https://www.tlu.ee/en/neurocine-kick-off-conference

NeuroCine Conference´s aimed to pave the ground for future joint interdisciplinary research endeavours between filmmakers and neuroscientists in cinematic storytelling, film viewing and related first-person experiences.

The Baltic NeuroCine conference invited both local and international colleagues to join the effort of bridging the explanatory gaps between

  1. neuro-physiological observation data,
  2. first-person experiential data,
  3. descriptive data of the experienced film content.

In particular, the organizeres looked for contributions from a broad multidisciplinary spectrum of expertise with viewpoints on practical filmmaking, be they from psychophysiology, phenomenology, narratology or related technologies. Likewise all relevant theoretical views, systemic models and epistemic considerations were welcomed and proposals that target a broad audience beyond disciplinary niches.

Originally, the approach of neurocinematics was coined by our keynote speaker Uri Hasson and his colleagues (Projections 2008), with reference to experimental studies that apply neuroimaging methods to understand the functional brain of film viewers while engaged with the same audiovisual content. This method allows, to some extent,  generalization over individuals in terms of what is called intersubject correlation (see reviews Jääskeläinen et al. 2020, 2021). However, it has become evident that neuro-physiological measurements alone do not suffice to fully understand how the collected quantitative neural data of film-viewing relates to the temporally unfolding narrative content on one hand, and film viewers’ embodied first-person experiences on the other. This is why, we argue, neurocinematic methods need to be extended so as to enable associating the observations with embodied and enacted first-person experiences, as well as the associated temporally unfolding narrative contexts.

So far, the focus of the neurocinematic inquiries have mainly been on the observation of the film viewer. However, a range of research questions could be related to professional filmmaking practitioners such as screenwriters, editors, sound-designers, or cinematographers. We propose that their experiences and actions could be likewise addressed using neurocinematic methods, based on the assumption that filmmakers and viewers alike build their experience and sense-making on the same embodied foundation, as their occasional references to “instincts”, or “gut feelings” may suggest. In what ways could neuroimaging observations of viewer experience be extended to accumulating novel insights on the professional practices? Is this also something relevant for the future teaching of practical filmmaking?