brain response in the amygdala to watching scenes from the horror film Pop Skull. For those that don't know, the amygdala is the emotional center of the brain. It's involved in feelings of disgust, anger, lust and fear – all emotions especially elicited during a horror film.

For two sessions of 48 seconds and 68 seconds, a 24-year-old female watched two scenes from the movie while being scanned in a Siemens 3T MRI scanner. With a 20-second break in between three viewings of each scene (to refocus her eyes to center), the data was converted into a BrainMovie (like those cool, colorful brain-scan things you'd see on House) and analyzed by the team at MindSign. What they saw (and what you can see in the movie below) is that for most of the two movie scenes, the amygdala lit up like a Christmas tree out of fear. This activity was pinpointed to the frame, the exact scene and action that registered the response. For instance, "The scariest moment in Scene 1 came when the hand reaches further around the corner." It is that precise. How can any focus group be that exact in locking down the exact moment that they felt fear? Producer Peter Katz explains further in this video.

You can view a second video here (contains violence, NSFW).

To find out more about this technology and what it means for the film industry, I spoke to producer Peter Katz, an award-winning filmmaker focused on utilizing new innovative storytelling techniques from neurocinema to transmedia storytelling – and Dr. David Hubbard, a board-certified neurologist who is the leading neurologist on the project.

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.

GeekDad: How does MindSign Neuromarketing plan on getting people to lie still in an MRI machine for the length of a movie? A commercial is one thing, but an hour and a half? Without snacks? Or is my understanding of the way this works way off? Can you elaborate on how the machine and movie-watching will be utilized?

Hubbard: The real problem in the scanner is falling asleep. It’s actually quite peaceful in the bore. The biggest problem is bladder pressure so we make sure everyone goes to the bathroom just before they enter. One can’t eat popcorn though – head, jaw and tongue movements cause image artifacts. We’ll see if the brain likes M&Ms melting slowly in the mouth. No chewing, please!

GeekDad: How much of a gap do you perceive there being between the results from old methods of focus group marketing and the results of neurocinema when it comes to screening movies?

Hubbard: Recently we scanned a subject whose brain showed only little reaction to a scary scene. On her questionnaire she dutifully wrote “I liked it,” “very scary,” although she confided to the scan technician that actually she found it boring, as did her brain. Besides the problem of focus group subjects saying what they think the interviewer wants to hear, a bigger problem is that they don’t remember what they saw a minute ago. When you ask them which scene they liked best, they can seldom remember. FMRI eliminates both these problems. We can see directly which scenes excite which regions of the brain every one to two seconds, whether the subject is aware of it, or says so or not.

Katz: I recently attended a test screening of an action film, and although I had a blast, and really enjoyed many of the sequences, I had a hard time filling out the questionnaire when the film was over. First off, I'd just been sitting down for a couple hours, and I was restless, more focused on leaving the theater, than recalling every single emotion I had during each and every scene. I just wanted to get home. Plus, I was given a tiny pencil, and tiny margins ... so the whole process seemed limited. I wasn't able, or willing, to truly express my thoughts on the film, and I wasn't completely able to recall every plot point that they needed my opinion on. If the studio had used neurocinema they could have recorded every moment that I was immersed or whenever I tuned out and lost interest.

GeekDad: How do you plan on measuring these differences?

Katz: If this technology starts being regularly utilized by studios I would see how many more successful films were made to measure its impact. Just recently, Nielsen, the leader in market research has gotten behind neuromarketing.

GeekDad: Subliminal marketing is basically illegal, but marketing to the subconscious is not. How do you efficiently bypass the conscious mind to reveal true feelings about a product or film?

Hubbard: We are only conscious of stimuli that last a few hundred milliseconds or longer. In fact half a second to two seconds is the typical duration of conscious experience. The movie industry has already discovered that this time frame is the same for interesting shots. Quicker and the scene looks jerky, slower and the scene gets boring. Can we see if the brain excites to a popcorn image flashing subliminally? We’d better have an answer in the debate about its illegality.

GeekDad: What is the general "Hollywood" view on using the fMRI technology to supplement marketing already in place?

Hubbard: We just read [James] Cameron’s Variety interview in which he says, “I believe that a functional MRI study of brain activity would show that more neurons are actively engaged in processing a 3-D movie than the same film seen in 2-D.” We’re testing that now (the cheap paper goggles are MRI-safe) and will have an answer in a few days. Since we have our own scanner it doesn’t take us the weeks and months that academic scanner projects take. We are also working with a virtual reality company on “total immersion” goggles that can be worn in the scanner.

Katz: It is a new frontier. Most people in the film industry haven't heard of these techniques. Try searching film + neuromarketing or neurocinema on Digg.com. There are little to no articles on this subject.

GeekDad: How is your work and process different from the work of Steven Quartz, director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory at Caltech who is working with Hollywood to use neuromarketing to measure reactions for movie trailers?

Hubbard: Steven Quartz is the best. We’d love to run his scans for him.

GeekDad: How do you answer the critics of neuromarketing who fear that neuromarketers could have too much control over our buying behavior and decision making?

Hubbard: The company No Lie MRI uses our facility. It is quite easy to pick out which question causes the executive areas to struggle. The military has asked us if we can tell if a terror subject has been exposed to radiation even if he doesn’t himself realize he has been. Myself, I am not afraid of other people controlling my mind. I am afraid of not knowing my own mind. My own interest is in meditation. What does my mind look like when it’s really really quiet? What is it doing when it wanders? Is daydreaming about myself different from daydreaming about someone else? We are in fact able to tell when a subject is lying to himself. We are also now doing neuropsych testing, using the same tests currently used by neuropsychologists to measure cognitive and emotional skills in patients with development or traumatic brain injuries. This will surely help people, not control them.

Katz: This technology doesn't brainwash anyone. A moviegoer's brain will reveal their personal preferences, while creators will be able pay attention to those important details to produce better films and know how to effectively market them.

GeekDad: Right now, horror films are basically torture/gore fests with the occasional psychological thriller with some horror elements. We've all become desensitized to them in a sense. How do you see fMRI technology changing the genre so that we react again?

Katz: I don't think fMRI technology can affect trends in horror. Different sub-genre's popularity fluctuate yearly, sometimes even monthly based on box-office returns: At some points psychological/supernatural thrillers are in vogue (i.e., The Others, The Sixth Sense), while other times audiences are clamoring for more visceral bloody horror (i.e., Saw, Hostel). Those trends are difficult to track or change. We will however be able to make scarier films by focusing on the amygdala, the part of your brain that processes information pertaining to threats and fear. As a viewer is exposed to terrifying moments from a horror film, we can watch how much the amygdala was activated when going over the results. This makes the scariness of a horror film quantifiable. Directors will be able to tweak scares, until they are optimized.

GeekDad: What about demographics? The impact a horror film has on me now is much different from the impact it had on me when I was younger. How will people's changing tastes be taken into effect? Will there be different studies for different demographics?

Katz: The beauty of this technology is that it can track people's specific tastes over time, but not blindly put everyone into boxes based on stereotypes of their demographic. Bran scans could reveal that large groups of male football fans enjoy romantic comedies even if they all don't want to admit it. This creates opportunities to profit from new audiences outside the obvious demographics.

GeekDad: If this is successful, will the fMRI neurocinema process be applied to films outside the horror genre?

Katz: The same tools that are applied to making films scarier can be applied to making them funnier, or more dramatically moving. Film should be an emotionally engaging experience. This technology can be used to heighten, no matter what the intended emotional effect. The best-case scenario features packed multiplexes where individuals rarely check their text messages ... they are completely enthralled ... because the filmmakers have done their homework.

Follow Peter Katz on Twitter for updates on new projects or check out his latest film, Pop Skull. You can also email him at neurocinema@gmail.com.

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