Emotional Response to the Audio-visual Pattern Language of Film (original) (raw)

Audio-visual Rhetoric: Visualizing the Pattern Language of Film

2009

Audiovisual Rhetoric is a knowledge domain for designers in theory and practice that is valid for all communicative actions through media that aim for persuasion. Within this domain, we introduce a framework for media analysis. We developed an AudioVisual Pattern (AVP) language for film that is visualized within a notation system. This system shows auditory and visual parameters in order to reveal film's rhetorical structure. We discuss related theories from pattern language and rhetoric and apply the AVP method to analyze 10 commercials.

Coding emotional events in audiovisual corpora

2008

The modelling of realistic emotional behaviour is needed for various applications in multimodal human-machine interaction such as the design of emotional conversational agents (Martin et al., 2005) or of emotional detection systems (Devillers and Vidrascu, 2007). Yet, building such models requires appropriate definition of various levels for representing the emotions themselves but also some contextual information such as the events that elicit these emotions. This paper presents a coding scheme that has been defined following annotations of a corpus of TV interviews (EmoTV). Deciding which events triggered or may trigger which emotion is a challenge for building efficient emotion eliciting protocols. In this paper, we present the protocol that we defined for collecting another corpus of spontaneous human-human interactions recorded in laboratory conditions (EmoTaboo). We discuss the events that we designed for eliciting emotions. Part of this scheme for coding emotional event is being included in the specifications that are currently defined by a working group of the W3C (the W3C Emotion Incubator Working group). This group is investigating the feasibility of working towards a standard representation of emotions and related states in technological contexts.

Development and assessment of film excerpts used for emotion elicitation

OBJECTIVES: Presentation of a film story is useful tool for inducting positive and negative emotional states. The aim of the present study was to select appropriate film clips that would be effective in the induction of certain emotion. METHODS: The assessment of film excerpts was conducted on the sample of 173 Slovak university students. A set of 11 film excerpts was presented to participants. We analyzed the distribution of elicited emotions, the discreteness of target emotion as well as gender differences in emotional reactivity. Film excerpts were compared also according to the rate of valence and arousal of induced emotional state. RESULTS: Each of the 11 film clips elicited the target emotion (amusement, sadness, neutral emotional state). Women reported higher level of sadness than men after film clips with that specific target emotion. Moreover, mute film clips were as effective as excerpts with dialogues. COCNLUSION: Our results indicate that presentation of film clips (whether mute or with dialogues) is effective method for emotions inducing.

The Emotional Movie Database (EMDB): A Self-Report and Psychophysiological Study

Film clips are an important tool for evoking emotional responses in the laboratory.When compared with other emotionally potent visual stimuli (e.g., pictures), film clips seem to be more effective in eliciting emotions for longer periods of time at both the subjective and physiological levels. The main objective of the present study was to develop a new database of affective film clips without auditory content, based on a dimensional approach to emotional stimuli (valence, arousal and dominance). The study had three different phases: (1) the pre-selection and editing of 52 film clips (2) the self-report rating of these film clips by a sample of 113 participants and (3) psychophysiological assessment (skin conductance level (SCL) and the heart rate (HR)) on 32 volunteers. Film clips from different categories were selected to elicit emotional states from different quadrants of affective space. The results also showed that sustained exposure to the affective film clips resulted in a pattern of a SCL increase and HR deceleration in high arousal conditions (i.e., horror and erotic conditions). The resulting Emotional Movie Database (EMDB) can reliably be used in research requiring the presentation of non-auditory film clips with different ratings of valence, arousal and dominance.

Affective analysis on patterns of shot types in movies

2011

In film-making, the distance from the camera to the subject greatly affects the narrative power of a shot. By the alternate use of Long shots, Medium and Close-ups the director is able to provide emphasis on key passages of the filmed scene, thus boosting the process of identification of viewers with the film characters. On this basis, we here investigate the use of camera distance in famous movie scenes, highlighting the relations between the employed shot types and the affective responses by a large audience. Results obtained by using statistical classifiers suggest that patterns of shot types constitute a key element in inducing affective reactions in the audience, with strong evidences especially on the arousal dimension. Findings are applicable to support systems for media affective analysis, and to better define emotional models for video content understanding.

Characterization of Audiovisual Dramatic Attitudes

Interspeech 2016, 2016

In this work we explore the capability of audiovisual parameters (such as fundamental frequency, rhythm, head motion or facial expressions) to discriminate among different dramatic attitudes. We extract the audiovisual parameters from an acted corpus of attitudes and structure them as frame, syllable, and sentence-level features. Using Linear Discriminant Analysis classifiers, we show that sentence-level features present a higher discriminating rate among the attitudes. We also compare the classification results with the perceptual evaluation tests, showing that F0 is correlated to the perceptual results for all attitudes, while other features, such as head motion, contribute differently, depending both on the attitude and the speaker.

Audio Description of Emotions in Films using Eye tracking

2009

Abstract. Dealing with the Audio description (AD) and taking into account the many works and studies carried out in the field, the aim of this paper focuses on the moment when emotions and gestures must be described—avoiding any personal interpretation by the one who describes the audiovisual material. In this sense, we will carry out an experiment evaluating the eye movement from two groups of people: one watching a film excerpt with AD and another one watching the same film excerpt without AD.

Emotional Prediction and Content Profile Estimation in Evaluating Audiovisual Mediated Communication

International Journal of Monitoring and Surveillance Technologies Research 2(4), 62-80, 2014

The present paper focuses on the extraction and evaluation of salient audiovisual features for the prediction of the encoding requirements in audiovisual content. Recent research showed that encoding decisions can be really crucial during audiovisual mediated communication, where poor encoding may lead to unaccepted Quality of Experience (QoE) or even to the creation of negative emotional response. In contrast, exaggerated high quality encoding may create increased bandwidth demands that are associated with annoying delays and irregular playback flow, resulting again in QoE degradation with similar emotional repulsion. Thus, there has to be a careful treatment with proper encoding balance during the production and deployment of mediated communication audiovisual resources. Such machine-assisted creativity is investigated in the current work, with the utilization of applicable audiovisual features, QoE metrics and emotional measures, aiming at implementing intelligent models for optimal audiovisual production and encoding configuration in demanding mediated communication applications and services.

A conscious design of sound: Created with sound in mind, are movie listeners more susceptible to emotional suggestion?

This article analyses the field of Sound Design, within the context of film. It raises questions as to the importance of a deliberate design of sound, throughout a film, and suggests that a films sound is still too often undeserved. After presenting a brief history of Sound Design, this literature considers ‘Sound Design’, the growth of the concept, in films, since its inception in the late 1970s. It will focus on ideas proposed by academics, and critics, found in books, online journals, newspaper articles, podcasts and other online resources with regards to its believed effect in eliciting an emotional response in audiences. Examining feature length movies; The Conversation (1974) & Wall-E (2008), I analyse the key themes raised in the literature review, and in context with these, present examples that aim to legitimise one theory or another. Moreover it includes scientific research, Emoacoustics which offers another avenue in the aim of answering my research question. I also evaluate on my own production, “Simon” which aimed to further test proposed theories within my research.

Semantic Annotation and Automated Extraction of Audio-Visual Staging Patterns in Large-Scale Empirical Film Studies

2018

The study of audio-visual rhetorics of affect scientifically analyses the impact of auditory and visual staging patterns on the perception of media productions as well as the conveyed emotions. In the AdA-project, together with film scientists, we aim to follow the hypothesis of TV reports drawing on audio-visual patterns in cinematographic productions to emotionally affect viewers by largescale corpus analysis of TV reports, documentaries and genre-films of the topos “financial crisis”. As it can be observed in the past and current media coverage of the world-wide financial crisis, TV reports often employ highly emotionalizing staging strategies in order to convey a certain message to the audience. This is also true for public broadcasting agencies who claim to adopt journalistic objectivity. This project therefore aims to make transparent this hard to grasp opinion-forming level of audio-visual reporting and follows the hypothesis of audio-visual staging patterns always aiming at ...