Chapter 9 Watching You Watch Movies: Using Eye Tracking to Inform Cognitive Film Theory

"The art of plastic composition consists in leading the spectator's attention through the exact path and with the exact sequence prescribed by the author of the composition. This applies to the eye's movement over the surface of a canvas if the composition is expressed in painting, or over the surface of the screen if we are dealing with a film-frame." (Eisenstein, 1948; pg. 148) One of the key intentions of cognitive film theory is to understand the cognitive processes involved in the viewing of a film and how this relates to the intentions and decisions of a filmmaker. Film theorists have applied an array of intellectual approaches to this question including the psychoanalytical, philosophical, close formal analyses of films and the application of cultural and social theories (Bordwell & Carroll, 1996; pg. 444). These theoretical explorations have generated many rich and detailed hypotheses about how filmmaker decisions may influence viewers but these hypotheses generally remain untested. In order to identify evidence in support of or in disagreement with these hypotheses, cognitive film theorists can appeal to the methods and theories of empirical psychology an