SPECTATOR PHYSIOLOGY
|| Featuring ||
Tomas Axelson. Associate Professor in sociology, Dalarna University – Sweden
Philippe Barrière. Script-consultant & Screenwriter
Designing a fictional narrative generally requires that authors and script-writers maintain a paradoxical relationship between the notion of the recipient-spectator being both the motivation and the source of constraint. Though the recipient is central to the storytelling mechanism, a less essential approach would sometimes be preferable because of the implications related to marketing alone. This paradoxical relationship presents an obstacle to the construction of a common core of understanding of the spectator’s experience from a practical point of view.
Bearing in mind the idea of facilitating the emergence of this core of understanding relevant to the community of fiction writers, this unprecedented first StoryTANK session will entail a meeting between scriptwriters bearing practical skills, and researchers or experts, bearers of specific expertise in key areas of reflection:
The description of the neuro-psychological and physiological experience when immersed in a fictional film.
What kind of activity does this involve? What are the physiological mechanisms or reflexes involved? What are the conditions for success? What are the circumstances when immersion fails? Are these conditions universal?
The spectator’s motivations: what does he/she expect from this experience? What kind of conscious satisfaction needs are mostly sought by the spectator? What are the existing less conscious expectations?
The emotions involved in this immersive experience. The association between these emotions and the pragmatic dimensions of the story.
Are we expecting to experience familiar or unprecedented emotions? To be entertained or to delve deeper into self-discovery through the fictional experience? Do film stories satisfy specific emotional needs? Is the central phenomenon of empathy rooted in an emotional experience?
The conditions for the emergence of meaning from an emotional experience.
What role does moral judgment play in the spectator’s experience? Is this a key factor? In what way does the emergence of meaning depend on the spectator’s construction of a metaphor?
Each of these themes will be addressed through discussions relative to our main concern: in what way can scientific expertise support or contradict the scriptwriters’ intuitive skills and how can it enhance their writing methods? To what extent does it challenge established theories and assumptions in the field of scriptwriting?
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