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• Published: 03 July 2018

A psychology of the film

• Ed S. Tan 1 , 2  

Palgrave Communications volume  4 , Article number:  82 ( 2018 ) Cite this article

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• Cultural and media studies

The cinema as a cultural institution has been studied by academic researchers in the arts and humanities. At present, cultural media studies are the home to the aesthetics and critical analysis of film, film history and other branches of film scholarship. Probably less known to most is that research psychologists working in social and life science labs have also contributed to the study of the medium. They have examined the particular experience that motion pictures provide to the film audience and the mechanisms that explain the perception and comprehension of film, and how movies move viewers and to what effects. This article reviews achievements in psychological research of the film since its earliest beginnings in the 1910s. A leading issue in the research has been whether understanding films is a bottom-up process, or a top-down one. A bottom-up explanation likens film-viewing to highly automated detection of stimulus features physically given in the supply of images; a top-down one to the construction of scenes from very incomplete information using mental schemata. Early film psychologists tried to pinpoint critical features of simple visual stimuli responsible for the perception of smooth movement. The riddle of apparent motion has not yet been solved up to now. Gestalt psychologists were the first to point at the role of mental structures in seeing smooth movement, using simple visual forms and displays. Bottom-up and top-down approaches to the comprehension of film fought for priority from the 60s onwards and became integrated at the end of the century. Gibson’s concept of direct perception led to the identification of low-level film-stylistic cues that are used in mainstream film production, and support film viewers in highly automated seamless perception of film scenes. Hochberg’s argument for the indispensability of mental schemata, too, accounted for the smooth cognitive construction of portrayed action and scenes. Since the 90s, cognitive analyses of narration in film by film scholars from the humanities have revolutionised accounts of the comprehension of movies. They informed computational content analyses that link low-level film features with meaningful units of film-story-telling. After a century of research, some perceptual and cognitive mechanisms that support our interaction with events in the real world have been uncovered. Today, the film experience at large has reappeared on the agenda. An integration of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms is sought in explaining the remarkable intensity of the film experience. Advances are now being made in grasping what it is like to enjoy movies, by describing the absorbing and moving qualities of the experience. As an example, a current account of film viewers' emotional experience is presented. Further advances in our understanding of the film experience and its underlying mechanisms can be expected if film psychologists team up with cognitive film studies, computer vision and the neurosciences. This collaboration is also expected to allow for research into mainstream and other genres as forms of art.

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An agenda for the psychology of the film

At the time of the first kinetoscope and cinema exhibitions in 1894–1895, thanks to devices such as the Phenakistoscope, Zoetrope and Praxinoscope, moving images had been popular for decades. Just before that time, academic psychology turned to the identification of the mechanisms underlying the functioning of the mind. Perception psychologists began to study apparent movement of experimental visual stimuli under controlled conditions because they found moving stimuli interesting cases in human perception, or as part of the study of psychological aesthetics founded by Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt. The publication of The Photoplay: A Psychological Study marked the beginning of the psychology of the film. Hugo Münsterberg was trained by Wundt and recruited by William James to lead the experimental psychology lab at Harvard. Importantly, Münsterberg was also an avid cinemagoer as his analyses of theatrical films of his time may tell, and a professing cinephile at that. Münsterberg set two tasks for the study of the film: one was to describe the functioning of psychological mechanisms in the reception of film; the other to give an account of film as an artistic medium.

Münsterberg shared his contemporaries’ and even today’s spectators’ fascination for the wonder of moving images and their apparent reality. He described the film experience as a 'unique inner experience' that due to the simultaneous character of reality and pictorial representation “brings our mind into a peculiar complex state” (p. 24).

In the first part of The Photoplay , explores how film characteristically addresses the mechanisms of the basic psychological functions investigated by experimental psychology—namely perception, attention, memory and emotion. Footnote 1 In The Photoplay the imagination is the psychological faculty that theatrical movies ultimately play upon; attention, perception, memory and emotion are also directed by the film, but contribute to the film experience as building blocks for the imagination in the first place. One of the ways that films entertain the imagination is by mimicking the psychological functions. Film scenes may represent as-if perceptions, as-if thoughts, as-if streams of associations, and as-if emotions or more generally: display subjectivity. Footnote 2 Second, the film creates an imagined world that deviates from real world scenes as we perceive these in real life. Liberated from real life perceptual constraints involves the spectator’s self in 'shaping reality by the demands of our soul' (p. 41). Third, Münsterberg has a nuanced view of the automaticity of responses to film. On the one hand, it is the spectator’s choice—based on their interest—which ideas from memory and the imagination to fit to images presented on screen; they are felt as 'our subjective supplements' (p. 46). On the other, the film’s suggestions function to control associated ideas, '… not felt as our creation but as something to which we have to submit' (p. 46). And yet in Münsterberg’s view the film does not dictate psychological responses in any way. Footnote 3

Finally, The Photoplay provides abundant and compelling introspective reports of the film experience and so probes into the phenomenology of film, that is, what it is like to watch a movie. I think it is fair to say that for Münsterberg the film experience is the ultimate explanandum for a psychology of the film. In order to account for that phenomenology by mechanism of the mind proper descriptions of the film experience are needed, and introspective reports are an indispensable starting point for these.

The other task Münsterberg set himself was to propose an account of the film as a form of art. Part two of The Photoplay proposes that the film experience includes an awareness of unreality of perceived scenes. This awareness is taken as fundamental for psychological aesthetics; all forms of art are perceived to go beyond the mere imitation of nature. Footnote 4 Münsterberg showed himself a formalist in that he theorised that aesthetic satisfaction depends not on recognition of similarity with the real world or practical needs, but on the sense of an 'inner agreement and harmony [of the film’s parts]' (p. 73). Footnote 5 But in order to qualify as art, according to Münsterberg film was not to deviate too much from realistic representation that distinguishes theatrical movies from non-mainstream forms.

Münsterberg’s agenda is in retrospect quite complete. The detailed investigation of psychological mechanisms and aesthetics of film is followed by a last chapter on the social functions of the photoplay. The thoughts forwarded in it are more global than those on perception and aesthetics. The immediate effect of theatrical films on their audience is enjoyment due to their freeing the imagination, and their easy accessibility to consciousness 'which no other art can furnish us' (p. 95). Enjoyment comes with additional gratifications such as a feeling of vitality, experiencing emotions, learning and above all aesthetic emotion.

In a final section behavioral effects of successful films are discussed. Here the film psychologist vents concerns on what we now refer to as undesirable attitude changes and social learning, especially in young audiences. The agenda of today's social science research on mass media effects (e.g. Dill, 2013 ) is not all that different from Münsterberg's in the last chapter of The Photoplay.

The two tasks that Münsterberg worked on set the agenda for the psychology of film in the century after The Photoplay . It is clearly recognisable in the psychology of the film as we know it today. Footnote 6 But the promising debut made in 1916 was not followed up until the nineteen seventies, or so it seems. James Gibson lamented in his last book on visual perception that whereas the technology of the cinema had reached peak levels of applied science, its psychology had so far not developed at all (1979, p. 292). The cognitive revolution in psychology of the 60s paved the way for its upsurge in the early 80s. But some qualifications need to be made on the seeming moratorium. First, Rudolf Arnheim developed since the 1920s a psychology of artistic film form. Second, although not visible as a coherent psychology of the film, laboratory research on issues in visual perception of the moving image—in particular studies of apparent movement—continued.

Gestalt psychology and film form

Rudolf Arnheim’s essays published first in 1932 added analytic force to Münsterberg’s conviction that film is not an imitation of life. Film and Reality ( 1957 ) highlights shortcomings of film in representing scenes as we know them from natural perception. Footnote 7 In the same essay, it is pointed out that comparing a filmic representation of a scene with its natural perception is what analytic philosophers would call an error of category. In The Making of Film ( 1957 ) Arnheim presented an inventory of formative means for artistic manipulations of visual scenes, including delimitation and point of view, distance to objects and mobility of framing. It is argued that chosen manipulations often go against the most realistic options. For example, ideal viewpoints and canonical distances are often dismissed in favour of more revealing options. Footnote 8 Arnheim’s aesthetics of film gravitates towards acknowledged artistic productions more than to the 'naturalistic narrative film' (e.g., 1957 , p. 116–117) the more moderate art form that Münsterberg tended to prefer.

Arnheim was informed by such founders of Gestalt psychology as Wertheimer, Köhler and Koffka. This school held that natural perception results from the mind’s activity. It organises sensory inputs into patterns according to formal principles such as simplicity, regularity, order and symmetry. Arnheim developed into the leading Gestalt theorist of aesthetics of the 20th century. In his 1974 book he analysed a great number of pictorial, sculptural, architectural, musical and poetic works of art while only rarely referring to film. Footnote 9 The cornerstone aesthetic property of art works including film is expression, defined by Arnheim as 'modes of organic or inorganic behaviour displayed in the dynamic appearance of perceptual objects or events' ( 1974 , p. 445). Expression’s dynamic appearance is a structural creation of the mind imposing itself on sound, touch, muscular sensations and vision. Expressive qualities are in turn, the building blocks of symbolic meaning that art works including film add to the representation of objects and events as we know them in the outer world. Thus, Arnheim’s theory of expression and meaning in the arts seems to echo Münsterberg’s formalist position on the perception of 'inner harmony' as the determinant of film spectators’ aesthetic satisfaction.

Apparent motion

Münsterberg shared the amazement that moving images awakened in early film audiences. He considered the experience of movement a central issue for the psychology of the film. The experience of movement in response to a series of changing still pictures has been studied in psychology and physiology under the rubric of apparent motion . Footnote 10 In Münsterberg’s days, international psychology labs were probing the perception of movement in response to experimental stimuli that were perceived as moving images. Well-known examples include apparent motion induced by the subsequent views of single stationary lines in different positions that result in phi movement , the perception of one moving shape or line. Researchers in this area have continued to study the perception of movement in film as only one of many interesting visual stimuli, such as shapes painted on rotating disks, or dynamic computer-generated lights, shapes and objects of many kinds. Why and how we see motion has been as basic to the study of visual perception as questions of perception of colour, depth, and shape. Helmholtz proposed that what we need to explain is how retinal images that correspond one-to one, i.e., optically with a scene in the world are transformed into mental images, or percepts that we experience. In the case of apparent motion, we also need to understand how a succession of retinal images are perceived as one or more objects in motion Footnote 11 Apparent motion in film viewing needs to be smooth, Footnote 12 and depends on frame rates and masking effects. (The latter effects refer to dampening of the visual impact of one frame by a subsequently presented black frame).

Münsterberg’s conviction that the perception of movement needs a cognitive contribution from the viewer clashes with alternative explanations that rely on prewired visual mechanisms that automatically and immediately pick up the right stimulus features causing an immediate perception of motion, without the mind adding anything substantial. The inventors of nineteenth century moving image devices explained the illusion of movement by the slowness of the eye, possibly following P.M. Roget’s report on apparent motion to the Royal Society in 1824. In the early years of cinema, the persistence of vision account was meant to add precision to this explanation. It proposed that the retina, the optic nerve or the brain could not keep up with a rapid succession of projected frames, and that afterimages would bridge the intervals between subsequent frames. Anderson and Fisher ( 1978 ) and Anderson and Anderson ( 1993 ) have argued why the notion is false and misleading. It suggests that film viewers’ perceptual system sluggishly pile up retina images on top of one another. However, this would lead them to blur which obviously is not the case. The Andersons refer to the explanation as a myth because it is based on a mistaken conception of film viewing as a passive process. Even with the characteristically very small changes between subsequent frames characteristic of motion picture projection, the visual system performs an active integrative role in distinguishing what has changed from one image to another. This integrating mechanism in film viewing is exactly the same as in perceiving motion in real world scenes. Mechanistic explanations have since been founded on growing insights in the neuroscience of vision, such as single cell activity recordings in response to precisely localised stimulus features. Footnote 13 'Preprocessing' of visual input before it arrives in the cortex takes place in the retina and the lateral geniculate nucleus, which have specialised cells or trajectories for apprehending various aspects of motion. There are major interactions between perceptual modules. Footnote 14 Physiological and anatomical findings in the primate visual system, as well as clinical evidence, support the distinction of separate channels for the perception of movement on the one hand, and form, colour and depth on the other (Livingstone and Hubel, 1987 ). Research on how exactly the cortical integration systems for vision are organised has not yet come to a close. A variety of anatomical subsystems have been identified Footnote 15 , and there is room for task variables in the explanation of motion perception. Footnote 16 The operation of task variables in presumably automated processes (e.g., attentional set, induced by specific task instructions) complicates accounts of apparent motion and the perception of movement based on lowest processing levels.

Non-trivial and clear-cut contributions of the mind to smooth apparent motion have been proposed by Gestalt psychologists. Arnheim ( 1974 ) considered the perception of movement as subsidiary to that of change. The mind uses Gestalt principles such as good continuation and object consistency to perceive patterns in ongoing stimuli. Movement is the perception of developing sequences and events. Footnote 17 Gestalt psychologists have attempted to identify stimulus features that are perceived as a spatiotemporal pattern of 'good' motion, and they discovered various types of apparent motion have been distinguished as a function of stimulus features. In an overview volume, Kolers ( 1972 ) presented phi and beta motion as the major variants. Phi , the most famous, was first documented by Wertheimer in 1912 . An image of an object is presented twice in succession in different positions. Footnote 18 Pure or beta motion that is objectless motion, was the novel and amazing observation; the perception seemed to be a sum or integration by the mind beyond the stimulus parts, and asked for an explanation. It is also experienced when the objects in the subsequent presentations are different.

Wertheimer and those after him looked for mechanisms of the mind that could complement the features of the stimulus responsible for apparent motion in its various forms. Footnote 19 Other studies of apparent motion, too, indicated that simple models of stimulus features alone could not explain apparent motion. Footnote 20 One of the best examples of what the cognitive system adds to stimulus features is induced motion (Duncker, 1929 ). When we see a small target being displaced relative to a framework surrounding it, we invariably see the target moving irrespective of whether it is the target or the frame that is displaced. Ubiquitous film examples are shots of moving vehicles, with mobile or static framing.

In this summary and incomplete overview of the field, we could not make a strict distinction between mechanist and cognitive explanations for the perception of movement in film. The current state of research does not allow for it. Footnote 21 Kolers’s conclusions on the state of the field closing his 1972 volume on motion perception seem still valid. He inferred from then extant research that there must be separate mechanisms for extracting information from the visual stimulus and for selecting and supplementing the information into a visual experience of smooth object motion or motion brief. He concluded that 'The impletions of apparent motion make it clear that although the visual apparatus may select from an array [of] features to which it responds, the features themselves do not create the visual experience. Rather, that experience is generated from within, by means of supplementative mechanisms whose rules are accomodative and rationalizing rather than analytical' (p.198). But even if after Koler's analysis some perceptual (Cutting, 1986) or brain mechanisms (Zacks, 2015) have been identified today we still do not know enough about the self-supplied supplementations. Footnote 22

Perception and cognition of scenes

Mental representation and event comprehension.

Contributions of the mind can go considerably beyond apparent motion, i.e., the perception of smooth motion from one frame to another. The cognitive revolution in academic psychology that took off in the 1960s broadened the conceptualisation of contributions of the mind to the film experience beyond the narrower stimulus-response paradigms that had dominated psychological science until the 1960s. The cognitive revolution went beyond Gestalt notions of patterns applied by the mind on stimulus information. It introduced the concept of mental representation as a key to understanding the relation between sensory impressions from the environment on the one hand, and people’s responses to it. Moreover, these cognitive structures were seen functional in mental operations such as retrieval and accommodation of schemas from memory, inference and attribution. These were quite complex in comparison to perceptual and psychophysical responses. In the past 30 years, they have come to encompass event, action, person, cultural, narrative and formal-stylistic schemas. The cognitive turn in film psychology has stimulated a growing exchange with humanist film scholarship, resulting in advances in the elaboration of cognitive structural notions. Early applications of the cognitive perspective in the psychology of the film can be found in the 1940s and 50s in work by Albert Michotte ( 1946 ) and Heider and Simmel. Footnote 23

Against mental representation: direct perception of film events

The psychology of the film as a subdiscipline of academic psychology really took off in the late 1970s. Münsterberg’s broad agenda that had been scattered across isolated studies of mainly movement perception regained general acclaim. This was due first to the booming supply and consumption of moving images through media television and computer-generated imagery since the 60s. Second, the cognitive turn in experimental psychology renewed an interest in perception and cognition as it occurs in natural ecologies. This is the backdrop against which James Gibson ( 1979 ) noted the virtual absence of a psychology of the moving image, motivating his chapter on the film experience. The chapter was important in that it applied his highly influential ecological principles of perception of real world scenes to perception in the cinema. Gibson’s general theory of visual perception (e.g., Gibson, 1979 ) hinges on the notion that the visual system has evolved to extract relevant information from the world in a direct fashion. A scene presents itself to the observer as an ambient optical array that immediately and physically reflects the structure of the real world. Changes and transitions in the flow of the optical array are due to natural causes such as alternations of lighting intensity of the scene, e.g., due to clouds, or movement of objects in the scene or of the observer. These variations in the optical flow enable the automatic pick-up of invariants. Example invariants are the change in size of portions in the array, and the density of texture in that portion when the observer gets closer to, or farther away from the object. Footnote 24 The changes in these parameters are linked with depth-information in a way that is constant across different scenes, observer speeds, lighting conditions, etc. Invariants enable the direct perception of the real world in the service of adaptive action. Disturbances of the optic flow can automatically be perceived as events. The events are categorised on the basis of the nature of the disturbances, e.g., as terrestrial, animate, or chemical events. Furthermore, the direct tuning of the perceptual senses to the structures of the environment enable an immediate perception of affordances , for example the slope of a hill causes the direct perception of 'climbability'.

The experience of motion pictures according to Gibson involves a dynamic optical flow exactly like the one an observer would have when being present at the filmed scene. Footnote 25 Film represents the world to the senses that are calibrated to that world. The field of view of the camera becomes the optic array to the viewer (Gibson, 1979 , p. 298). Perception of objects, movement, events and affordances is direct and realist, based as it is on the same invariants and affordances that the scene in the real world would offer. Deviations from these as emphasised by cognitivist film psychologists from Münsterberg through Arnheim to Hochberg as we will shortly see, are largely taken as non-representative exceptions.

A major affordance offered by conventional movies is empathy with characters. Empathy presupposes that we understand what happens to characters. Scenes present their actions, reactions and feelings. However, most scenes are not continuous. How do we understand scenes presented in pieces, and what are the limits to our understanding? Gibson’s reply to the question of how continuity is perceived in scenes that is, smooth movement and unitary events across cuts would be that the perceptual system extracts the same invariants from the two shots on either side of the cut. The elegant explanation again rests upon a presumed correspondence between perception of real world scenes and film scenes.

Gibson inspired important theorising on the film experience, notably by Anderson and Cutting that we will turn to shortly. Here we emphasise that his direct perception account of the film experience stands in perpendicular opposition to the key innovation that the cognitive turn introduced in experimental psychology. Gibson denied the necessity of mental representations in the perception of objects and events, be it in real scenes or in film.

Cognitive schemas and the canonical set-up of the cinema

The role of mental representations, be they cognitive principles or schemas or other mental structures was argued over a lifetime of work in the psychology of film by Julian Hochberg. A perception psychologist with an interest in pictorial representations and their aesthetics, he devoted a large part of his work to identify what is given in film stimuli and how perception goes beyond that, in often ingenuous demonstrations and experiments. (The demonstrations are, in fact, introspective observations of film perception under exactly specified, reproducible stimulus conditions). A comprehensive overview can be found in Hochberg ( 1986 ). Footnote 26 His legacy should be referred to as the Hochberg and Brooks oeuvre, because his wife Virginia Brooks a psychologist and filmmaker, contributed such a great deal to it. Hochberg found that cognitive schemata are necessary in the perception of film for two reasons. The most profound one is that completely stimulus-driven (or 'bottom-up') accounts of the perception of movement, events, and scene continuity do not really explain the experience. For example, Hochberg and Brooks point out that neurophysiological motion detectors do not explain motion perception, that is, they 'amend but do not demolish' an account based on a mental representation of motion (Hochberg and Brooks, 1996b , p. 226). The same would go for any other direct perception account, including Gibson’s optics plus invariant extraction model. The more practical argument is that the direct perception account fails to pose limits to the scope of its application, leaving thresholds and ceiling conditions for the mechanisms out of consideration. The canonical set-up of cinematic devices for recording and displaying motion pictures has evolved to produce good impressions of depth, smooth and informative motion, emphasis on relevant objects and continuity of action, often violating the course of direct perception in comparable real world scenes. Figure 1 presents a demonstration of active disregard that viewers of mainstream movies typically display. (See also Cutting & Vishton ( 1995 ) on contextual use of depth-information).

Example of perceptual disregard in the cinema. Hochberg ( 2007 ) discusses the view of objects moving in front of a landscape. In normal film viewing flatness of studio-backgrounds and quasi-camera movement is disregarded. Traditional films can use a painted or projected landscape at the backdrop of the set, and panning camera movements instead of a really mobile camera to create a convincing impression in the viewer of following a moving object in the scene’s space. A cycling woman is followed in a pan shot moving from left to right; frames A and B constitute the beginning and the end of the panning shot. In normal perception in the real-world objects on the horizon seem to move in the direction of the moving subject, whereas nearby objects move in opposite direction. Panning involves a stationary viewpoint, causing the image to lack this 'motion parallax'. For example, the scarecrow in the middle ground of frame B should be further to the left from the ridge on the horizon than in frame A (DA < DB), but the distance between the objects has remained identical (DA = DB). However, the lack of parallax and resulting apparent flatness can be and is disregarded and viewers experience smooth self-motion parallel to the moving object. Disregard such a this is part and parcel of normal film viewing or the "ecology of the cinema".

The most immediate demonstration of apparent motion is Duncker’s induced motion referred to above, a cinematic effect because it is dependent on canonical projection within a frame. The best analytic examples are about the perception of events in filmed dance. Footnote 27 For Hochberg and Brooks an ecological approach to perception in the cinema needs to take the ecology of the cinema into account.

The necessity of cognitive schemas in film perception was pointed out most pregnantly in Hochberg’s dealing with the comprehension of shot transitions or cuts. It was argued that known sensory integration and Gibson’s extraction of invariants, fail to account for viewers’ comprehension of frequent and simple cinematic events like elision of space and time. Overlap in contents between successive shots can be hard to identify or lack at all. Hochberg and Brooks proposed a principled alternative: films play in the mind’s eye. Viewers construct an off-screen mental space from separate views, and they can link two successive views by the relation of each of these to this space. In constructing a mental space, overlap may even be overruled by other cues, that have nothing to do with any invariance. The construction must involve event schemas and cognitive principles removed from anything immediately given in the film. Schemas may indeed outperform (mathematical) invariants picked up from the optical array offered by the screen. Hochberg and Brooks ( 1996b ) show, for example how gaze direction of film characters or personae in subsequent shots may be more effective in the construction of a continuous mental scene than overlapping spatial or visual symbolic contents. Footnote 28 Mental schemas seem to be indispensable in the comprehension of sequences of completely non-overlapping cuts. A famous demonstration by Hochberg and Brooks is reproduced in Fig. 2 . The succession of shots is readily understood when it is preceded by the presentation of a cross, which provides the integrating schema. Viewers’ schema-based continuous perception of scenes is supported by the ways that traditional cinema tells its stories. The presentation of an overall view in so-called 'establishing shots' followed by a 'break-down' of its object into subsequently presented part views is a cornerstone procedure in classical continuity film style (Bordwell and Thompson, 1997 /1979).

Role of mental schemas in the comprehension of continuous space across shots as discussed in Hochberg and Brooks ( 1996 , 2007 ). a The sequence of eight static shots does not seem to make sense. b A static preview of the entire object as in A) would activate a mental schema of a cross. Subsequent shots are then recognised as consecutive camera relocations, counter-clockwise rotations offering subsequent views of corners From Hochberg and Brooks ( 2007 ). Adding a shot of the cross moving diagonally to the lower left corner of the frame would smoothen the transition between the entire object view and the view of its top right corner further and facilitate the perception of the subsequent parts. Hochberg and Brooks ( 1996 ) reported that replacing one of the shots by a blank frame does not lead to confusion. For example, if shot 7 were replaced by a blank frame, the view of the lower left angle of the cross would seem to have been skipped, and shot 8 would be recognised as to present a view of the lower left corner. That is, the trajectory of the views would remain intact in keeping with the overall view of the object. This illustrates all the more the leading role of the schema of a cross in the perception of its parts.

A smooth understanding of non-overlapping cuts may require dedicated knowledge of discursive story units and rules for their ordering that only literary analysis types of study can reveal (Hochberg, 1986 , pp. 22–50). Hochberg and Brooks ( 1996a , p. 382) pointed out that theoretical or empirical proposals as to the nature of such representations were lacking. They found Gestalt principles unsatisfactory (Hochberg, 1998 ). Current film psychologists have taken up this challenge as we shall see briefly.

As a final contribution of Hochberg and Brooks’ to the psychology of the film, we would like to highlight their view of film spectators as partners motivated to deliver their share in a communicative effort. Film viewers contribute to the canonical setup of the cinema in that they are astutely aware of the filmmaker’s communicative intentions: '… the viewer expects that the film maker has undertaken to present something in an intelligible fashion and will not provide indecipherable strings of shots' (Hochberg, 1986 , p. 22–53). Viewers must be assumed to have an associated motivation to explore the views presented to them. In a series of inventive experiments, Hochberg and Brooks gathered evidence for an impetus to gather visual information. Looking preference increased with cutting rate and with complexity of shot contents. Visual momentum , or viewer interest, (Brooks and Hochberg, 1976 ; Hochberg and Brooks, 1978 ) as they termed it is the absorbing experience typical of cinema viewing. These studies help us to understand how current cutting strategies meet the viewers’ typical motivation for cognitive enquiry. The reward of comprehension is carefully dosed by varying the time allowed to the viewer to inspect objects and scenes, dependent on their novelty and complexity.

Hochberg’s demonstrations of the involvement of mental structures in understanding portrayed events was in large part based on introspective evidence. They have been criticised for relying too heavily on top-down control of perception by too intricate mental structures, by Gibson and others. Footnote 29 Current research in the cognitive structure tradition uses more sophisticated experimental set-ups. Inspiration has been drawn from theories of discourse processing in cognitive science. In this research, the relationship of 'top-down' use of schemas in scene comprehension with 'bottom-up' processing of stimulus features has become an important question. Footnote 30 Zacks has extensively investigated how film viewers segment the ongoing stream of images and extract meaningful events and actions from it. Viewer segmentation depends on automatically detected changes in a situation (Zacks, 2004 ). Detection of the changes requires only minimal use of schemas, and triggers automated perceptual-motor simulations of events and subevents such as actions. Footnote 31 Segmentation follows the logic of events in the real world. Most importantly, multiple events can be organised in a hierarchical or linear fashion, as scenes, sets of events and subevents or actions (Zacks, 2013 ).

Theory of mind and layered meaning of events

Extracting events in understanding film scenes needs more than retrieving schemas of real world events. The fact that they are presented with an idea in mind, is reflected in their understanding. Understanding film scenes and especially characters, their actions, plans and goal has been argued to require a so-called Theory of Mind (Levin et al., 2013 ). TOM is a system of cognitive representations of what beliefs, needs, desires, intentions and feelings people have in their interaction with others and the world. It is acquired in early childhood, when children understand that others, too, have an internal life, similar to but also different from one’s own beliefs and feelings. Levin et al. explain how use of TOM, also referred to as mentalising is necessary for an elementary understanding of film character actions and feelings. For example, character gaze following that underlies our perception of what characters feel or want to do with respect to an object that they look at requires TOM. TOM underlies grasping spatial (and action-) relations in scene comprehension across cuts using gaze following. Understanding relations between more complex events require schema-controlled theorizing on what people believe, do, think, and feel. Finally, Levin et al. demonstrate through film analyses how film viewers construct multi-layered representations of a film’s action from the point of view of different characters, the viewer and even from the narrator’s or filmmaker’s. For example, viewer and character perspectives may clash as in dramatic irony , or the narrator may create false beliefs on story events in viewers.

Continuity of events and viewer attention

Hochberg’s question of what the mental schemas look like that enable us to perceive smooth progress of events across film cuts has recently been addressed by the next generation of film psychologists. They have sought answers in profound analyses of the canonical setup delivered by the founders of cognitive film theory in the humanities, such as Bordwell ( 1985 , 2008 ), and Anderson ( 1996 ). Bordwell’s extensive analyses of classical film narrative and his account of the viewer’s mental activity in the comprehension of the film’s story-world suggest a film-psychological hypothesis on the experience of continuity: Classical Hollywood film style serves smooth progress of the narrative. Continuity editing ensures fluency across shot transitions. Shot A cues cognitive schema-based or narrative expectations that are subsequently matched in shot B. Expectations can be perceptual or cognitive, i.e., requiring inferences supported by event schemas. Anderson added a Gibsonian perspective, arguing that the perception of film scenes mimics the perception of real world scenes. Continuity shooting and editing closely follow the constraints of the human perceptual systems that have evolved to 'extract' continuity from changing views of scenes in the real world. Recent research into the experience of smooth development of events and scenes across shot transitions draws on these principles of continuity narration. Footnote 32 Framing, editing and sound finetune the viewer’s top-down search to focus on candidate target stimuli. A quite complete and accurate explanation was offered by Tim Smith. His Attentional Theory of Cinematic Continuity ( 2012 ) explains the viewer’s sense of smooth progress by the continuity editing principles that mainstream filmmakers tend to adhere to. AToCC breaks away from Hochberg’s analyses to the degree that it holds that viewers do not need intricate spatial or semantic schemas to construct continuous events from separate shots. Rather it is built on the Gibsonian principle that perceiving continuity in film scenes derives from the continuity that we experience in perceiving scenes in the natural world. The ecology of the cinema renders it sufficient to follow a number of simple spatiotemporal guidelines. Continuity editing film style guides viewers’ attention in seamlessly following action across cuts. Attention, that is the focused selection of objects in a shot by the viewer, i.e., what and where the viewer directs their gaze, is led by the filmmaker. The viewers’ gaze in shot A is directed to the part of the screen where the target of interest in shot B, that is after the cut, will be. The shift of attention from one portion to another of the screen in shot A is shortly followed by the cut, and because the gaze 'lands' in the right place in shot B, the cut has become invisible. Footnote 33 The theory of continuity perception adds precise levels of analysis to the construction of mental scene spaces that Hochberg proposed. It distinguishes higher level and lower level control of attention. Higher-level ones include 'perceptual inquiries' as Hochberg and Brooks ( 1978a ) called them. The expectations or questions that guide the gaze may be minimally articulated, e.g., 'what or whom are these characters looking at' as in gaze following, but the operation of higher level cognitive schemas are not excluded. The best demonstration to date of the control of focus of attention by the narrative is given in research on suspense and its effects on film viewer gazes by Bezdek et al. ( 2015 ) and Bezdek and Gerrig ( 2017 ). Footnote 34 Their results can be taken to imply that suspense, a state of high absorption, is associated with focal attention to story-world details supervised by expectations created by the narrative (see also Doicaru, 2016 ).

The study of film viewers' attention has delivered a firm account of the role of the ubiquitous Hollywood continuity film style in the typical experience of smoothly flowing film scenes and stories that audiences allover the world have. (See for a review Smith, Levin & Cutting, 2012 ).

A lead role in perception for cinematic low-level features?

Experimental psychology has always aspired basic explanations of perceptual responses, preferably through transparent mechanistic associations with physically observable stimulus conditions. The role of high-level narrative schema-based attention in smooth film experiences discussed in the previous section, is subject to debates in which experimental data support arguments pro and con. To begin with, AToCC emphasises the role of leading expectations in following cuts, but more akin to the Gibsonian approach of visual perception than to Hochberg’s schema position as it is, it tends to stress lower level features as directing attention bottom-up, too or even more so. One lower level is given by film-stylistic devices, for instance the use of sound that can orient viewers to direct their gazes to the next shot’s portion of the screen where the sound’s origin will be shown. Another are lower level stimulus features in a narrower and technical sense, such as bright lights and movements with sudden onset that automatically attract attention due to the make-up of the senses and the brain. Especially movement was shown by Smith to be an extraordinary low level attentional cue. The power of low level feature control of attentional shifts has inspired Loschky et al. ( 2015 ) to speak of the 'tyranny of film'. They start from research findings suggesting that the use of low-level stylistic features can result in attentional synchrony across film audiences, that is individual viewers of a scene gaze at exactly the same portions of the screen at exactly the same time. Footnote 35 Remarkable degrees of inter-viewer synchronization of visual attention has also been established in studies of localisations of brain activity in film viewers (e.g., Hasson et al., 2003 ). However, Stephen Hinde’s research has recently shown that the distraction effect of inserted low-level attention triggers is quite limited (Hinde et al., 2017 ) In line with this notion of top-down attention control overriding bottom-up attention triggers, Magliano and Zacks ( 2011 ) demonstrated that the perception of cuts is suppressed by higher order processes related to the construction of complex events.

Gibson’s idea of invariants in optical arrays can now be made concrete, enabling the prediction of bottom-up controlled attention and perception from objectively identified features. Developments in computer vision, image and sound analysis have paved the way for automated extraction of features and patterns in visual and auditory stimuli in terms of multiple dimensions. For example, machine extraction of saliency as a feature predictive of bottom-up attention has been developed and applied in numerous computer vision applications. A much-cited article by Itti and Koch ( 2001 ) illustrates the idea for static images. Specialised neural network algorithms detect features such as colour, intensity, orientations, etc. in parallel over the entire visual field. Each feature is represented in a feature map, in which neurons compete for saliency. Feature maps are combined into a saliency map. A last network sequentially scans the saliency map, moving from the most salient location to the next less salient one and so on. Footnote 36 An excellent explanation of how to obtain saliency maps is given at a Matlab page. Footnote 37

Psychologists of film in their attempts to explain the extraordinary smooth and intense perceptual experience that mainstream film typically provides, currently seek to join forces with computer vision scientists. In a next step, they may seek collaboration with vision labs in the world that attempt to link their low-level film image feature analyses with film narrative structures and viewer responses. Footnote 38

Examples of computational film analyses. Number of shot transitions as a function of acts. Cutting ( 2016 ), Fig. 2 . Under Creative Commons License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ). Note that ordinates are inverted; lower positions of titles mean larger number of shots and decreased shot durations. Normalised time bins refer to units of duration standardised in view of variable film length of separate titles. Left panel displays distribution of cuts over time and acts, right panel of non-cut transitions such as dissolves, fades and wipes.

The work of perception researcher James Cutting has carried the psychology of the film into the next stage of the Gibsonian ecological approach, while also linking it with insights in the structure of film narrative from humanities scholarship. Footnote 39 In an interesting essay on the perception of scenes in the real world and in film Cutting ( 2005 ) summarised the ecological perspective on perception stating that understanding how we perceive the real world helps to grasp how we perceive film and vice versa. Footnote 40 In the last decade Cutting developed powerful computational content analysis methods that reveal the patterning of low-level features in relation to dimensions of film style and technology, in representative samples of Hollywood films of well over a hundred titles. The theoretical starting point of the approach is that movies exhibit reality. The psychologist Cutting subscribes to the analytical distinctions made in literary and film theories between plot, form and style of a narrative on the one hand, and the represented story-world on the other. The Gibsonian proposal is that analyses of the fabula or story-world (i.e., the action, events, characters and so on) should lead to identification of syuzhet features (i.e., formal and stylistic features that are physically given in the film stimulus or can be perceived without substantial instruction) functional in the perception and understanding of that story-world; vice versa, variations in form and style reflect variations in the portrayed story-world. Cutting’s definition of low-level film features used in the analyses was informed by analyses of narrative, style and technology by David Bordwell, and methods for statistical style analysis by Barry Salt ( 2009 ).

Low-level features analysed by Cutting and co-workers are physically and quantitatively determinable elements or aspects occurring in moving images, regardless of the narrative. They include shot duration, temporal shot structure, colour, contrast and movement. The value of each feature can be expressed as an index for an entire film, or for some segment targeted in an analysis. Footnote 41 Inspection by an analyst complements machine vision analyses, but I would qualify the indexing approach as computational (objective) film analysis , because of intensive tallying and numerical operations developed by specialists in psychological data-processing. The features do not constitute events or scenes, but they accentuate these. A recording of their measurements for an entire film would constitute an abstract backbone to be filled with scenes and events. One possible comparison is with the rhythmic score of a song without melodies and words. In the hands of capable film-makers they are indispensable for conveying the narrative, due to their direct, predictable and automated effects on the visual system.

The primary use of the approach is in film analysis. The multi-feature configurations of indices can be used to reliably 'fingerprint' films or sections. Reliably because the indices are derived from large numbers of measurements. Computational film analysis uses a historical corpus of films and has been deployed over the past decade to corroborate and enrich historical analyses of film style. Footnote 42 The climax so far of efforts to integrate computational content analysis with film theory and analysis is Cutting’s ( 2016 ) report on narrative theory and the dynamics of popular movies. The corpus consisted of 160 English language films released between 1935 and 2010, ten for each year. As Figure 3 illustrates a typical course obtained of the number of shot transitions over film presentation time, interpretable as to mark the acts and the pace of narration, see Figure 3 . An important outcome of the analyses is that clear physical support was obtained for the four-act structure proposed by film historian Thompson ( 1999 ) across the entire period. It should be noted that Thompson’s act structure was identified largely on the basis of higher level narrative segmentation. Footnote 43 Shot scale was unrelated to the act structure. Cutting added analyses of higher order level film features that can be interpreted to co-vary with narration. Footnote 44 Cutting then ventured upon a multi-feature analysis of the entire corpus. Associations among all indices across all titles could be reduced to four dimensions: motion, framing, editing and sound. They correlated in a meaningful way. For example, shot scale was inversely related to shot duration; in classical narration close-ups tend towards briefer durations than wide shots. Each dimension represented polar opposites between features, e.g., music vs. conversation for sound and close-ups vs long shots for framing. Computational content analysis can explore the dynamics of the dimensional representations over subsequent acts of movies. Figure 4 reproduces Cuttings findings for prolog, setup, complication, development, climax, and epilog. Footnote 45 It would seem that the analysis winds up in a level of cinematic content representation that is grounded in directly given stimulus features, integrated with film-analytical features that can be readily indexed and seem relevant as production tools in regular filmmaking.

Five movie dimensions in narrational space. Reproduced from Cutting ( 2016 ) Fig. 9. under Creative Commons License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ). The displayed representation is obtained from dimensional reduction of the numerous associations between film titles in terms of their feature profiles. The results of the first stage of the analysis are not displayed here, see Fig. 8 in Cutting ( 2016 ). In that stage, the number of associations between all titles regarding all features was reduced to four dimensions (see main text) using principal component analysis. In the next stage the analysis was applied to the features and films for each separate act, to result in the configurations shown here. Arrows vary in length, correspondingly to differences in the range of values on the dimensions. Black dots indicate median values of the acts on the dimensions. Considering for example the sound dimension, it can be seen that the set-up tends to have more conversation and the climax has more music. The red bars indicate the dispersion of values on the dimension and the degree it is skewed towards one or the other end

What does computational content analysis mean psychologically, that is how do indices and dimensions function in the viewer’s perceiving and comprehending events? Patterns of features trigger changes in viewers’ physiological, attention, perception and emotion systems, according to Cutting ( 2016 , p. 27). Typical low-level configurations may correlate with possible effects on the viewer’s perception and experience of events. For example, shot duration may support interpretations of pace, mood and tension, think of drama’s long takes; temporal shot structure is functional for sustaining attention or suspense (e.g., when a sequence of brief shots abruptly merges into long duration shots), e.g., in thrillers; movement (of camera and objects on screen) serves arousal in the viewer, as in action movies; low luminance signals possible threat as in horror movies, while high luminance may lend 'a sense of other worldliness' (Brunick et al., 2013 , p. 141). All low-level features can help viewers in categorising films as to genre, and changes in these will support segmentation of events and scenes, which is at the basis of smooth narrative understanding. Combinations of indices enable more interesting interpretations of possible experience effects. Footnote 46 However, because the studies that the overarching computational content analysis was based on do not involve response measurement, a direct connection between cinematic form (especially narrative procedures) and cinematic meaning that Cutting argues for is open to further elaboration. Even in the face of the richness of directly given information that has been extracted using computers, Cutting sees room for the use of cognitive schemas. The very narrative acts that are underlined by immediately given information may be schematic in nature, but he finds it more likely that their functioning is less dependent on memory-processes than the very high-level cognitive structures implied in cognitive scripts and TOM reasoning.

To conclude the sections on the cognition of film scenes, we seem to have made important progress in understanding how movies construct events in film viewers' minds an brains, as put it in his state of the art review. Movies in part "dictate" events, actions and scenes to viewers' brains using an "alphabet" of visual and auditive features; viewers in turn contribute to the construction of story-worlds by developing and matching higher-order structural anticipations using embodied cognitive event, character and narrative schemas. Since 1916, the film units that have been analysed increased from paired single stimuli (as apparent motion experiments) to whole film acts (as in computational film analysis). Analyses of narrative structure from film theory have become for the psychology of film what harmonics and counterpoint analysis signify to the psychology of music or the theories of syntax and semantics to psycholinguistics. They inform psychological notions of film structure and organization.

The awareness of narrative film

The third part of The Photoplay deals with issues other than the psychological mechanisms or the psychology of film form namely the awareness offered by the photoplay. It was only natural to Münsterberg as a child of his time to designate the special awareness that film creates as the explanandum in psychological research, the mechanisms of film stimuli impinging on attention, perception and memory being the explanans . His characterisations of this conscious awareness, what it is like to watch theatrical films, or in other words the phenomenology of the film experience remains in my view as yet unparalleled. Apart from the sense of freedom that we have already discussed, they include attentional and affective experiences.

Münsterberg described enjoyment as the immediate effect of theatrical film, explaining it from the exceptional freedom of the imagination: "The massive outer world has lost its weight, it has been freed from space, time, and causality, and it has been clothed in the form of our consciousness. The mind has triumphed over matter and the pictures roll on with the ease of musical tones. It is a superb enjoyment which no other art can furnish us" (Münsterberg, 1916 , p. 95). Light has been thrown on the remarkable fluency of the film experience noted by Münsterberg by current research in narrative procedures, and the mechanisms of continuity perception discussed in the previous section. Münsterberg also stressed that the enjoyment of photoplays depends on our experience of the film’s story as an emotionally meaningful world separate from reality: 'The photoplay shows us a significant conflict of human actions … adjusted to the free play of our mental experiences and which reach complete isolation from the practical world …' (p. 82). And finally, he singled out the role of focused attention in enjoyment. 'It is as if that outer world were woven into our mind and we were shaped not through its own laws but by the acts of our attention, …' (Münsterberg, 1916 , p. 39).

Twentieth century academic psychology did not develop much of a body of theory and research on human consciousness. Hence it is not surprising that alongside research into perception and comprehension one doesn’t find much work on the conscious experience of film. Measurements of perceptual, attentional, cognitive and affective responses in experimental psychology are extremely limited with regards to the contents of consciousness that they tap. Lab tasks enabling measurement are must be simple, e.g., identification, comparison or categorisation of visual stimuli, rather than free description or recall. Self-reports associated with such tasks must be quantifiable and take the shape of choice responses, simple intensity ratings or readily codifiable reports. Behavioural measures are farther removed from any contents of experience because these need to be inferred. Here, too, simple objective coding is a must. Descriptive and interpretative reports of the qualia and meaning of experiences afforded by film have been largely left to hermeneutic film criticism and phenomenologically oriented film philosophy in the humanities. Scholarship in these fields follows in the footsteps of Münsterberg. The present overview of the psychology of the film cannot go into it further; I refer to Sobchack’s ( 1992 ) volume on the phenomenology of the film experience. It opens with the proposition that film directly expresses perceptions, a proposition coming close to the observation in The Photoplay that the contents of the audience’s experience are perceptions, attention, thinking and emotion that are projected before them on the screen.

Absorption in film

Meanwhile, progress can be reported in understanding one aspect of the rich and complex film experience namely its intensity. Münsterberg observed that the film audience’s enjoyment is due to prolonged states of attention strongly focused on a fictional story-world, so strong in fact that the here and now escapes consciousness and it seems instead as if an 'outer world were woven into our mind'. Elsewhere we have proposed to refer to the experience of intense attention as absorption in a story-world (Tan et al., 2017 ), following Nell's ( 1988 ) groundbreaking description of "being lost in a book". Media psychologists specialised in research on media entertainment (Vorderer et al., 2004 , Bilandzic & Bussele, 2011 ) have developed a variety of measures capturing enjoyable absorption-like states afforded by narrative, television drama and video-gaming. We discuss four of these.

a. Narrative engagement (Bussele and Bilandzic, 2008 , 2009 ) is a pleasant state of being engrossed or entranced by the narrative as a whole as it is presented in a book or film, including the activity of reading or viewing it. Footnote 47 (Tele-)Presence (Schubert et al., 2001 ; Wirth et al., 2007 ; and others) refers to the embodied awareness of being in a virtual world: being there with your body, in other words absorption in a story-world. Footnote 48 The concept has its origin in research into the experience of virtual realities. Footnote 49 Attempts have been made to ground mechanisms of film-induced emotion on presence that is the audience’s basic and embodied awareness of being in the middle of the story-world as a witness to events befalling characters Anderson ( 1996 ); Tan (1994, 1996 ).

b. Green and Brock’s ( 2000 ) definition of transportation is the most frequently used conceptualisation of absorption in media-psychological research. It is considered a major gratification offered to readers of narrative and film viewers alike. It overlaps with presence in that it features a sense of being in the story-world, as well as a realistic and attentive imagery of details. The difference may be that as a metaphor transportation evokes associations with transition to or travel into the film’s story-world. Footnote 50 More than presence, the operationalisations of transportation entail personal relevance and participatory sympathetic feeling, amplifying the emotional quality of the experience.

c. Empathy is the common denominator for concepts referring to absorption in the inner life of fictional characters. Like transportation, it is seen as a major gratification in reading stories and watching drama and movies. Viewer empathy has been defined as perceiving, understanding and emotionally responding to character feeling in the seminal work on the subject by Zillmann (Zillmann, 1991 , 1996). Perceived similarity and sympathy for the character (grounded in moral attitudes) have been suggested and tested as determinants of spectator empathy in drama (e.g., Zillmann, 1996; 2000 ; 2003 ; 2006 ). Footnote 51 There is still a need to sort out possible forms of empathy specific to the canonical conditions of the cinema which may be quite different from situations in real life where we observe other persons. Footnote 52 Moreover, empathy with film characters can be less or more cognitively demanding. Footnote 53 Identification (e.g., Cohen, 2001 ) seems to stand for complete absorption of the viewer’s self by a represented character. Footnote 54 It can be argued that empathy is the rule in film viewing while identification is the exception (e.g., Zillmann, 1995; Tan, 1996 , 2013a , b ), as most mainstream film narratives are mainly geared towards provoking the former rather than the latter. According to Smith ( 1995 ) they use 'alignment' techniques that promote perspective taking and allegiance strategies that foster viewer sympathy for the character while the distinction between self and character is unaffected.

d. Finally, flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997 ) is the odd person out in the series of absorption-like experience concepts reviewed here, because it applies not only to absorption in movies, narratives or games, but to any activities that stand out for a certain intensity and intrinsic reward as well. The rather simple idea supporting the concept is that a pleasurable state is experienced when the challenges inherent in an activity just match the person’s capacities. In the canonical setup of mainstream film (and mainstream audiences) this balance is generally realised due to filmmakers’ skilful presentation of interesting story-events, and the overlap of it with attentional, perceptual and cognitive routines that film viewers have acquired in the real world. Mainstream movie continuity film style facilitates flow a great deal as it tedns to minimize challenges posed by transitions from one view or perspective to another. Smith's ( 2012 ) studies were discussed above as relevant to smooth continuity of visual attention, and I would also mention the research on comprehension of events by Schwann (2013; Garsofsky & Schwan, 2009 )

Obviously, these and other varieties of absorption are not mutually exclusive. Elsewhere we have presented qualitative empirical support for a dynamic interplay among the varieties of absorption (Bálint and Tan, 2015 ). Footnote 55

From the overview we may conclude that Münsterberg’s introspective psychology of the film experience is in large part echoed in the empirical observations gathered one century later. Viewers feel absorbed in another, exceptionally vivid reality, 'clothed in the [embodied] forms of our consciousness' (presence and transportation). Empathy is mentioned by Münsterberg as a prominent experience, and his notion of an unhampered stream of the imagination may correspond with the experience of flow. Focused attention is already in The Photoplay a major component of the film experience, that would later be investigated in research on bottom-up vs. top-down attention discussed above. Absorption, empathy and intensely focused attention can easily substantiate the enjoyability of watching films as Münsterberg already would have it. However, compared to Münsterberg’s conceptualisation of the typical film awareness, insights into how acts of imagination on the part of the spectatorcontribute to it have not advanced that much in the psychology of film. Footnote 56

A narrative simulation account of emotion in film viewing

Absorption is an affective state characteristic of the film expeirience. However, a description of the typical experience of narrative films is incomplete if more specific affective states are not considered. Watching movies has been identified with emotions. We go to the cinema to experience mirth, compassion, sadness, bittersweet emotions, thrill, horror, and soon in response to what we see and hear happening to characters and ourselves. Emotions of movie audiences have not received much attention since Münsterberg’s Photoplay . Twenty-first century film psychology has taken up where he left off, and a major step forward has been to regard the narrative structure of films as a fundamental starting point for explaining film viewer emotions. The narrative simulation account is, I think, dominant in today’s psychological approaches to the issue of why the cinema offers the intense and remarkable emotional experience that Münsterberg’s photoplays induced a century ago. Important work on emotion in media users has been done in media psychology, most on empathy with characters, but narrative induced emotion has not received much attention, as can be seen from a complete overview by Konijn ( 2013 ). Cognitive scholars in the humanities have highlighted different aspects of film narratives that induce perceptions of fictional events associated with intense emotional experiences (e.g., genre-typical film style: Grodal, 1997 , 2009 , 2017 ; Visch and Tan, 2009 ; narrative procedures, e.g., Smith, 1995 ; Plantinga, 2009 ; Berliner, 2017 ). I hope the reader will allow me to use my own work on the subject as an illustration. It is closely related to the cognitive - theoretical analyses just referred to. I have found a cognitive approach to emotion in general psychology fruitful for narrative modelling of emotion in film viewing. Footnote 57 Investigations of film-induced emotion have raisedthe issue of apparent realism : how can a clearly fictional world be taken for real to the effect of intensely moving emoting viewers? Oatley introduced a cognitive theory of narrative fiction as simulation ( 1999 , 2012 , 2013 ) that applies to film as a stimulus for possibly complex emotions. Narrative runs simulations on the embodied mind just as programs run simulations on computers. Footnote 58 I would add that filmviewers take part in a playful simulation in which the film leads them to imagine they are present in a fictional world, where they witness fictional events that film characters are involved in (Tan, 1995 , 1996 , 2008 ). Being a witness involves embodied perceptions of what happens in a fictional world, as well as in the imagination constructing and participating in events, without acting on these. In the process, events are taken for real for the sake of playful entertainment. This position is related to Walton’s ( 1990 ) well-known account of fiction as make-believe.

Frijda’s cognitive theory of the emotions (Frijda, 1986 , 2007) is the starting point for further explanation of emotional experiences in response to film. The theory posits that the emotion system has evolved for adaptive action in the first place. For example, the sight of a monster will spawn a strong urge to flee due to a basic concern for safety being jeopardised. Of course, film audiences do not run out of the auditorium. According to the cognitive theory of emotion, action responses are not fixed responses to emotional stimuli, but the result of appraisals of what they mean for a person’s concerns in light of the situational context. Playful simulation provides the contextual frame for the complex appraisal of apparent realism of film events. The appraisal has three stages: perceptual, imagination based and self-involved. Footnote 59

1. Many popular film stimuli provoke immediate and automated appraisals of concern relevance and ensuing emotional responses, due for instance to their nature of unconditioned stimuli in the real world. A snake popping out from the bush would be an example. Emotional appraisals in the cinema can be and often are empathetic. That is they include perspectives on events taken by film characters. Film technology in mainstream movies is used to emphasise emotional triggers; editing could strengthen the suddenness of the snake’s appearance, and photography could render fear releasers such as the typical movements of the snake more salient. Footnote 60 But popular films also present us with emotional stimuli that are immediately perceived as fake, for example a rubber prop snake. Due to the playful simulation frame further cognitive processing of perceptions takes place. In the first case, film viewers realise that just perceived events are not real but must be held true for the sake of a playful simulation. In the second, they realise that the fake stimulus is only a prompt, and comply with its invitation to hold the stimulus true and allow it to appeal to their concerns, also for the sake of playful simulation.

2. Once imagination takes over from perception, the reality status of stimuli is traded for believability. As part of the imagination fictional events are matched with higher order genre-specific narrative schemas, and then dealt with as possibilities in a particular world . As Frijda ( 1989 ) argued when he discussed the apparent reality of fiction: 'Seeing a fake snake approach a real person is not scary. But watching an imaginary snake approach an imaginary Jane is. The first is seen as unreal in a real word, and the second as real in an imaginary world. And this is how we appraise events in fiction. The fun of art is in the play with the duality' (p. 1546). Play with the possibility of events in the imagined world and entertaining as-if emotions can suffice for genuine emotion to arise. As I argued elsewhere (Tan, 1996 ) the appraisal of the possibility of events in a particular fictional world can and usually does lead to genuine emotion, because humans have been equipped with a capacity to have emotions in response to mental representations of counterfactual and imaginary events. Footnote 61

3. The genuine emotion can—but does not need to—open up considerations of the believability of fictional events in the real world. Moreover, it can lead to imaginations in which the viewer’s self is involved in the events or their ramifications. The appraisal of fictional film events is treated in more detail in Tan and Visch (2018). The search for film style and technology features that are conducive to particular emotional appraisals has only slowly lifted off. Cutting's computational content analyses were already mentioned There are scattered empirical studies e.g. of camera angle and editing pace by Kraft (1987) and Lang et al. 1995, respectively. Film technique manuals and critical anayles provide abundant intuitively convincing examples of how to produce emotionally appealing sequences. It is to be expected that computational film analysis will soon enable large scale studies of the use of style and technology in emoting scenes.

Back to emotion and action. As film viewers perceive film scenes to be projections on screen of a fictional world, they understand they cannot act, and their action tendencies are suppressed. Footnote 62 As importantly, one’s inability to act upon a fictional world is a strong trigger for emotional responses involving the imagination of action. Driven by sympathy, viewers desire that protagonists escape from a horrific situation. In their imagination they anticipate and hope that the protagonist is saved by someone or something and if need be by a fictional miracle. Footnote 63 Thus, they experience or exhibit a virtual form of action readiness (Frijda, 1986 ). Footnote 64 This readiness for action can be directly observed in film viewers from their "participatory responses" (Bezdek, Foy & Gerrig, 2013 ) - such as overt expressions of sympathy for a character (see also Tan, 2013b ). However, there is one thing that film-viewers as witnesses invariably do when properly emoted: eagerly watch the events on screen.

Following cognitive film theory further, I consider the emotional experience of film as the sum total of experience of the appraisal, internal and external bodily expressions and changes in action readiness integrated in consciousness in accompanying the sensory intake of units of film.

Film, interest and enjoyment

An account of `film - audience emotion is incomplete if it does not go into the question why we actually take the trouble of watching movies. Münsterberg already wondered how mature people can become so emotionally absorbed in fantasy worlds. Narrative films can be argued to address two basic emotional concerns in particular, curiosity and sympathy (Tan, 1996 ). All sorts of narrative fiction, including film provoke interest by presenting events with uncertain consequences. Thus, they address a basic curiosity , that is a need for novelty, knowing and exploration. Interest is the emotion that responds to appeals involving this concern. Interest in film viewing does have a real action readiness to it referred to above: watch eagerly. Because the response in interest includes spending and focussing attention to specific story-world events, its experience goes hand in hand with absorption. Mainstream film’s narrative is perfectly designed to support a characteristic systematic unfolding of interest as an emotion. Movies continuously present cognitive challenges that viewers know they can meet. Footnote 65 Silvia ( 2006 ) has shown in a greater number of studies that this is the condition for optimal interest. I have referred to the core appraisal of narrative interest as promise of rewarding outcomes , in terms either of desirability for a protagonist or mankind in general, or of coherence, completeness or elegance of a narrative’s structure, or both (Tan, 1996 ). In addition, the prospect of sought emotions, such as excitement, enjoyment and appreciation is as well part of the promise that ongoing film narratives constantly offer. Footnote 66 Interest is closely linked with enjoyment, the primary gratification that movies offer their audience. In the cinema interetst is pleasant because it is fun to entertain anticipations of as yet uncertain story-outcomes. Moreover, every outcome, even if it is unanticipated or unfavorable, is greeted with enjoyment because it answers one's curiosity. (In the case of sad, horrific or otherwise hedonically negative or mixed outcomes, "enjoyment" is not the proper label for the rewarding emotion. We return to the fun of unpleasant emotion in a later section).On a final note, interest in film viewing is a case of narrative interest as a broader category of emotions, but the sensory qualities of the medium are relevant for how interest feels. Curiosity to know is in part a desire for the closure of a propositional narrative structure, but in the cinema we do not only want to know but also to see and hear . The enjoyment of seeing a couple kiss or a heroine return after an odyssee of some sort is in the cinema incomplete when it is not shown. In the cinematic appraisal of interest, an anticipation of embodied completion of our narrative-led imagination is a major ingredient of the promise of reward.

Emotional responses to fiction film worlds

The second concern that movies touch upon is sympathy . That this concern is active throughout the reception of all traditional movies answers the question why film viewers care about damsels, hobbits or gorilla’s in distress. There is a fundamental human need for bonding with others and recognising whatever fictional character as someone 'like us' supposedly suffices for sympathy to arise. Footnote 67 Mainstream films activate the concern to the full as their sympathetic protagonists meet with ups and downs in on the way to their goals. Sympathy-based emotions like disappointment, regret, awe, mirth, suspense, hopes and fears, compassion and sadness occur in response to obstacles or their removal on the way to protagonists realising their projects. Footnote 68 Because these emotions arise in response to events (appraised as desirable or undesirable) in a fictional world, we refer to these emotions as responding emotions . Footnote 69 Some frequently experienced sympathetic responding emotions such as fear, sadness, compassion and being moved, can be empathetic , that is require mentalising a character’s inner life. Said more precisely, empathetic emotion requires that the viewer’s appraisal of any fictional events reflects the perspective of a character; the event is understood from a character’s imagined point of view and with her concerns, and feelings. In its most intense forms, sympathy can look and feel like self-indulgent sentiment . However, there is no point in condemning tears of sadness or joy as silly. The term sentiment is not necessarily pejorative. The appraisal of a character’s suffering or good doing can involve an acknowledgment of its superior measure, notably in relation to the self’s suffering or good doing. In my compassion with or admiration for a beloved character I can feel that her fate is really woeful compared to mine, or that her altruistic achievements make mine totally insignificant. Being moved , awe and having goose bumps are emotional responses accompanying such appraisals (Tan and Frijda, 1997 ; Tan, 2009 ; Wassiliwizky et al., 2017 ; Schubert et al., 2018 ) Footnote 70

However, not every responding emotion requires empathy or sympathy. Footnote 71 The sympathy concern does not only drive our siding with characters and responding emotionally to the ups and downs in their projects. As I proposed (Tan, 1996 ) it can make us invest affectively 'film-long' in characters, on top of going along in their hopes and fears, successes and failures. We are also witnesses of characters’ slower and more profound development into personae we would want them to be. The share of action or plot development relative to that of character differs from one genre to another. Footnote 72 Generally, action movies and especially comedies tend to allow for only minimal character development, whereas the drama genres may indulge into it. In these genres, viewer interest may depend in larger part on characterisation and character development.

Another class of emotions responding to the fictional world are 'spectacular' that is spectacle based . The spectacle of landscapes, buildings, natural objects and artifices, human or animal figures in motion, can surprise us and touch on a sense of beauty and invoke appraisals of harmony, elegance, or serenity. In some genres the spectacle of explosions, injury, cruelty disfiguration, etc. may incite disgust, fear raise emotions. Spectacle-based emotions do not rely on empathy of any depth, their stimulus being the mere view or sound of a fictional scene; they are neither dependent on sympathy. In more traditional terms, image and sound combinations of objects, events, and figures in the fictional world can be emotionally appraised as spectacular, beautiful, sublime, horrific, bizarre, absurd and so on. Amazement, enjoyment, awe (the wow-feeling), entrainment, being moved and aesthetic appreciation are apt labels for ensuing emotions. Like all emotional responses to fiction worlds, spectacle-based emotions can also arise when we read narratives, but in the cinema, they compete conspicuously with plot and character-driven interest and sympathy-based affective response. It seems like the viewer’s witness role is temporarily swapped for a spectator role. Footnote 73 The viewer can identify even further with patterns of motion or sequences of image and sound that lack reference to the film’s story-world. Viewers may contemplate lyrical associations of visuals, sounds, music and symbolic concepts in embodied consciousness as Grodal ( 1997 ) proposed. If story action imaginations give rise to emotions, lyrical associations are responded to with moods, e.g., nostalgic, tense or relaxed ones. The seemingly immediate representations on screen of emotions through camera movements and associative editing editing that Münsterberg described would be examples.

Emotion structure of narrative film

As a way to profile the dynamics of emotion across an entire film I proposed to represent these in a succinct model, the affect structure of a film (Tan, 1996 ). The model represents the course of interest and of responding emotions in time as predicted by theevents as they are subsequently presented by the film. Footnote 74 Generalising across titles, a most general hypothesis is that the level of interest during mainstream movies tends to rise globally. This is because on the way to protagonists’ goals, stakes tend to go up every novel complication. This will lead to increasing promise of reward roughly between the prologue and climax acts. Locally though, interest peaks and dips alternate over subsequent scenes, depending on genre and particular film. Figure 5 displays an example course of interest measured in viewers of the film In for treatment . In this study of emotions induced by a tragic drama on a terminally ill hospital patient, we found that an initial appraisal of the protagonist as increasingly suffering under the yoke of an oppressive hospital regime, was associated with a responding emotion of compassion. After the complication act, the protagonist’s acts of resistance against the hospital’s regime gave way to admiration due to an appraisal of the protagonist’s sense of self-determination. Both measures determined the level of interest measured continuously using a seven-point slider device (Tan and van den Boom, 1992). Affect structures can be more or less generic. That is, responding emotions are just like the plots, characters, and events that prompt these, characteristic for a certain genre. The study of genre-based emotion has been concentrated in research of undesirable effects of watching violence, sensation or horror in entertainment fare, see e.g. a volume edited by Bryant and Vorderer (2006). Psychological research into the role of viewer genre knowledge is on its way (e.g. Tan & Visch, 2009 ).

Continuous interest over the course of In for treatment; N  = 21; from Tan and Van den Boom (1992). Interest was registered every second using a slider rating device. Measurement was validated by self-report interest ratings. Numbers under the abscissa represent subsequent scenes. 1–6: prolog; 7–18: complication, 19–20 development; 24: climax followed by epilog.

The appeal of unpleasant emotions

A brief glance at the success rates of films featuring sad, violent or horrific content illustrates the appeal that unpleasant emotions can have to audiences at large. Münsterberg already objected to vicious effects of violent and repulsive imagery in 1910s photoplays, contents that he observed to be worryingly attractive. The psychology of the film holds various explanations in stock, but none as yet chosen. The best documented proposal is Menninghaus et al.’s distancing-embracing model that stipulates two complmentary mechanisms. One rids painful, disgusting or otherwise unpleasant aesthetic stimuli from an impact that would prevent any enjoyment or appreciation of the stimulus. The other allows for experiences that are 'intense, more interesting, more emotionally moving, more profound, and occasionally even more beautiful' (Menninghaus et al., 2017 , p. 1). The model is meant to explain the prevalence of negative emotion in all art forms, and harbours a great many classical approaches to the issue. Media psychologists have proposed what I think are regulation accounts of the pleasures of negative emotion. An emotion such as horror results from appraisal of monsters etc. as threatening and repulsive, but the emotion itself, too, can be subject to appraisal. Likewise, your crying in the cinema may induce embarrassment upon your realising that it is only a film you are watching. Footnote 75 Serious drama, the contents of which can be appraised as poignant or thought-provoking (Oliver and Hartmann, 2010 ), and more in particular independent arthouse titles that tend to provoke appreciation and elevation rather than enjoyment seem to compensate the most painful experiences they offer by a high instruction or (self-) reflection potential (Oliver & Bartsch, 2013 ). They offer continuous promises of broadening insights or revising one’s views of the world and the self, possibly only materialising to the full long after the show. In my own work I have pointed at the modulating effects of genre schemas (Tan & Visch, 2017) and narrative interest on negative emotions. Footnote 76

In closing the sections on film-induced emotion we need to note that the account of the cognitive appraisal of emoting events given here is simplified. Even straightforward film narratives can have complexities in terms, e.g., of plot lines, or character and narrator perspective that affect the intricacies of emotional events. I refer readers to Oatley’s ( 2012 ; 2013 ) discussion of in this sense more sophisticated appraisals of fictional events. More generally, film psychological research is needed into the use of more complex TOM heuristics in the comprehension of film narrative, and in emotional appraisals of film events.

The conclusion on the psychology of film awareness must be, I think, that the gripping nature of the film experience is as astonishing today as it was to early film audiences. Media psychologists have started to measure it, and cognitive film scholars have forwarded theoretical frameworks for an account of film viewer affect and emotion. But the phenomenology of film has not been expanded by film psychologists beyond the descriptions of what it is like to watch a movie provided in The Photoplay .

The psychology of film as art

Whether or not the awareness of film entails appreciations of artistry can only be a rhetorical question, but the psychology of the film has not explicitly addressed the subject. After Münsterberg and Arnheim hardly any psychologist considered film as an art form at all. And neither have general psychological aesthetics taken film into consideration. The psychology of narrative film as it developed since the 1990’s has addressed the aesthetics of movies, but rather implicitly. We have discussed psychologists’ efforts to explain the natural fluency in the perception of story-events that Münsterberg already found characteristic for the film experience. They pointed at the conventional use of continuity film style. Mainstream cinema’s narration has been demonstrated by cognitive film theorists to be at best marginally self-conscious (Bordwell, 1985 , 2006 ). That is formal features of a film’s composition, style and use of technology are non-salient and subservient to the viewer’s reconstruction of and absorption in a fabula . The viewer’s construction of a story-world is only discretely cued by the narration, and formal or stylistic patterns that do the job tend to escape consciousness to a more than considerable degree (see Tan et al., 2017 ). We could say, I believe, that the psychological aesthetics of popular film is as it stands, first and foremost about absorption , the intense and fluent imagination of being in a fictional world. And it should be added that a psychological aesthetics of forms other than popular narrative fiction film is missing. Available knowledge suffices to propose a psychology of the thriller, the romance drama or the coming-of age film, but not for a psychology of the documentary, the expressionist, the surrealist or the postmodern film, let alone of experimental, avant-garde and other museum film art forms. After all then, at present we are not far removed from Münsterberg’s speculation on the aesthetic experience of theatrical film as intense absorption due to the inner harmony of a film’s parts and conditional on only modest deviations from realistic photo-representations of the worlds that it plays.

However, as we write, everything seems set to embark on research in the film audience’s aesthetic appraisals of movies. We can rest assured that at present 'the inner parts' of mainstream film in terms of contents, style and technology have been well-described by film theorists such as those referred to above. They can help psychologists teaming up with computer vision and hearing specialists to develop computational analyses of 'the inner harmony between the parts'. As a favourable sign of the times we also note a growing interest in the implicit knowledge that the regular film audience has of patterned uses of film style and technology in various forms and genres (see, e.g., Visch and Tan, 2009 ). Moreover, the first attempts have been made to identify the psychological dimensions that underlie film audience aesthetic tastes. Footnote 77 Dimensions of what I called the Artefact emotions , that is the affective evaluations of films as aesthetic products will soon be identifiable from reviews by critics and the film audience at large that are already available in large data repositories. Footnote 78 Large scale highly data-intensive research can be accompanied by smaller scale laboratory studies of whether and how viewers attend to aesthetically relevant patterns of formal and stylistic features. Footnote 79

Concluding remarks

The agenda that Hugo Munsterberg set for the psychology of the film, explaining the film experience through revealing psychological mechanisms underlying it, and accounting for its aesthetic functions is after a century still leading. I believe that psychologists of film have over the century not added new questions, while the ones he posed have been shown to be complex or even resilient. Nonetheless the field has gradually expanded. After the 1970's growth accelerated and today we face what in modesty may be called a surge. Two film-psychological books, Art Shimamura’s Psychocinematics (2013) and Jeffrey Zacks’ Flicker: Your brain on movies ( 2014 ), have recently filled the void left after The Photoplay .

The review of psychological studies into the film experience presented in this contribution is highly selective. It was not meant at all to cover the entire field, if only because we selected achievements from the vast research area of moving images and their perception. This is why the essay is titled 'A psychology of the film' rather than 'The etc.'. Granted its basic limitations, an overview of a century of film psychology could conclude with a comparison with research agenda that was set in Münsterberg’s Photoplay . The typical gripping experience that mainstream movies offer the audience has now come to be characterised as a sense of being absorbed by and quasi-physically present in a film scene that feels like going on as smoothly and continuously as a scene in real life. Considerable progress has been made in understanding how the basic psychological functions attention, perception and memory contribute to viewers’ comprehension of film. An understanding has developed of how attentional, perceptual and cognitive mechanisms dovetail with the solutions and norms of traditional cinemascopy. In the conventional 35 mm theatre set-up, the dark environment where high-density projections extend over the limits of the foveal acuity field, screens are big enough to allow for sufficient stimulation of the peripheral motion-sensitive visual field and the spinning projector shutter makes for smooth stroboscopic movement. Moreover, the visual system is quite resistant against perspective transformations due to less optimal viewing points, probably through extracting invariants under transformation (Cutting, 1986 ). Mainstream narrative continuity film-style ensures a fluent perception and comprehension of a film’s story-world, action, characters and their inner lives. Emotional responses can be explained from the development of the story and the progress of protagonists’ projects.

And yet, a lot less effort has been spent in theoretically elaborating further on what the film experience is. There is a general disbelief that it would involve a mere recognition of events, situations, persons etc. as we know them in the real world. But what exactly the spectator’s imagination contributes to the typical awareness of the film is still mysterious. And how filmic events, and the ways they have been staged, acted, framed, photographed and edited exactly influence and prompt acts of imagination on the part of audiences, has only in part been understood.

Meanwhile, the supply of "photoplays" has immensely multiplied and diversified since 1916, but the mainstream narrative film has by far remained the most popular form. Today’s ubiquitous access to moving images through a multiplicity of screens has made it more urgent than ever for psychologists to understand the experiences associated with extremely different cinematic devices. They range from handheld phones to giant 3-D multiplex screens and surround installations in museums. Canonical set-ups of the cinema also tend to diverge because of networked interaction technologies seeking application in the production, distribution and exhibition of motion pictures. Psychologists of the film can use their current understanding of how audiences experience mainstream cinema as a basis for differentiating what film semiologists call 'dispositives': clusters of production, exhibition and reception practices characterised by specific expectations, attitudes and competences of their end users. Footnote 80

The psychology of film is rapidly developing into an interdisciplinary field. Münsterberg’s psychological study already reflected inspiration from fields far removed from experimental psychology such as the then conventional practice of the photoplay as well as from Aristotelian poetics of the theatre play. In the same vein, current psychologists of film as we have seen, improve their understanding of the perception and cognition of film in a collaboration with experts in the analysis of narration in the fiction film. Advances in current models of film viewer attention featuring narrative cuing are profoundly informed by (historical) film analyses. Footnote 81 Scholars in cognitive film studies, such as those collaborating within the Society for the Cognitive Study of the Moving Image are steadily producing in-depth analyses of film at work conjointly with the viewer’s mind. Footnote 82 The same goes for the (more modest) advances made in psychological models of film-produced emotion. Further collaborations with specialists in machine-analysis of image and sound can be expected to add to an objective identification of formal and stylistic film structures, also beyond the domain of traditional mainstream film, 'in the wild' of cyberspace, and in experimental art cinemas.

The technology of measuring psychological responses to film structures (perception, attention, memory and affect) has also developed tremendously since Münsterberg founded the perception lab at Harvard. Gaze tracking, fMRI and TMS have been added to the psychophysical and cognitive response registrations. Integration of large scale image analysis data with behavioural measures obtained in the lab or as 'big data' is the next step in the development of film psychology. The study of integral responses to units of film extending beyond a few seconds entailing entire actions, events, scenes and acts, or even films as a whole, requires new response recording devices and data models. Perhaps it will be feasible within a decade or so to append large emotional response datasets obtained from social media and filmdatabase metadata to computational content analyses described above. We will then be able to categorise films into meaningful clusters, e.g., genres and subgenres based on relations between themes, plots, film style and emotion profiles. Small scale lab experiments can tell us more about what exactly the mind adds to the image on screen and the sound from cinema loudspeakers remains. Let me single out as the leading issue the question how bottom-up and top-down mechanisms interact in producing the film experience. Footnote 83 Diversification of the set-up of in-depth studies is also necessary following the multitude of conventional set-ups of film viewing on various screens and in on-line or 'live'(?) exhibitions.

And just as in 1916, a select but growing minority of researchers in academic, empirical psychology want to understand why and how it is we perceive and what it is like to enjoy movies. They want an understanding because first they are movie-loving psychologists and second they find film a challenging testing ground for fundamental models of attention, perception, memory, imagination, emotion and aesthetics.

A more detailed discussion of the functions in photoplay viewing can be summarised thus: As regards the perception of film scenes, Münsterberg argued that in the cinema depth is seen without spectator’s taking it for real, that movement is perceived not without the spectator’s mind adding the quality of smooth motion to merely seeing a succession of positions. For example, apparent movement of in fact stationary lines is '… superadded by the action of the mind, to motionless pictures' (1916, p. 29). Attention in the cinema concentrates the mind on details that acquire an unusual vividness and become the focus of our impulses and feelings. Close-ups objectify this weaving 'of the outer world into our minds' (p. 39). Attention is characterised by a series of subsequent shifts in its object. Shifts are provided by scene or action details made salient by spatial mise-en-scène, notably actor expression (movement and gestures), and mobile framing. Memory is used at any moment to remember events presented earlier in the film. Just as attention and perception are an instrument of the imagination, memory enables the fusing of events in our consciousness that are physically apart. Münsterberg’s view of the emotions showed similarities with James’ theory on the subject, as it stressed their embodied character; emotions cannot do without behavioural and physiological expressions. Münsterberg proposed that emotions that film audiences experience are portrayed on screen. The viewer’s imagination transforms what they see into their own felt emotion: The 'horror, pain and the joy' that spectators go through are 'really projected to the screen' (p. 53). In addition, he introduced a distinction between what we would refer to today as emotions based on empathy with characters on the one hand, and on the other emotions responding to the scenes they are in.

Münsterberg’s observation of how film expresses the basic psychological functions has been compellingly argued by Baranowski and Hecht’s ( 2017 ) in their excellent review of Münsterberg’s Photoplay .

Even if what we call today automated responses do have a place in the psychological functions, perception, attention, and memory are according to Münsterberg in the end acts of the mind, and imagination is even more so.

The aesthetic experience is grounded in a Kantian conception emphasising the completeness of the work of art in itself, and an explicit denial of the contemplant’s desires or practical needs in it.

This in turn requires that we 'enter with our own impulses into the will of every element, into the meaning of every line and colour and tone. Only if everything is full of such inner movement can we really enjoy the harmonious cooperation of the parts' (p. 73).

This probably not in the least due to the stability of the experimental and social have been on the agenda of the psychology of film ever since. The functions and mechanisms of the mind that experimental research focuses on have globally remained the same, and the interest in aesthetics has not waned.

Constancies in visual perception are disrupted due to the optical and mechanic qualities of film. Examples in point include reduced depth, absence of colour, object shape and volume distortions due to insufficient information on object size or camera’s distance.

A famous example is the ballet sequence in René Clair’s Entr’Act (1924). Filmed through a glass plate on which the dancers move, they are seen from a most unusual angle, at least compared to the canonical views that theatre audiences have, i.e., from below, and from an as unusual distance, i.e., from nearby. So close indeed that their robes fill the entire frame, and the spectator is struck by their expanding contours in the 2D plane of the screen.

To be sure, his treatment of the perception of movement, dynamics and expression in works of all arts, seem to be modelled after the organisational principles the mind uses in shaping the film experience.

Cutting has often convincingly argued that stroboscopic motion is a better label than apparent motion. His definition is 'a series of discrete static images can sometimes render the impression of motion'(Cutting, 2002 , p. 1179)

Why and how we see motion has been as basic to the study of visual perception as questions of perception of colour, depth, and shape. Helmholtz proposed that what we need to explain is how retinal images that correspond one-to one, i.e., optically with a scene in the world are transformed into mental images, or percepts that we experience. In the case of apparent motion, we need to understand in addition how a succession of retinal images are perceived as one or more objects in motion.

By smooth is meant that no transitions or flicker are seen, and no blurring of superposed images occurs. The problem of apparent motion in film has been formulated in this way by the Dutch perception psychologist and filmmaker Emile van Moerkerken in an unpublished chapter written in 1978 . The issue of why and when flickering instead of smoothly projected images are seen has been technically resolved through trial and error. Cinematic projectors need to present at least 24 frames per second if flicker is to be avoided, and higher frequencies, for instance 72 fps are even better (e.g., Anderson, 1996, pp. 54–59). These frequencies are above the human perception system’s critical fusion frequency, at least for the conventional luminance ranges in cinematic projection.

In the late nineteen sixties the organisation of the cortical cell complexes for visual perception in layered columns were identified by neurophysiologists Hubel and Wiesel ( 1959 ). Cells in Brodman areas 17 and 18 were found sensitive to different aspects of motion (e.g., orientation and spatial vs. temporal resolution), while integration into forerunners of motion perception is assumed to take place in areas V4 and MT.

Luminance and colour identification have been shown to interact with the more motion dedicated complexes in delivering impressions of motion, while the phenomenon of perceiving depth from movement has been very well documented.

For example, form-invariant apparent motion—that seems to require somewhat less elementary integration has been shown attributable to specialised MT cells for slower and faster motion (O’Keefe and Movshon, 1998 ). And as another example, Anstis (1980) discovered a system based on comparison of subsequent locations for apparent horizontal motion of a single dot, and another one for the perception of wave-form motion of an array of dots.

For example, it has been reported that test participants accurately perceive velocity of motion of a grating pattern only when they pay attention to its details (Cavanagh, 1992 ).

As another example, tension in a static work of art is perceived due to the brain’s synthesis of forces from implied movements, such as outward-directed tensions perceived in symmetrical geometric shapes. These can be observed in 'gamma movement', Arnheim, 1974 , p. 438.

The presentation times are short (flashes), say two-hundred milliseconds. The objects differ between the two presentations only in spatial position, we refer to these as A1 for object A in position 1, and A2. Depending on the interval between presentations apparent motion can be seen. With a briefest interval simultaneity of objects A1 and A2 is seen; less brief (appr. 100 Ms) makes us see 'pure motion'; that is 'objectless movement'; with still briefer intervals (appr. 60 Ms) we see 'optimal movement' of the object A1 to A2; and with briefest interval partial movement.

Wertheimer believed that perceived motion patterns reflected a short-circuiting between cells in the brain that were successively stimulated.

For example, among Korte’s laws, proposed in 1915, was a rule stating that the ratio of spatial distance between shapes and the interval between successive presentations was constant for the perception of 'good motion', clearly a Gestalt-like pattern. This coupling of the two features obtained in controlled studies, is surprising until today because purely mechanistic intuition would have it that increases in spatial distance would need 'compensation' by briefer inter-stimulus intervals to preserve smooth apparent motion. A related discovery, reported by Kolers (1972, p. 39 also militates against light-hearted use of an analogy with mechanics: Decreasing the spatial distance between successively presented shapes does not necessarily result in better movement.

First, the physiological account resting on 'prewired' neurocircuitry cannot do without integrative operations at a higher level of mental processing involving integration across separate cortical modules. Even if such operations are prewired, they represent contributions of the mind. Second, as importantly, the impact of visual stimulus features has on the perception of movement, and especially more complex forms, have been shown sensitive to control by the will within certain bounds. Third, figural processes in apparent motion appear to be extremely plastic, defying explanations by stimulus factors, as the example of induced motion illustrates.

As an illustration, even a somewhat forgotten proposal by Van der Waals and Roelofs ( 1930 ) according to Kolers, seems to go. They proposed that in apparent motion, the intervening motion is constructively interspersed in retrospect that is, only after the second presentation of the Koler object. And after Kolers' volume on apprent motion, several proposals have been forwarded on possible mechanisms. For example Kubovy and Gepshtein ( 2007 ) demonstrated in two experiments that spatial and temporal distances act either in trade-off or coupled to one another to provide for smooth apparent motion; the one at low speeds and the other at high speeds. None of the proposals have been accepted as the final solution, also because different definitions of the factors or the criterion for motion have been used.

Michotte (1946) attempted with some success to capture configurations of moving objects that would be perceived as instances of causation , a mentally represented concept. For example, block A is seen to 'push' block B forward if A approaches B (that is standing still) with an appropriate speed, and contact time. Alternatively, B will be perceived to 'depart' if some time in contact has elapsed before B moves away from A. In fact, Michotte’s experimental phenomenology was influenced by Brentano who was a major inspiration to the early Gestalt psychologists as well. Another great contribution by Michotte to the psychology of the film was that he was one of the first to analyse the problem of the apparent reality of cinematic scenes that Münsterberg and Arnheim had signalled. His diagnosis was that we see non-real objects, that is shapes projected on the screen. However, we do perceive—physiologically—real movement of these, and this is a condition presumed to be decisive for perceiving reality. Heider and Simmel are known for their demonstration of the inevitability of event, person and story-based schema-based inferences that viewers of simple animated geometric figures tend to make (Heider and Simmel, 1944).

Note that objects are not part of an optic array, as the latter refers to the metrical organisation of patterns of light.

There are certainly limits to the likeness of the dynamical optical flow offered by film images to real world ones. First, the flow is interrupted by cuts, and second the projected image in the cinema constrains the optic flow in a variety of ways. (Thanks to one the anonymous reviewers).

The discussion of Hochberg and Brooks’ psychology of the film is based on an earlier essay (Tan, 2007 ).

Hochberg and Brooks ( 1996a ) provided wonderful examples of the intricate aesthetics of camera movement when filming a human figure in motion, examples that require frequent analyses of filmed dance, or to film dance oneself, as Brooks has done indeed. Movement may be seen where there is actually none, apparent reversals of direction or apparent stasis may all occur, even in parallel. Hochberg and Brooks ( 1996b ) demonstrated that complex movements need to be ‘parsed’ by viewers into components depending on factors such as fixation point and even viewer intentions. Direct realist explanation of the film awareness would soon stumble on degrees of stimulus complexity too high to capture in optical array invariants; input from other cognitive structure-based mechanisms capable of selecting candidates for 'pick-up' would be necessary.

Hochberg ( 1986 ) stated that in some cases only the most complex cognitive efforts could explain an understanding of shot transitions, that could only be conveyed through literary analysis. Here he was probably referring to cases in artistically highest end productions.

For example, Hayhne (2007) criticised Hochberg’s stipulation that mental schemas used in understanding shot transitions cannot be spatially precise or complete. She quoted evidence of the use of self-produced body movements following a mental map with extreme precision.

According to one such theory (the so-called Event Indexing Model, Magliano, Miller & Zwaan, 2001 ) viewers of film like readers of stories generate embodied cognitive models of (story-) situations. These mental models represent sequences of events, people and their goals, plans and actions, in spatiotemporal settings. The situation model is continuously updated while the film proceeds. Updates follow upon the identification of changes in story-entities (e.g., movement of characters or objects), time, causality and intentionality.

This synthetic response by the viewer can be taken as the actual recognition and categorisation of an event or action. Neuroscience research has identified areas of the brain involved in recognising—and 'simulating' actions such as grasping an object, or exhibiting a facial expression, e.g., Hasson et al. (2004).

As an example study, Garsoffky et al. ( 2009 ) demonstrated that the recognition of events by film viewers improved when framing objects or events across shots adheres to viewpoints that are common in real world perception. Other studies tested the notion that movies adhering to this style present viewers with simplified event views that they can readily integrate in an available event schema (e.g., Schwan, 2013 ).

The cueing of attentional shifts to the target portion of screen B can assume distinct forms, such as through match on action, establishing and shot/ reverse shots, and point shot. The attentional shift has carried the conscious experience across the discontinuity in views. The theory is documented by numerous analyses of scene perception, in which analysed shot contents are overlaid with dynamic gaze maps. The model can explain how violations of continuity principles result in less efficient gaze behaviours. Artistically motivated violations are taken seriously, but dealt with as atypical for the canonical set-up.

Bezdek et al. ( 2015 ) report a study in which participants were shown a film scene at the centre of fixation while checkerboard patterns were flashed in the periphery of vision. The results of fMRI analyses showed that activity of peripheral visual processing areas in the brain was diminished with increasing narrative suspense of the scenes, whereas activity in areas associated with central vision, attention and dynamic visual processing increased.

In one experiment, viewers were presented with a sequence from Moonraker in which James Bond jumps out of a plane and can be expected to fall 'safely' onto a circus tent. This high-level event schema-based cognitive expectation was enhanced in one condition but not in another, through providing a written context before the sequence was shown. It turned out that providing context knowledge led to the critical inference and to less surprise, pointing at the functionality of high-level attention cues. However, gaze behaviour did hardly differ between the high-level cued vs. non-cued viewers. Moreover, effects predicted from a tyranny of film analysis of the sequence—that is where viewers looked and what, were much stronger than the subtle effects of high-level cognitive processes.

The computation of visual salience can easily be extended to the case of film by replacing the input image by a series of frames and the output by an array of saliency maps. Furthermore, low-level features such as colour and orientation need to be integrated over successive images into dynamic ones, e.g., changes in orientation, and into motion features.

See: http://bitsearch.blogspot.nl/2013/05/saliency-maps-and-their-computation.html#!/2013/05/saliency-maps-and-their-computation.html (accessed 31 Jan 2018).

For example, an international group from the universities of Brescia and Teesside has recently shown able to predicts movie affect curves that is, dynamic patterns of emotional responses, from low-level features such as colour, motion and sound, while taking into account the influence of film grammar (e.g., sequences of varying shot-types) and narrative elements (e.g., script or dialogue analysis classifications). The analysis of the grammatical and narrative features can be supported by the computer but are not entirely machine-executably algorithmic. The emotional responses were measured using physiological and self-report measures (Canini et al., 2010 ).

In his earlier widely acclaimed work in general visual perception, Cutting continued the Gibsonian ecological approach to the perception of real world scenes, attempting to find formal extraction and coding principles sustaining the direct pick-up of behaviourally relvant information. See, e.g., Cutting ( 1981 ), in which ecological tenets regarding the perception of events based on invariant structures in the information offer of the visual stimulus. This line of research also included cinematic perception. An example is his study on the perception of rigid shapes when viewers are seated at extreme angles vis-à-vis the centre of projection, e.g., front row side aisle (Cutting, 1987 ).

In the essay Cutting lists the cues in the optical array that sustain the perception of distance in the real world, and then elaborates on how filmmakers manipulate depth cues in order for the audience to perceive scenes exactly the way the narrative requires them to.

Following the convenient overview in Brunick et al. ( 2013 ) they are for duration average shot duration in seconds; for temporal shot structure the distribution of shot durations; for movement the degree of difference between pixels in adjacent frames (zero when frames are identical means no movement); for luminance the degree of black vs white of images; and for colour the distribution of hues and degrees of saturation of frames.

For example, in the analyses just mentioned Cutting et al. established in their Hollywood sample an increase of movement between 1905 and 1935 and could relate this finding to film-analytic accounts of stylistic changes supporting growing emotional impact of movies. As another example, consider the well-documented finding that shot duration tends to decrease across the history of popular film. Salt (2009) reported a linear decrease of average shot length. Cutting and Candan ( 2015 ) could use his data and added nuances to the general linear decrease trend that they replicated. One was that different slopes for shot classes obtained, especially in the post 1940s’ Hollywood films, another that shot scale, in particular increasing use of wide angle shots, contributed considerably to the decrease in shot duration.

The climax works towards the minimum as the narrative tends to progress here presenting focused events without disruption, while its scope is wider and shifting in the set-up and epilogue acts. Consistently, during the climax movement is more frequent while shots also tend to be darker compared to the remaining acts. The set-up and epilogue contrast most conspicuously with the climax, while complication and development exhibit steady in-between values for the low-level feature parameters.

They do not manifest physically, but their indexing is perceptually straightforward. One is time shifts, a structural feature. It decreased over the time of a film, in line with the film-narratological notion that a film’s action thickens towards a deadline. Three other higher-level features were more semantic in nature. Character appearances dropped after the set-up. Action shots were most numerous at the end of the set-up and the beginning of the climax, while conversations levelled down during the climax.

Cutting’s ( 2016 ) interpretative qualifications illuminated the stylistic distinctions among the acts. They are most informative and any summarisation would be detrimental to the value of the analyses. To give just one example For example: 'The development also has several characteristics in contrast to the complication: its shot durations are a bit longer (Study 1), it has more noncut transitions (Study 2), and it is dimmer (Study 4) so that by its end the luminance falls to the psychological and literal “darkest moment” for the protagonist' (Cutting, 2016 , p. 24). I encourage the reader interested in the stylistic comparison of the acts to reading the original article.

An example is an analysis by Cutting et al. ( 2011 ) of 150 historical films were indexed as to movement and shot duration. They observed a decrease of movement with decreasing shot durations, and reasoned that a basic perceptual mechanism could be at the basis of this correlation: people can only follow so much movement in a duration-limited view. The researchers then analysed newer films that far exceeded the maximum movement-to- shot duration ratio, and it was found from the public discourse around the titles that viewers could not cope with the overload stimulation.

Dimensions captured in the instrument include comprehension of the narrative, a sense of being in the story-world, emotional responses to story-world events and characters, and attentional focus on story-world details. The remaining experience concepts refer to experiences of entertainment or story-worlds excluding awareness of a narrative or any other constructions underlying these.

Hinde ( 2017 ) has recently presented evidence showing that self-reported presence is positively related to response latencies in a dual attention task in which participants were required to respond to a distractor signal while watching a movie. This result supports the notion of absorption and loss of awareness of the real world.

Variants of presence stress embodied apparent reality of the portrayed world, and the loss of awareness of mediation. Loss of awareness and apparent reality point to the illusion of being absorbed by the story-world. Presence seems the most immediate experiential outcome of natural or real-world scene perception and event comprehension mechanisms. It was implied in Gibson’s summary of the awareness of film: 'We are onlookers in the situation, …, we are in it and we can adopt point of observation within its space'.

In this respect, the concept of transportation builds on Gerrig’s ( 1993 ) seminal work on the experience of narrative worlds. Transportation requires a 'deictic shift' (Segal, 1995) from the real to the story-world (Segal, 1995 in Bussele and Bilandzic, 2009 ). When the narrative ends the spell is broken and the audience returns into the previously inaccessible real world.

In line with general psychological research on empathy, a distinction has been made between embodied simulation of film character feeling and a cognitively more demanding forms of empathy with characters (e.g., Tan, 2013a , b ). Complex forms of empathy that require TOM cognition presuppose that there is an awareness of the distinction between self and other. The highest degrees of absorption by characters (measured by items such as 'I became the character') seem characterised by a complete fusion of the viewers’ self with the character and are properly referred to as identification (e.g., Cohen, 2001 ). In this case, viewer emotion is identical with character emotion.

For example, cinematic techniques of selective or emphatic framing of character expression can lead to stronger mimicry or embodied simulation on the part of the viewer than observation of a person in the real world would allow (e.g., Coplan, 2006 ; Raz et al., 2013 ).

The less demanding forms are based on automated embodied simulation or mirroring, for instance mimicry. Complex forms involve mentalising, or reasoning supported by general Theory of Mind schemas and inferencing. The most demanding occur when the film’s narration withholds information about a character’s inner life in relation to story-events as in some arthouse films (Tan, 2013a , b ). Mentalizing has like cognitively less demanding forms of empathy been shown to be affected by film style. Rooney and Bálint ( 2018 ) recently demonstrated that close-ups of the face stimulate the use of TOM in the perception of characters.

Identification has been empirically observed and isolated from other forms of absorption by Cohen (2001); Tal-Or and Cohen ( 2010) ; Bálint and Tan (in press).

In an attempt to qualify what it is like to be absorbed in a film, Bálint and Tan (2015) synthesised a summarising dynamic image schema, from a study of film viewers’ reports on their own experience of absorption while watching a film. Image schemas are culturally shared embodied cognitive structures that have been identified by cognitive linguists and are hypothesised to underlie cognition and experience and are more specifically used in metaphorical thinking and use of language. The schema entails the viewer’s self-travelling into the center of the story-world. The self exerts forces to remain inside the story-world, and is taken there in some cases notably by the author. In Bálint and Tan’s study, readers of novels turned out to use the same image schemas to describe their experience as film viewers.

It is noteworthy that Münsterberg considers the activity of the basic functional mechanisms perception, attention and memory as consisting of 'acts', rather than responses as it would become common in mainstream experimental psychology, see, e.g., p. 57. 'Imagination' refers to acts resulting in 'products of the active mind' (p. 75) in particular memories, associations and emotions added to perceptions as 'subjective supplements' (p. 46).

For an overview of current cognitive emotion theories see Oatley and Laird ( 2013 ).

Through procedures such as suggestion and juxtaposition of fictional elements and perspectives, and due to strong coherence of elements, simulations are as engaging as to allow for recipients’ explorations of social situations, involving the self. This results in emotions ranging from the more basic to the social and culturally sophisticated type.

The stages correspond to Oatley’s ( 2013 ) direct, imaginative and self-related modes of appraisal in film-induced emotion.

There is some literature on the affective potential of mainstream film techniques. See for example experiments on camera angle and image composition on emotional appraisal of objects and characters such as weakness, tenseness, dominance or strength reported in Kraft ( 1991 ), and an overview of formal and presentation features of media messages in relation to their emotional effects by Detenber and Lang ( 2011 ).

This capacity has the obvious adaptive advantage of learning proper responses to critical situations before they are met in the actual world. The same point has been made by Currie ( 1995 ); see also Currie and Ravenscroft ( 2002 ). See also Tan ( 2008 ) on pretense play as exercising emotions and adaptive responses in film viewing. My position on the issue of the authenticity of emotion in response to fictional narrative is opposed to Walton (1990) who proposed that make-believe worlds can only induce 'as-if emotions'.

Neuropsychological accounts of film viewer emotions, such as those by Grodal (2009) and Zacks’ ( 2014 ) emphasise suppression of actions such as fight or flight, by prefrontal circuits following appraisals, e.g., of threats or provocations. In my related application of the cognitive theory to film viewing, viewers can experience a tendency to flee as an initial tendency, due to automated mimicry or simulation.

An attempt to measure virtual forms of emotional action readiness in response to several film genres was reported in Tan ( 2013a , b ).

In the end virtual action responses in the cinema should be understood as an example of the situatedness of emotion in general. (See Griffith & Scarantion, 2009 ). The conventional set-up of the cinema positions spectators as witnesses to fictional events and appraisals, experiences, expressions and action readiness take shape according to the cinematic situation.

In the end, viewers know on the basis of their narrative and genre schemas, the film will provide answers to extant questions they have underway.

Needs of mood management and the occurrence of emotions that help to improve moods have been shown to explain preference for entertainment products such as movies (Zilmann, 2003).

Sympathy for mainstream protagonists is probably rather immediately induced by our felt similarity and familiarity with them, and more especially in terms of moral values (Zillmann, 2000 ).

The nature of the events and their outcomes corresponding to ups and downs in the life of a protagonist vary from one genre to another. For example, the action heroine meets with assaults on her life and deals blows to her stalker; the romance protagonist with separation and reunion. See also Zillmann’s theory of the enjoyment of drama.

I have introduced these emotions earlier (Tan, 1996) under the heading of Fictional World emotions or F emotions, because they are responses to events in a fictional world. F emotions include empathetic and non-empathetic emotions. Non-empathetic emotions can either be based on sympathy, for example, when we fear that a bomb will explode to the harm of a protagonist, or not based on sympathy. Awe induced by the sight of a sublime landscape would be an example. F-emotions are defined in opposition to A emotions. The latter category consists of responses to the film as a human-made artefact instead of a fictional world produced in the viewer’s imagination.

The point has been made in Tan and Frijda ( 1997 ) and Tan ( 2009 ), and more recently underscored in psychophysiological research using film by Wassiliwizky et al. ( 2017 ). Schubert et al. ( 2018 ) refer to the emotion as kama muta a socio-relational emotion of feeling closeness when an intensification of communal sharing relations is appraised. In the study just referred to such moments had been analysed in film fragments.

An example is the fear we have when we watch a horror monster in a view not aligned with any character’s, or without a character being in the neighbourhood of the monster.

See, for example, study of interest during character vs. action development oriented films Doicaru (2016, Ch. 2).

See for empirical comparative analyses of absorbed modes of witnessing drama and detached modes of spectatorship in watching nature documentaries Tan ( 2013b ).

Films are segmented (from larger to smaller units) in acts, scenes and events. All subsequent events induce interest. Every scene offers answers or matches to anticipations induced earlier, leading to enjoyment. Enjoyment tends to reinforce interest—as it stimulates intake and rewards past efforts. Every scene, too, induces novel questions and affective anticipations, keeping interest at least alive.

Some researchers of media entertainment refer to such regulatory reappraisals as meta-emotions (Bartsch et al., 2008). Positive gratifications may be derived from such reappraisals and associated emotions. Viewers of sad drama may appreciate their own moral stance that transpires through their experience of a character’s losses and suffering from injustice. Horror lovers may like the emotion because they explicitly seek it, and younger male audiences of extremely violent films have been shown to test, and pride themselves on their coping abilities (Hill, 1997). A related act of emotion regulation is male viewers’ display of protective attitudes towards their female company during horror shows (Zillmann and Weaver, 1997).

In Tan ( 1996 ) I proposed that, in contrast to aversive situations witnessed in real life, popular fiction scenes on separation, isolation, violence, terror and horror and so on are due to their being part of a story always signal that we are in medias res ; the narrative is to be continued, we are curious to know where it is heading, and it is virtually impossible to completely abort expectancies and imaginations of a turn to the positive. Entertaining these is in itself not unpleasant, especially when viewers are open to the possibility that they can learn from the unpleasant events.

Doicaru (2016) reviewed general models of aesthetic appreciation as to their suitability for explaining aesthetic appreciation of film. She reported a validation study of a measurement instrument in which five general factors were identified that may be used to describe dimensions of aesthetic appraisal in film viewing. They were Cognitive stimulation, Negative emotionality, Self-reference and Understanding. A corpus of films from different genres and aesthetic categories (e.g., mainstream, arthouse and experimental were used, and according audiences were involved.

Movies can move us not only in our role of witnesses of events in a fictional world, but also as artefacts made by filmmakers with some formal intention in mind; appreciation of visual beauty etc. are an example. They have the construction of the artefact as their object, and need to be distinguished, as artefact emotions from emotional responses to witnessed events in fictional worlds. They are aesthetic emotions because they involve appraisals of artefact features, such as form, style, use of technology and implied meaning. Untrained audiences can recount their artefact emotions: Professional critics can add elaborations of the appraisals they made while viewing. They have as their object the complex of film form, use of style and technology and intended or unintended meanings. We can further our understanding of appraisals in Artefact emotions using such intuitions available in critical film analyses. They are massively represented in internet user groups like Youtube and Metacritics. Machine learning algorithms are now being developed to extract and categorise emotions from film forums, and differentiate both films and target audiences, see, e.g., Buitinck et al. ( 2015) .

A few example studies on effects of foregrounding procedures in narrative film and their effects on cognitive strategies and aesthetic appreciation can be found in Hakemulder ( 2007 ) and Bálint et al. ( 2016 ).

The concept has developed over the past three decades, see Casetti ( 2015 ). I have freely summarised meanings to fit the purpose of sketching a research agenda for psychologists.

The large project started by Bordwell et al. (1985) on the historical poetics of American mainstream cinema, already have provided psychological research into the mechanisms underlying the film experience with major concepts and reference norms for conventional structuring of film narratives and their stylistic parameters. Among these are continuity, spatiotemporal segmentation and stylistic emphasis.

Interested readers should regularly consult the society’s scholarly journal Projections .

In the role of top-down influences I emphatically include the Münsterbergian acts of imagination on the part of the spectator.

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Acknowledgements

The research for this article has been supported in part by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), grant number 360-30-200 for the project 'Varieties of Absorption'.

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Tan, E.S. A psychology of the film. Palgrave Commun 4 , 82 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0111-y

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174 Film Research Paper Topics To Inspire Your Writing

Also known as a moving picture or movie, the film uses moving images to communicate or convey everything from feelings and ideas to atmosphere and experiences. The making of movies, as well as the art form, is known as cinematography (or cinema, in short). The film is considered a work of art. The first motion pictures were created in the late 1880s and were shown to only one person at a time using peep show devices. By 1985, movies were being projected on large screens for large audiences.

Film has a rich and interesting history, as well as a bright future given the current technological advancements. This is why many professors will really appreciate it if you write a research paper on movies. However, to write a great paper, you need a great topic.

In this blog post, we will give you our latest list of 174 film research paper topics. They should be excellent for 2023 and should get you some bonus points for originality and creativity. As always, our topics are 100% free to use as you see fit. You can reword them in any way you like and you are not required to give us any credit.

Writing Good Film Research Paper

Before we get to the film topics for research papers in our list, you need to learn how you can write the best possible film research paper. It’s not overly complicated, don’t worry. Here are some pointers to get you started:

Start as early as possible Start your project with an outline that will keep you focused on what’s important Spend some time to find a great topic (or just use one of ours) Research every angle of the topic Spend some time composing the thesis statement Always use information from reliable sources Make sure you cite and reference properly Edit and proofread your work to make it perfect. Alternatively, you can rely on our editors and proofreaders to help you with this.

Now it’s time to pick your topic. We’ve made things easy for you, so all you have to do is go through our neatly organized list and select the topic you like the most. If you already know something about the topic, writing the paper shouldn’t take you more than 1 or 2 days, however if you have no desire to spend a lot of time on your assignment, thesis writing help from our professionals is on its way. Pick your topic now:

Easy Film Research Topics

We know most students are not too happy about spending days working on their research papers. This is why we have compiled a list of easy film research topics just for our readers:

• What was the Electrotachyscope?
• Research the history of film
• Describe the first films ever made
• Talk about the Kinetoscope
• Who were Auguste and Louis Lumière?
• An in-depth look at film during World War I
• Talk about the evolution of sound in motion pictures
• Most popular movie actors of all time
• The life and works of Charles Chaplin
• The life and works of Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein
• Discuss the Mutoscope device
• Talk about the introduction of natural color in films

Film Topics To Write About In High School

If you are a high school student, you probably want some topics that are not overly complicated. Well, the good news is that we have plenty of film topics to write about in high school. Check them out below:

• An in-depth analysis of sound film
• Research the shooting of Le Voyage dans la Lune
• Talk about the Technicolor process
• Research the film industry in India
• The growing popularity of television
• Discuss the most important aspects of film theory
• The drawbacks of silent movies
• Cameras used in 1950s movies
• The most important cinema movie of the 1900s
• Research the montage of movies in the 1970s
• The inception of film criticism
• Discuss the film industry in the United States

Interesting Film Paper Topics

Are you looking for the most interesting film paper topics so that you can impress your professor and your fellow students? We are happy to say that you have arrived at just the right place. Here are our latest ideas:

• Are digital movies much different from films?
• Research the evolution of cinematography
• Research the role of movies in Indian culture
• The principles of a cinema camera
• Technological advancements in the film industry
• The use of augmented reality in movies
• Talk about the role of film in American culture
• An in-depth look at the production cycle of a film
• The role of the filming crew on the set
• Latest cameras for cinematography
• An in-depth look at the distribution of films
• How are animated movies made?

Controversial Movie Topics

Why would you be afraid to write your paper on a controversial topic? Perhaps you didn’t know that most professors really appreciate the effort and the innovative ideas. Below, you can find a whole list of controversial movie topics for students:

• An in-depth look at Cannibal Holocaust
• Controversies behind Fifty Shades of Gray
• A Clockwork Orange: the banned movie
• All Quiet on the Western Front: a controversial war movie
• Discuss The Texas Chain Saw Massacre movie
• Apocalypse Now: one of the most banned movies
• Brokeback Mountain and the controversies surrounding it
• Talk about The Last Temptation of Christ
• The Birth of a Nation: the movie that was banned in America

Movie Topics Ideas For College

As you probably know already, college students should choose topics that are a bit more complex than those picked by high school students. The good news is that we have compiled a list of the best movie topics ideas for college students below:

• Methods to bring your sketches to life
• Discuss problems with documentary filming
• War movies and their impact on society
• What does a director actually do on the set?
• Talk about state-sanctioned movies in China
• Research cinematography in North Korea
• Talk about psychological reactions to films
• Research the good versus evil theme
• African Americans in the 1900s cinematography in the US
• Discuss the creation of sound for films

Hottest Film Topics To Date

Our writers and editors did their best to compile a list of the hottest film topics to date. You can safely pick any of the topics below and write your essay or research paper on it. You should be able to find plenty of information online about each and every topic:

• The life and works of Alfred Hitchcock
• Talk about racial discrimination in war movies
• The psychology behind vampire movies
• The life and works of Samuel L. Jackson
• Classic opera versus modern movie soundtracks
• Hollywood versus Bollywood
• The life and works of tom Hanks
• Research the Frankenstein character
• Major contributions by women in cinematography
• The life and works of Harrison Ford
• The 3 most popular topics for a moving picture

Good Movie Topics For 2023

We know, you probably want some topics that relevant today. You want to talk about something new and exciting. Well, we’ve got a surprise for you. This list of good movie topics for 2023 has just been added to the blog post, and you can use it for free:

• The life and works of Will Smith
• Why do people love movie monsters?
• Talk about the popularity of fan movies
• The life and works of Morgan Freeman
• Gender inequality in UK films
• Research movies that were produced because of video games
• The life and works of Anthony Hopkins
• The importance of the Golden Raspberry Award
• Outer space: the future of cinematography
• Compare today’s filming techniques to those in the 1950s
• The importance of winning a Golden Globe Award

Fascinating Film Topics

Are you looking for some of the most fascinating film topics one can ever find online? Our experts have outdone themselves this time. Check out our list of ideas below and choose the topic you like the most:

• Talk about the development of Star Wars
• Talk about spaghetti western movies
• Discuss the filming of Pride and Prejudice
• Research fantasy films
• The most popular movie genre in 2023
• What makes a movie a blockbuster?
• Filming for the Interstellar movie
• Peculiarities of Bollywood cinema
• Talk about the era of Hitchcock
• Discuss the role of motion pictures in society
• Talk about Neo-realism in Italian movies
• Research the filming of A Fistful of Dollars

The History Of Film Topics

Writing about the history of film and cinematography can be a good way to earn some bonus points from your professor. However, it’s not an easy thing to do. Fortunately, we have a list of the history of film topics right here for you, so you don’t have to waste any time searching:

• Research the first ever motion picture
• Discuss the idea behind moving images
• Research the Pioneer Era
• Talk about the introduction of sound in movies
• Talk about the Silent Era
• Who created the first ever movie?
• Discuss the Golden Era of cinematography
• The era of changes in 2023
• The rise of Hollywood cinematography
• Discuss the first color movie
• Research the first horror movie
• Discuss the phrase “No one person invented cinema”

Famous Cinematographers Topics

You can, of course, write your next research paper on the life and works of a famous or popular cinematographer. You have plenty to choose from. However, we’ve already selected the best famous cinematographers topics for you right here:

• The life and works of Sir Roger Deakins
• Research the cinematographer Vittorio Storaro
• An in-depth look at Bill Pope
• Research the cinematographer Gordon Willis
• The life and works of Wally Pfister
• An in-depth look at Robert Burks
• Research the cinematographer Stanley Cortez
• The life and works of Conrad Hall
• An in-depth look at Rodrigo Prieto
• The life and works of Claudio Miranda
• Emmanuel Lubezki
• An in-depth look at Jack Cardiff
• Research the cinematographer Michael Ballhaus
• The life and works of Kazuo Miyagawa

Famous Films Topic Ideas

The easiest and fastest way to write an essay or research paper about movies is to write about a famous movie. Take a look at these famous films topic ideas and start writing your paper today:

• Research A Space Odyssey
• Research the movie Seven Samurai
• Cinematography techniques in There Will Be Blood
• Discuss the film The Godfather
• An in-depth look at La Dolce Vita
• Research the movie Citizen Kane
• Cinematography techniques in Goodfellas
• An in-depth look at the Aliens series
• Cinematography techniques in Singin’ in the Rain
• Research the movie Mulholland Drive
• An in-depth look at In The Mood For Love
• Research the movie City Lights

The Future Of Movies Topic Ideas

Did you ever wonder what the movies of the future will look like? We can guarantee that your professor has thought about it. Surprise him by writing your paper on one of these the future of movies topic ideas:

• The future of digital films
• Discuss animation techniques of the future
• The future of cinematography cameras
• How do you view the actors of the future?
• Will digital releases eliminate the need for DVDs?
• The role of streaming services in the future
• Talk about the direct-to-consumer distribution concept
• Is cinematography a good career for the future?
• Will movie theaters disappear?
• Virtual reality in future films
• The rise of Pixar Studios

Awesome Cinema Topic Ideas

Our experts have just finished completing this section of the topics list. Here, you will find some of the most awesome cinema topic ideas. These should all work great in 2023, so give them a try today:

• The concept of the Road Movie
• Review the film “Donnie Brasco”
• The popularity of musical movies
• A comprehensive history of cinematography
• Discuss the A Beautiful Mind movie
• Compare watching movies now and in the 1990s
• Talk about film narrative
• The importance of the main characters in a movie
• The process of selecting the right actor for the role
• Well-known produces in the United States
• The most popular actors in 2023
• Research Nazi propaganda films

Simple Cinema Essay Ideas

If you want to write about cinematography but don’t want to spend too much time researching the topic, you could always choose one of our simple cinema essay ideas. New ideas are added to this list periodically:

• Discuss the concept of limited animation
• War movies during World War II
• The importance of James Bond for Americans
• What is docufiction?
• The traits of a filmophile
• The success of early crime movies
• An in-depth look at Hanna-Barbera
• The transition from VHS tape to DVD
• Best comedy movies ever made
• Discuss the Film Noir genre
• What is a Blaxploitation?
• The best samurai film ever produced

Movies And The Internet Topics

• How does piracy affect the movie industry?
• An in-depth look at Netflix
• Research the top 3 movie streaming websites
• Compare and contrast Netflix and Amazon Prime
• Should movies be shared for free online?
• The effects of online streaming on piracy
• Is pirating movies illegal everywhere?
• Illegal downloads of movies in North Korea
• Piracy: a form of film preservation
• The most pirated movies of the 21st century
• Research the best ways to stop film piracy
• The economic impact of movie piracy in the United States

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217 Film Research Paper Topics & Ideas

18 January 2024

last updated

Film research paper topics provide a rich, multifaceted canvas for critical analysis. One can explore genre theory and its evolution, scrutinizing the symbiotic relationship between society and film genres, such as sci-fi, horror, or romance. Another fruitful area lies in auteur theory, assessing the unique stylistic fingerprints of directors, like Kubrick, Hitchcock, or Miyazaki. Delving into film adaptations provides an opportunity to study narrative transformation across different media. Studying representation in film, be it racial, gender, or cultural, opens a lens into societal norms and biases. In turn, there is the exploration of film technologies and their influence on the cinematic experience. Film criticism and its role in shaping public perception can also be an intriguing topic. With every cinematic element providing a potential research topic, film studies truly cater to diverse academic interests.

Best Film Research Paper Topics

• Impacts of Technological Advancements on the Animation Film Industry
• Portrayal of Mental Health in Contemporary Cinema
• Cultural Stereotypes in Global Film Industry
• Feminist Theory Analysis in Alfred Hitchcock’s Films
• Violence and its Effect on Teenagers in Action Films
• Representation of History in Steven Spielberg’s Movies
• Examination of Homosexuality in Bollywood Cinema
• Depiction of Science and Technology in Science Fiction Films
• Philosophical Themes Explored in the Matrix Trilogy
• Influence of Film Noir on Modern Thrillers
• Comic Book Adaptations: Success and Failure Factors
• Cinema’s Role in Promoting Environmental Awareness
• Portrayal of AI and Robotics in Films: A Comparative Study
• Evolution of Special Effects in the Film Industry
• Relationship Between Music and Narrative in Film
• Examination of Sociopolitical Contexts in Iranian Cinema
• Impacts of Hollywood on Global Film Cultures
• Aesthetic Evolution in French New Wave Cinema
• Exploring Symbolism in Stanley Kubrick’s Films
• Influence of the Silent Era on Modern Film Techniques
• Alien Depictions: Reflection of Societal Fears in Film
• Use of Dreams and Subconscious in David Lynch’s Films
• Examination of Masculinity in Clint Eastwood’s Westerns
• Evolution of Animation: From Disney to Studio Ghibli
• Exploring Religion and Spirituality in Indian Cinema

Easy Film Research Paper Topics

• Interpreting Magic Realism in Guillermo del Toro’s Films
• Analysis of Adaptation Theory in Book-to-Film Transitions
• Modern Film Criticism: Influence of Online Review Platforms
• Exploration of Absurdism in Coen Brothers’ Films
• Social Media Portrayal in Contemporary Film
• Influence of Film on Public Perception of Historical Events
• Analysis of Horror Tropes in Japanese Cinema
• Portrayal of Childhood and Growing Up in Animated Films
• Impacts of Censorship Policies on Film Creativity
• Narrative Techniques in Quentin Tarantino’s Films
• The Role of Fashion and Costume in Period Films
• Ethical Considerations in Documentary Filmmaking
• Representation of Post-Apocalyptic Themes in Cinema
• Exploring Cultural Identity in African Cinema
• Analysis of Musical Scores in Film Noir
• Examination of Adaptation of Video Games Into Films
• Portrayal of Space Travel in Science Fiction Films
• Evolution of Stop Motion Techniques in Cinema
• Cultural Interpretations of Love and Romance in Films
• Examination of Dystopian Themes in Animated Films
• Analyzing the Concept of Anti-Heroes in Film
• Exploring Satire and Parody in Comedy Films
• Portrayal of Race and Ethnicity in Hollywood Cinema

Interesting Film Research Paper Topics

• Depiction of Cybercrime in Contemporary Cinema
• Influence of German Expressionism on Tim Burton’s Aesthetic
• Use of Color and Lighting in Guillermo del Toro’s Films
• Examination of LGBTQ+ Representation in Hollywood Cinema
• Roles of Politics in the Cuban Film Industry
• Portrayal of Disability in Modern Films
• Treatment of Time Travel in Science Fiction Films
• Analyzing the Evolution of Cinematography Techniques
• Cultural Influences in South Korean Cinema
• Roles of Nostalgia in Recreating Period Pieces
• Importance of Film Score in Creating Atmosphere
• Analysis of Propaganda Techniques in North Korean Cinema
• Representation of Women in Action Films
• Ethical Implications of Animal Use in Film Production
• Impacts of Streaming Platforms on Film Distribution
• Evolution of Film Censorship: A Comparative Study
• Examination of Familial Relationships in Animated Films
• Interpretation of Surrealism in Luis Buñuel’s Films
• Examination of Biopics: Historical Accuracy vs. Dramatic License
• Impacts of Film Festivals on Independent Cinema
• Exploring Existentialism in Ingmar Bergman’s Films

Film Research Paper Topics About Students

• Influence of Silent Cinema on Modern Filmmaking Techniques
• Portrayal of Social Media’s Impact on Adolescents in Contemporary Movies
• Bollywood vs. Hollywood: A Comparative Study of Storytelling Styles
• Representation of Mental Health in Animation Movies
• Foreign Language Films: Enhancing Global Cultural Understanding among Students
• The Role of Women in Classic Film Noir: A Critical Analysis
• Analysis of Auteur Theory in Modern Independent Cinema
• Evaluating the Accuracy of Historical Dramas: A Fact vs. Fiction Study
• Roles of Music in Creating Emotional Impact: A Study on Film Scores
• Racial Stereotyping in Blockbuster Movies: A Comprehensive Study
• Interpreting Symbolism and Metaphor in Fantasy Genre Films
• Exploring Subliminal Messages in Advertising and Product Placement in Films
• Understanding the Social Impact of LGBTQ+ Representation in Cinema
• Examining the Evolution of Special Effects in the Film Industry
• Influence of Japanese Anime on Western Animation Styles
• Significance of Set Design in Creating Realistic Period Films
• Ethics in Documentary Filmmaking: Truth vs. Storytelling
• Roles of Cinematography in Enhancing Narratives in Films
• Impacts of Sci-Fi Films on Popular Science Understanding Among Students
• Subtext and Satire: The Power of Political Commentary in Movies
• Narrative Techniques in Autobiographical and Biographical Films
• Artistic Censorship: Its Impact on Creative Freedom in International Cinema

Film Research Paper Topics Made by Students

• Transformation of Comic Books to Silver Screen: A Historical Analysis
• Gender Representation in Oscar-Winning Films Over the Decades
• The Evolution of Horror Films: From Psycho to Paranormal
• Motion Capture Technology: Changing the Landscape of Animation Films
• Examination of Propaganda in World War II Era Cinema
• Unpacking the Influence of Music Scores in Emotional Storytelling
• Analyzing Film Noir: The Aesthetics of Grit and Shadows
• Impacts of Streaming Platforms on Traditional Movie Theatres
• Silent Era to Talkies: How Did Sound Revolutionize Cinema?
• Special Effects Techniques: The Making of Modern Sci-Fi Movies
• The Hero’s Journey: Exploring Mythological Themes in Films
• Ethical Dilemmas in Documentaries: A Study on Bias and Objectivity
• Dissecting the Psychological Depth of Christopher Nolan’s Films
• Censorship in Films: A Comparative Study Between Countries
• The Role of the Auteur in Independent Filmmaking
• How Disney Reinvents Fairy Tales: A Feminist Perspective
• Bollywood vs. Hollywood: Contrasting Storytelling Techniques
• Exploration of Coming-of-Age Themes in Teenage Films
• Stereotyping in Movies: Assessing the Consequences on Society
• Roles of Cinematography in Creating a Film’s Atmosphere

Film Research Paper Topics About Popular Movies

• Influences of Classic Literature on “The Lord of the Rings” Trilogy
• Propaganda and War-Time Politics in “Casablanca”
• Exploring Social Alienation in “Taxi Driver”
• Cinematography Techniques Used in “Citizen Kane”
• Implicit Racism Portrayed in “Gone with the Wind”
• Animation Evolution: A Study on the “Toy Story” Series
• Gender Stereotypes in Disney Princess Films
• Symbolism and Surrealism in “Pan’s Labyrinth”
• Cult Status and Cultural Impact of “Pulp Fiction”
• Examination of Crime and Morality in “The Godfather”
• “Fight Club” and the Commentary on Consumerism
• Psychological Analysis of the Protagonist in “A Clockwork Orange”
• Role of Music in the Narrative of the “Star Wars” Saga
• Concept of Love in Richard Linklater’s “Before” Trilogy
• “The Shining” and Its Divergence From the Original Novel
• “Inception” and the Philosophy of Dream Interpretation
• The Relevance of “1984” in the Age of Mass Surveillance
• Science and Fiction: A Study on “Interstellar”
• Decoding the Metaphor of “The Matrix”
• “The Dark Knight”: A Modern Take on Heroism and Villainy
• Biblical Themes in Darren Aronofsky’s “Noah”
• Investigating Historical Accuracy in “Schindler’s List”

Film Research Paper Topics on History

• The Impact of World War II on Hollywood: Propaganda and Patriotism
• The Rise of Film Noir: Exploring the Dark Side of Post-War America
• Cultural Significance of Epic Historical Films: From “Gone with the Wind” to “Gladiator”
• Uncovering Hidden Histories: Films That Shed Light on Forgotten Events
• The Representation of Ancient Civilizations in Hollywood: Myths and Realities
• The Birth of Cinema: Exploring the Early Pioneers and Their Historical Films
• Propaganda in Film During the Cold War: From East to West
• The Role of Women in Historical Films: Portrayals and Progressions
• Depicting the Civil Rights Movement on the Silver Screen: From “Selma” to “The Help”
• The Historical Accuracy of Biographical Films: Balancing Fact and Fiction
• The Representation of Colonialism in Film: Perspectives and Power Dynamics
• The Cinematic Portrayal of World War I: From “All Quiet on the Western Front” to “1917”
• Political Upheaval and Film: Exploring Revolutionary Movements on Screen
• The Historical Evolution of War Films: From Silent Era to Modern Blockbusters
• The Representation of Indigenous Peoples in Historical Films: Stereotypes and Subversions
• Holocaust’s Theme in Movies: Documenting Trauma and Commemorating History
• The Role of Historical Films in Shaping Collective Memory: Remembering the Past
• Film and the Civil Rights Movement: Documenting Activism and Progress
• The Portrayal of Historical Figures: Heroes, Villains, and Complex Characters

Research Paper Topics on Music in Films

• Musical Transformations: Exploring the Evolution of Film Scores
• Melodic Narrative: The Role of Music in Conveying Storytelling Elements in Films
• Harmonic Innovations: Examining the Impact of Experimental Music in Cinematic Soundtracks
• Rhythm and Emotion: Analyzing the Connection Between Beat and Mood in Film Music
• Melancholic Melodies: Investigating the Use of Music to Evoke Sadness in Movies
• Orchestral Powerhouses: Unveiling the Influence of Symphonic Scores in Epic Films
• Sonic Identity: The Significance of Musical Themes in Establishing Character Presence in Movies
• Vocal Expressions: Exploring the Role of Singing in Enhancing Cinematic Narratives
• Cinematic Soundscapes: Investigating the Use of Ambient Music in Establishing Atmosphere
• Cultural Harmonies: Examining the Representation of Different Music Genres in Film Scores
• Experimental Soundtracks: Analyzing the Use of Avant-Garde Music in Artistic Films
• Jazzy Tones: Unveiling the Influence of Jazz Music in Enhancing the Cinematic Experience
• Musical Archetypes: Exploring the Portrayal of Heroes and Villains through Music in Films
• Electronic Ambience: Investigating the Role of Techno and Electronic Music in Movie Soundtracks
• Musical Narrative Arcs: Analyzing the Structure and Development of Musical Scores in Films
• Emotional Resonance: Examining the Connection Between Music and Audience Response in Movies
• Historical Harmonies: Unveiling the Role of Period Music in Depicting Different Eras in Film
• Musical Cues: Exploring the Use of Leitmotifs in Creating Musical Associations in Cinema
• Cross-Cultural Fusion: Investigating the Incorporation of World Music in Film Scores
• Genre-Bending Soundtracks: Analyzing the Influence of Non-Traditional Music in Different Film Genres

Horror Film Research Paper Topics

• Evolution of Horror Cinema: From Silent Movies to CGI Monsters
• The Role of Sound Design and Score in Creating Horror Atmosphere
• Psychoanalysis and Fear: The Hidden Messages in Classic Horror Films
• Ghost Stories in Film: Cultural Differences in Horror Narratives
• Horror Tropes and Their Social Commentary: A Deep Dive
• Relevance of Classic Monsters in Modern Horror Films
• The Impact of Globalization on Horror Film Narratives
• Found Footage Films: The Realism in Fear and Dread
• Women in Horror: Representation and Character Development
• Dissecting Cinematic Techniques in Iconic Horror Scenes
• Psychological Horror vs. Slasher Films: A Comparative Study
• Portrayal of Mental Illness in Horror Movies: Is It Responsible?
• Exorcism and Religion: The Unholy Alliance in Horror Films
• Horror Comedy: The Unique Balance of Scares and Laughs
• Adaptation of Horror Literature into Film: Successes and Failures
• Body Horror: Physical Mutation as a Symbol of Inner Turmoil
• Dark Tourism in Horror Films: Spooky Locations and Their Histories
• Post-Apocalyptic Horror Films: Reflecting Societal Anxieties
• Creature Features: The Significance of Non-Human Antagonists
• Examining the Unsettling Nature of Uncanny Valley in Horror Movies
• Interplay of Light and Darkness in Horror Cinematography
• Reception Studies: How Do Different Cultures Respond to Horror Films?
• Queer Representation in the Horror Genre: Progress and Challenges

Film Research Paper Topics About Monster Movies

• Evolution of Monster Depictions in Cinema: A Historical Analysis
• Cultural Implications of Monster Symbols in Japanese Kaiju Films
• Transcending Fear: Psychoanalytic Theory in Monster Movies
• Dissecting the Female Monster: Gender Dynamics in Horror Films
• Monsters as Metaphors: Environmental Themes in Monster Cinema
• The Gaze of the Other: Racial and Ethnic Subtexts in Monster Films
• Unveiling Monstrosity: The Role of Cinematography in Monster Reveals
• CGI vs. Practical Effects: Creating Convincing Monsters in Modern Cinema
• How Do Score and Sound Design Enhance the Fright Factor in Monster Movies?
• Parallels Between Classical Mythology and Contemporary Monster Films
• The Lure of the Lovecraftian: Cosmic Horror in Monster Movies
• Alien Invaders: The Intersection of Monster and Science Fiction Genres
• Transformation and Fear: The Role of Werewolves in Cinema
• Gothic Influence on the Evolution of Vampire Movies
• The Horror of the Familiar: Domesticity as a Setting in Monster Films
• Monstrosity Reimagined: Postmodern Approaches in Monster Cinema
• Archetypes and Stereotypes: Monster Character Analysis in Film
• Sequels and Series: Examining the Longevity of Monster Movie Franchises
• Deconstructing Zombie Cinema: Metaphors of Disease and Decay
• Audience Reactions and Expectations: A Study on Monster Movie Reception
• Silent Era to Sound: The Influence on Early Monster Movies
• Comedy in the Midst of Horror: Analyzing Humor in Monster Films

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A comprehensive analysis on movie recommendation system employing collaborative filtering

• Published: 08 June 2021
• Volume 80 , pages 28647–28672, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• Urvish Thakker 1 ,
• Ruhi Patel 1 &
• Manan Shah 2  

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Collaborative Filtering (CF) is one of the most extensively used technologies for Recommender Systems (RS), it shows an improved intelligent searching mechanism for recommending personalized items. It effectively makes use of the information retained by the application to find similarities between the sections of the application. Apart from RS, other applications of CF making use of the sensing and monitoring of data are environmental sensing, mineral study, financial services, marketing, and many more. Different industries like Tourism, Television, E-Learning, etc. make use of this technology, software such as Customer Relationship Management also make use of this technology. This paper discusses the prowess CF algorithm and its applications for Movie Recommendation System (MRS). It gives a brief overview of collaborative filtering consisting of two major approaches: user-based approach and Item-based approaches. Further, in model-based filtering methodology, it is discussed how machine learning algorithms can be implemented for movie recommendation purposes and also to predict the ratings of the unrated movies and bifurcate or sort movies as per the user preference. Followed by, it throws some light on the methodologies used in the late past and some of the basic approaches that are taken into consideration to incorporate it into MSR. Additionally, this paper anatomized many of the recent past studies in depth to draw out the essence of the researches and studies, its crucial steps, results, future scope and methodologies, followed and suggested by multiple researchers. Finally, we have discussed various challenges in MRS and probable future developments in this field. It is to be noted that various challenges in the field of CF recommendation systems like cold start, data sparsity, scalability issues, etc. were raised and many approaches tried to tackle these challenges in innovative and novel ways. Conclusively CF algorithm is a highly efficacious technique for the application of MRS and its integration with other techniques will lead students, researchers and enthusiasts to more cogent approaches for MRS.

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Data availability

All relevant data and material are presented in the main paper.

Abbreviations

Explanation

Collaborative Filtering.

Recommender Systems.

Movie Recommendation System.

Markovian Factorization of Matrix Process.

Singular Value decomposition.

Root Mean Squared Error.

Mean Absolute Error.

Particle Swarm Optimization.

Fuzzy c-means.

Alternating Least Squares.

Genetic Algorithm.

Application Programming Interfaces.

Effective Missing Data Prediction.

Pearson Correlation Coefficient.

Mean Squared Error.

Pure Content Based.

Hellinger Coefficient Based Collaborative Filtering.

Standard Deviation.

Mean Average Precision.

Aesthetic Visual Features.

Audio Information.

Visual Information.

Editorial Metadata.

Combination of correlation-based item similarity approach and Similarity calculation based on the genre and director movies.

Modified Collaborative Filtering Algorithm.

User-Item Interaction Records.

Number of neighbours.

K-Nearest Neighbour.

Singular Value Decomposition.

True Positive Ratio.

False Positive Ratio.

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Thakker, U., Patel, R. & Shah, M. A comprehensive analysis on movie recommendation system employing collaborative filtering. Multimed Tools Appl 80 , 28647–28672 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-021-10965-2

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150 Amazing Film Research Paper Topics for Students

Table of Contents

If you are a film student, then often you will have to work on film research papers. But for writing a research paper, you must have a good topic. Right now, do you want to prepare a film research paper? Are you looking for the top film research topics? No worries! We know how hard it is to come up with the right topic for a dissertation. So, to help you out, here, we have prepared a list of the best film research paper topics for you to consider. Continue reading this blog post and get exclusive film dissertation topic ideas.

How to Find a Good Topic for a Film Research Paper?

In film studies, there are plenty of film research paper topics available. Out of those topics, you will have to identify a good topic for your assignment. The topic selection becomes easier if your professor gives a set of ideas or themes for you to choose from. Sometimes, your professor will ask you to create your own idea for research. At that time, choosing one right topic from endless topics would become hard.

Are you confused about how to identify the right film research topic? Don’t worry! Here is what you will have to do to find out a good film dissertation topic of your choice.

• Create a list of your favorite filmmakers, films, or genres. Then, based on your interest or category, narrow down your search.
• It is not necessary to go with topics related to your favorite filmmaker or film. You can also think about a certain film history period and research the film techniques, themes, etc. used in that period.
• Deep research is necessary to identify the right topic. By exploring credible sources such as literature, books, media platforms, and published research papers, you can collect more research or dissertation ideas.
• From the list of ideas gathered, you can choose a topic that matches your area of interest and has a wide research scope.
• If the topic is too broad, make sure to narrow it down. Because the narrow topic will help you cover all the major points before the deadline and keep your readers engaged.

Also, before finalizing the topic, check whether your selected topic stands in line with your professor’s research paper writing guidelines.

List of Excellent Film Research Paper Topics

Film studies is a broad field of study where you can conduct research on any areas such as film technology, film history, film genre, music, sound design, etc. Here, we have listed some best film research paper topic ideas in various categories. Go through the whole list and pick an ideal film topic for writing your academic paper.

Film History Research Paper Topics

• Movies about the history of religions.
• The importance of representation in movies.
• African-Americans in cinematography.
• Science-fiction movies- History
• The globalization of popular culture: Hollywood vs. Bollywood.
• Discuss the contribution of Fellini to cinematography.
• How technology has transformed the art of filmmaking?
• Discuss the contribution of women in the film industry.
• Hitchcock’s sacred power.
• The progress of animation in movie production.
• The effect of the film industry on different generations.
• Analyze the life before CGI.
• War Justification in American Cinema
• Charlie Chaplin and the Silent Movie Era.
• Changes in Hollywood and its dominance of cinematography.
• Evolution of Hollywood movies  
• Discuss the cinematographic excellence of Roger Deakins  
• History of British Cinema  
• The Lion In Winter – A movie that nailed historical accuracy  
• Discuss the contribution of Steven Spielberg  
• Song of the Road – The first Indian movie at the Academic Award  
• Analyze the impact of LGBTQ+ Representation in Contemporary Cinema.
• War Justification in the worlds’ Moving Pictures
• Changes in Hollywood and Its Dominance of the Cinematography

Horror Film Research Paper Topics

• Special effects in horror films.
• Explain the Folklore elements in the screenplay.
• Discuss the popular fear elements used in horror films.
• Alfred Hitchcock: The Master of Suspense.
• Psychological and behavioral responses to horror films.
• The fusion of comedy and horror.
• Racial discrimination in horror films.
• The use of religion in horror movies
• The youngsters’ perception of horror films.
• The idea of suspense in horror films.
• George Romero: The greatest director of horror movies of all time  
• Compare the works of Sam Raimi and John Carpenter  
• Michael Myers: The most famous killer in horror movies  
• Chucky: One of the most scariest movies have ever made  
• Discuss the use of Psychopathy and Delusions in horror films with examples  
• A side effect of watching horror movies  
• The reflection of society’s fears in horror movies
• The specific use of genre theory in the horror game
• The human fondness for horror movies
• Monster creatures from horror movies
• Stephen King and his legacy in the genre of horror

Film Music Research Paper Topics

• The use of music in modern movies.
• The power of recorded nature sounds.
• The art of sound design in movies.
• The progress of music in films.
• The effects of music on movie perceptions.
• Bollywood-made musicals.
• The art of storytelling with sound
• Picture versus sound.
• Broadway musicals are made into movies.
• The development and cultural influence of musicals in the 20th century.
• Christina Aguilera’s career in musicals.
• Classical Opera versus Modern Music on Screen
• Analyze the soundtrack and music in films.
• Cradle of future pop stars.
• The mental effects created by music in movies.
• Theoretical aspects of studying film music.
• Music in cinema as a director of the semantic series.

Monster Film Research Topics

• Mythology in monster movies.
• The aspects of human monstrosity in films.
• The history of monster movies.
• The science behind Hollywood’s movie monsters.
• Explore fear in monster movies.
• Vampires through history: The evolution of the undead cinema.
• Examine the portrayal of aging in Cinema.
• The Monster vs. Frankenstein: Who Is More Human?
• The psychological appeal of movie monsters.
• Discuss the monster movie culture in the 21st century.
• Compare Prophecy (1979) and It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)  
• Discuss the first monster film  
• Impact of monster movies on children  
• A side effect of watching monster movies  
• Use of VFX and Special Effects in monster films  

Outstanding Film Research Paper Topics

• TV shows: A new film franchise.
• Masculinity and violence in films.
• Movies through the eyes of their directors.
• What are the effects of censorship on films?
• The role of colors in movies.
• Comics and Superheroes in films.
• The role of animals in movies.
• Investigate the Use of AI in Film Production, Visual Effects, and Storytelling.
• Animation: Giving life to sketches.
• The cultural effects of war movies.
• The power of documentary movies to change the world.
• Walt Disney and the psychosocial implications of his characters.
• The ethical issues involved in documentary filmmaking.
• The effects of Hollywood stereotypes.
• The art of creating stories using video editing.

Unique Film Research Paper Topics

• The role of film directors in giving life to stories.
• The important qualities of a successful movie director.
• The role of film critics and reviews on box office performances.
• Transitions and visual effects in movie editing.
• The social and cultural effects of movies .
• Contribution of Arthur Conan Doyle to detective movies  
• Good versus Evil: A classing theme of the movie  
• Discuss the cinematic innovations that have changed the movie industry  
• Discuss the most important inventions the movie industry experienced within the past two decades  
• The directorial debut of Tom Hanks  
• How depression years are depicted in American movies?
• Discuss the technological evolution of the global film industry from 1975 to 2022
• The Works of Christopher Edward Nolan and Sam Raimi: A comparative analysis
• Evolution of Indian cinema from 1950 to 2022
• Discuss the contribution of Edgar Allan Poe to detective movies
• Compare and contrast European and Asian horror movies
• Discuss the comparative mythology and dark side in screenwriting
• Critical analysis of the silent era of the movie industry
• How African-Americans get represented in American movies
• Analyze the evolution of the zombie in contemporary cinema

Interesting Film Dissertation Topics

• The importance of a character in a film.
• The influence of the digital revolution on the film industry?
• Drama as a cultural phenomenon.
• Diverse film elements are needed for creative writing.
• The evolution of urban filmmaking.
• Difference between commercial cinema and non-commercial cinema.
• The usage of irony in films.
• Discuss the popular cinema genres in the world.
• Analyze the localization efforts of Hollywood films.
• The relationship between literature and film.
• Explore the role of men and women in blockbuster movies.
• Assess the importance of global film awards in improving the quality of filmmaking.
• Analyze the roles given to black actors and white actors in Hollywood movies.
• Study the key differences between theater performances and film shooting.
• Analyze the principles of filmmaking with respect to casting and editing.
• Discuss the impact of online streaming services on the quality of traditional cinema content.
• Study the impact of film in a rural area.
• Explain the role of a short film in making a feature film.
• Research the cultures of theater and film in the big city of a country.
• Explain the economics of cinema.

Read more: Demonstration Speech Topics and Ideas That Will Impress the Audience

Brilliant Film Research Topics

• The art of cinematography.
• Indie Movies: An attitude or a genre?
• Good versus Evil concept in movies.
• The cinema of shortcuts.
• Multiple actors play a single role.
• The influence of social media on movie results.
• What makes a great film director?
• Humanity versus technology in modern films.
• The role of fashion design in the film industry.
• Video streaming platforms and the future of cinema.
• Success factors of the American film industry.
• The influence of movie genres on different audiences.
• Film Noir: A style expanding through genres.
• Comics in the film industry.
• The persuasive effectiveness of shortcuts.
• Freudian Practice in Cinematography.
• The effects of streaming platforms on cinematography.
• The idea of drama in movies.
• The psychological aspects of filmmaking.
• The art of storytelling in modern movies.

Impressive Film Research Questions

• Different Types of Narrative Structures in Screenplays and Books
• Violence and Masculinity in Hollywood Blockbusters.
• Looking for Truth in Film: Observational vs. Direct Cinema.
• Reconstructing atmospheres using ambient sounds: Recorded Nature Sounds.
• Comedy and horror combined in a chaotic genre mashup.
• History of the Vampire: The Cinematic Evolution of the Dead
• Using the content of documentaries, kids may develop their interethnic tolerance.
• The Cultural and Educational Project of the Cinema Museum and Its Importance in Historical Education.
• The history of development and current status of the post-apocalyptic storyline in American movies.
• The characteristics of contemporary cinema in relation to the development of historical politics.

Awesome Ideas for Film Research Paper

• Digital Storytelling: Narrative Elements from Hollywood.
• Analyze the Personality Traits of the Best Film Directors.
• Musicals: from stage to screen.
• Analyze the animation in the Movies Frozen and Zootopia.
• Share your viewpoints about the use of mythology in horror movies.
• Analyze the hidden elements in Disney movies and their effects on children.
• Write about the history of the Japanese animation industry and new technology.
• Historical and Mythical Time in the Marvel and DC Series.
• Analyze the new developments in the area of illustrations.
• Explore the phenomenon of visiting film locations and the economic impact on local communities.

The Bottom Line

Film studies basically approach movies from historical, theoretical, and critical perspectives. To write a brilliant film research paper, from the list of 150+ topics recommended above, choose the best topic that matches your interest. In case, you are not sure what film research topic to select or how to write an informative film research paper, then contact us for help.

We have a team of experienced writers who are masters in film studies to assist you in writing film research papers on the best topics. Based on your specifications, our experts will prepare a plagiarism-free research paper and deliver it to you on time at a low cost. As a part of our film research paper help service , we also offer unlimited revisions and 24/7 customer support.

Without any hesitation, just take our film studies assignment writing help by submitting the order form.

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Film making has become part and parcel of current human life. This makes  Film Research Paper Topics , Tips & Ideas to Use as Inspiration an affluent area of making money and even highly examinable in the schools. As such, as a veteran or aspiring filmmaker, researcher or student in that field, it is commendable to always have at your fingertips various current ideas to use as inspirations when working on such a topic. Consequently, this article seeks to keep you at par with the various current film research paper topics, tips & and ideas for inspiration. There are various film research paper topics  by WriteMyEssays.info  that the history of film making and research suggest to be very easy to work with as a beginner or student. Given the vast history of filmmaking, there are so many research topics and below is a list of the most relevant.

If you are searching for an essay writer on film topics you’ll need the best essay writing service company.

Film Research Paper Topics

There are various  film research paper topics  that the history of film making and research suggest to be very easy to work with as a beginner or student. Given the vast history of filmmaking, there are so many research topics and below is a list of the most relevant.

Science fiction movies

The digital era tends to appreciate science fiction movies so much. This gives this film research topic a wide range of markets, making it almost naturally acceptable. Science fiction movies as a film research paper topic also allow you to structure your script to your liking, provided it has a flow and is understandable.

African-Americans in the American Cinema

Writing about African-Americans has always been a marketable film research paper topic from time immemorial. This is given the diversity in the treatment and reception of African-Americans across the American continent. The success and rise to positions of power and leadership by the African-Americans, the rise in the anti-racism campaigns , the factual existence of people who still consider blacks as slaves and various topics surrounding the African-Americans allow you to structure your script as you so wish.

Women’s role and contribution in the film industry and society in general

Women have drastically evolved from their previous submissive nature into measuring up with their male counterparts in societal duties. Notably, in the film industry included, women have risen to the occasion to take up leadership and other roles in society and other fronts of life. This makes women in themselves a highly marketable film research paper topic.

The evolution of filmmaking

Like every other thing, filmmaking has evolved with technology over the decades. This is an exciting and highly marketable film research paper topic. The human mind tends to appreciate the knowledge of history and evolution of a field that has since become part and parcel of human life.

The Importance of Representation in Movie

The human brain tends to want to understand everything, especially the things that have since become a part of human life, like filmmaking. Consequently, the importance of representation in movies is a topic that tends to spike a debate anywhere across the globe. This makes it a highly marketable film research paper topic.

Tips &amp; Ideas to Use as Inspiration

As a person working in the filmmaking industry, you need to know the tips and amp and ideas and to use them as inspiration when writing a particular film. When choosing an inspiration, it is commendable to go with a topic you are passionate about to make it easily navigable for you. Below is a list of ideas that tend to carry so much inspiration. This site also will help you find out more creative ideas.

• Your background may form a perfect inspiration as you perfectly understand it.
• The culture and heritage of a particular group of people don’t necessarily have to be ethnic.
• Deserted areas tend to be good inspirations as the human mind is naturally curious and would want to know what goes on there.
• Former old film .
• A day in one’s life.

What are the current trends in filmmaking and research? The answers to this question tend to solve a good percentage of your problems in the film industry.

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Movie Recommender Systems: Concepts, Methods, Challenges, and Future Directions

Sambandam jayalakshmi.

1 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Vel Tech Multi Tech Dr. Rangarajan Dr. Sakunthala Engineering College, Chennai 600 062, India; gro.hcetitlumhcetlev@imhskalayaj (S.J.); gro.hcetitlumhcetlev@nhsenag (N.G.)

Narayanan Ganesh

Robert Čep.

2 Department of Machining, Assembly and Engineering Metrology, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, 708 00 Ostrava, Czech Republic

Janakiraman Senthil Murugan

3 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Vel Tech High Tech Dr. Rangarajan Dr. Sakunthala Engineering College, Chennai 600 062, India; [email protected]

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Movie recommender systems are meant to give suggestions to the users based on the features they love the most. A highly performing movie recommendation will suggest movies that match the similarities with the highest degree of performance. This study conducts a systematic literature review on movie recommender systems. It highlights the filtering criteria in the recommender systems, algorithms implemented in movie recommender systems, the performance measurement criteria, the challenges in implementation, and recommendations for future research. Some of the most popular machine learning algorithms used in movie recommender systems such as K -means clustering, principal component analysis, and self-organizing maps with principal component analysis are discussed in detail. Special emphasis is given to research works performed using metaheuristic-based recommendation systems. The research aims to bring to light the advances made in developing the movie recommender systems, and what needs to be performed to reduce the current challenges in implementing the feasible solutions. The article will be helpful to researchers in the broad area of recommender systems as well as practicing data scientists involved in the implementation of such systems.

1. Introduction

Modern technology has revolutionized the volume, variety, and velocity at which data are generated. Digitalization of day-to-day experiences has led to the big data era. However, the enormous data have also led to the problem of information overload. Information overload may be defined as the state of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data presented to an average human for processing and decision making. Data mining methods can aid in obtaining and processing the relevant data and deal with the issue of information overload. Perhaps the most widely exploited tool among data mining methods is recommender systems.

Recommender systems work by assessing the available information about the likely patterns of the users and making suggestions from the information available [ 1 ]. The suggestions from the recommender systems help the system users find what is most suitable for them. Recommender systems are designed to ease product or service searches based on the least information available about the features [ 2 ]. A combination of various factors is used to assess the correlations in patterns and user characteristics to determine the best product suggestions for the customers [ 3 ].

The development of recommender systems depends on the field of application. The major application is in e-commerce websites where they suggest to the users the products or services based on the information available such as past search, age, gender, and other preferences [ 4 ]. They are also applied in job search platforms where the website suggests to a candidate the best possible positions fit for the skills. Since various industries have moved from an age of little available data to the era of big data, the junk information available is so much that it can delay the decision-making process. The recommender systems are typically made to ease the information search over the online systems so that the users find a more convenient way to connect to their preferences [ 5 ].

One of the applications of recommender systems is suggesting movies to watch to customers based on their preferences data. Movie recommender systems work by assessing the characteristic features of the users to make endorsements to the customers on what is best suited for them. It works by assessing the age, the previous preferences, gender, the content, context, and other demographic data to propose the movies. It checks the similarity among the users and items in the system to determine what could best fit the new user [ 6 ]. For example, a child will most likely receive recommendations for movies that children watch such as cartoons and animations based on the best similarity index for the children. Apart from that, children of various ages have different types of cartoons/animations to watch, and the recommender systems will propose the best depending on what other children of the same age are watching.

Movie recommender systems have helped the users overcome the chunk of information online to find only what is suited for them [ 7 ]. They use data mining techniques that match the similarities and help users find what is best suited for them [ 8 ]. Various criteria determine how the recommender systems work. The criteria are based on machine learning or deep learning algorithms that are used in matching the similarities before the suggestions are made. The algorithms achieve different levels of accuracy and require different computational times to retrieve the suggestions. Various computational algorithms have been proposed and used to increase the efficiency of recommender systems e [ 9 ]. However, each algorithm has its advantages and disadvantages; these make using the systems meet various needs based on their strengths. To reduce the limitations of each, the algorithms may be combined so that they perform better in making the recommendations [ 10 ].

This review paper aims to assess the challenges of recommender systems and make propositions to increase the accuracy of the systems. It assesses the recommendation approaches, the evaluation criteria of their efficiency, the challenges of these approaches, and possible solutions. A systematic literature review is conducted to determine the findings of the operational characteristics of the various recommendation approaches used and the performance criteria. The author aims to suggest the best solutions to make the approaches work better to achieve the operational expectations of the users.

The rest of the paper is arranged as follows: Section 2 details the methodology followed in this article. Section 3 describes different types of recommendation systems. Section 4 highlights some of the most popular machine learning algorithms used in movie recommender systems. Section 5 details the commonly used metaheuristic algorithms in movie recommendation tasks. Model metrics used for verifying the accuracy of recommendation systems are discussed in Section 6 . Some common problems with recommendation systems are discussed in detail in Section 7 . A critical discussion is presented in Section 8 . Section 9 presents the concluding remarks and the limitations of the study.

2. Review Methodology

This section describes the method used in obtaining information for the literature review. Peer-reviewed sources were used to gather information about movie recommender systems. The databases used were EBSCO Academic Search Premier, ScienceDirect, IEEE Library, ResearchGate, SpringerLink, and the ACM Portal. Google Scholar was also used to find leads to specific aspects of recommender systems for review.

Search Descriptors: Some of the keywords used in finding information about the movie recommender systems were “movie recommender systems”, “movie personalization”, “algorithms used in movie recommender systems”, “filtering techniques in movie recommender systems”, and “machine learning model metrics and measurement criteria”.

Inclusion Criteria: The inclusion criteria were papers that had information about recommender systems, the information had to be from published peer-reviewed sources. The paper abstracts were read to verify the validity of their information for use in this study. The exclusion criteria were papers that had grey literature on recommendation systems. The inclusion criteria for the articles and the methodology steps are summarized in Table 1 and Figure 1 .

Steps in conducting the systematic review.

Selection criteria for including sources in this review.

3. Movie Recommendation Systems

Movie recommendation work by filtering out data that is irrelevant and including only that which have matching characteristics or features [ 11 ]. As highlighted earlier, the world has moved from an era of scarcity of data online to an exponential growth in data. The systems work by manipulating the data to make sure it is efficient to drive data-driven decisions. In the jungle of available information about products, the systems need to evaluate what fits a certain customer and what does not. The systems go further in target and retargeting marketing to increase product viewership and hence increase the chance of the customers purchasing [ 12 ].

It is important for the developers to come up with systems that have higher performance characteristics and efficiency in matching the similarities in customer wants to seal the product sales or movie viewership [ 7 ]. The major types of filtering methods are collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, context-based filtering, and hybrid filtering.

3.1. Collaborative Filtering

Collaborative filtering works by matching the similarities in items and users. It looks at the characteristics of the users and the characteristics of the items the users have watched or searched for before [ 13 ]. In general, latent features obtained from rating matrices are looked at. In movie recommender systems, the recommendations are made based on the user information and what other people with similar user information are watching. For example, collaborative filtering in movie recommender systems picks the user demographic characteristics such as age, gender, and ethnicity [ 14 ]. Through these features, movie recommendations are made that match other people with similar demographic characteristics and previous user search history. Collaborative filtering suffers from a cold start if the user has not input any information, or the information is too little for any accurate clustering. In these cases, it does not know what to suggest [ 15 ]. The accuracy of the suggestion is also limited because people with similar demographic characteristics may not have similar preferences [ 16 ].

3.2. Content-Based Filtering

In contrast to collaborative filtering, content-based techniques employ user and item feature vectors to make recommendations. The fundamental differences between the two approaches are that content-based systems recommend items based on content features (no need for data about other users; recommendations about niche items, etc.) whereas collaborative filtering is based on user behaviour only and recommends items based on users with similar patterns (no domain knowledge; serendipity, etc.). A content-based filtering method works by making movie proposals to the user based on the content in the movies. It recognizes that clustering in the collaborative filtering recommendations may not match the preferences of the users [ 7 ]. The tastes and preferences of people with similar demographic characteristics are very different; what person X likes may not be similar to what person Y likes to watch. To solve this problem, content-based filtering algorithms give recommendations based on the contents of the movies [ 17 ]. In movie recommendations, some of the contents are the key characters and the genre of the movie.

3.3. Context-Based Filtering

This filtering technology is an improvement of the collaborative filtering method. It assumes that if person A and person B hold the same opinion on issue X, it is most likely that the same people will hold the same opinion/preference/thinking on a different issue Z. For example, if both people are attracted to Christmas movies from Netflix, it is most likely that they will still like Christmas movies by Showmax. The context-based filtering method recommends items with similar features or characteristics because the applications have just been extended to a different context [ 12 ]. It makes the same suggestions though the contexts are different. In most cases, web browsers import bookmarks and other settings when one upgrades from one browser to the next. This represents a change in context, since most of the settings and other items are imported into the new context, and the data available are used in making useful suggestions. Similarly, movie recommender systems may make a similar recommendation based on data from the previous context [ 18 ]. It is worth mentioning here about context-aware recommender systems (CARS), where the concept of context is well defined [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ]. CARS acclimatize to the exact condition in which the recommended item will be used [ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ]. In this respect, CARS could avoid recommending a very long film to a user after a stressful day at work or suggest a romantic film if he/she is in the company of his/her partner.

3.4. Hybrid Filtering

This is a filtering technique that applies the concepts of all the other algorithms. It combines both collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, and context-based filtering to overcome the challenges of each method [ 10 ]. It is superior because it achieves higher performance in making the suggestions and also a faster computational time [ 11 ]. For instance, collaborative filtering may lack information about domain dependencies while content-based filtering lacks information about the preferences of the people [ 6 , 9 , 27 ]. A combination of these overcomes these challenges since user behaviour data and the content data are used to come up with recommendations.

4. Machine Leaning Algorithms for Movie Recommendation Systems

These are the algorithms that are used in filtering information and data mining so that the desired outcomes can be achieved. It is essential to understand the working of the information filtering methods so that the right algorithm is selected for the specific task in recommender systems [ 28 ].

4.1. K-Means Clustering

This is one of the simplest collaborative filtering approaches that categorizes the users based on their interests [ 29 ]. It is common for someone who wants to purchase an item to ask someone who has already purchased the product for their opinion. There is a higher chance that the influence of the current owner will affect the preferences and the tastes of the potentially new owner. Similarly, the algorithm compares the interesting features that can be associated with individuals that are classified to be within a group [ 30 ].

K -means clustering uses interests that are common among the users such as age, gender, movie time, history of the previous movies watched, etc. K -means clustering aims to group the features into clusters that represent the characteristics of the group [ 31 ]. If the classification is based on age, the probable K -means clustering will use children, teens, youth, and adult clustering methods. If a client falls within any of these age groups, movies are recommended based on what other people within that age group do. If the clustering depends on age, the closer an age is to the centroid age, the better the classification recommendation. The steps in the classification are measuring the similarity between the user and item features, selection of the neighbours, computing the prediction, and suggesting it [ 14 ].

4.1.1. Measurement of the Similarities

The first step is finding the similarity in the user features that the new user has with the previous system users. The algorithm always has the basic classifications for a beginning, where the user can give inputs and the predictions can be made [ 32 ]. Common features in finding the similarities are age, previous history, and geographical locations. Other recommender systems in movie theatres, including the price, the time to watch the movies, etc., are used in coming up with the means (centroids) for clustering. The distance from the centroids can be based on a Pearson correlation, cosine-based similarities, or an adjustment of the cosine-based similarity. The calculation of the similarity may be item-based or user-based. Item-based computation finds the similarities based on the features in the movies that similar people liked. If it is user-based, the calculation of the centroids is based on the demographic features of the user [ 15 ].

The computation of the similarities between items or users is shown in the mathematical equations below:

The equation above computes the correlation between the user and the item; it computes the closeness of the value to the centroid value. It is assumed that the two items i ∩ j are the correlated features (items or users); the value r j ¯ is the centroid feature, while the value r i is the value of the new user or new feature to be compared through correlation [ 33 ].

4.1.2. Selection of the Neighbours

There is always a consideration when developing the algorithm. The key metrics are the accuracy to obtain and the running time of the algorithm. To increase the accuracy of an algorithm, a large number of neighbours, which increases the computational time of the algorithm, is required. If a smaller computational time is needed, accuracy will be compromised [ 34 ]. To strike a balance, the selection may be threshold-based or use the top-N technique. The threshold technique will run only a specific number (sample number that meets the threshold value) of assessments of the neighbours and predict if that threshold is reached. For example, if the population is 1000, the system will run a prediction from 100 samples and predict out of the 100 samples [ 35 ]. In the top-N technique, only the top number of similarities (N) is run rather than the whole population of neighbours. For example, it will select only the top 10 for suggestions based on the nearest neighbours rather than assessing the whole population [ 36 ].

4.1.3. Prediction Computation

The computation of the subsequent predictions is based on the closest neighbours found in the system database. The prediction is obtained by the formula below:

The prediction or the nearest neighbour to the centroid ( K -mean) is made. In the equation above, the K -means is represented by r u ¯ while the correlation of the other variable on the right-hand side of the equation gives the nearest neighbour, both used in making the suggestion prediction [ 27 ].

4.1.4. Limitations of K -Means Clustering

• Cold-Start Problem : This is a prediction problem that happens with a new user to the system. There is very little information about the user; hence it is difficult for the system to make any predictions until the user starts feeding some information that can be correlated to and suggestions made based on the user or previous item characteristics. The negative impact is the system accuracy is greatly reduced [ 6 ]. It is because of this problem that new and excellent movies are not recommended to users, or new users do not find what is best for them.
• Sparsity in the dataset : The recommendation system involves assessing a large amount of data in the movie database. The users only look for a few items in the database; they are not able to use and assess a significant portion of the database to effectively evaluate the features. Apart from that, the users do not rate the movies they watched in the system. It becomes hard for the system to determine if the user liked the movie they watched, or they never liked it because they never left any rating. The negative impact is leaving some of the best movies not recommended in the large dataset since they have not been rated by the user. Moreover, the threshold/top-N techniques leave out the best matching suggestions [ 37 ].
• Scalability : One of the challenges cited in the selection of the neighbours was balancing the computational time and the accuracy of the system. The K -means filtering technique is accurate when the database has a small number of movies to recommend or few users [ 38 ]. However, with an increase in the number of users and the number of movies, the computational time or the threshold number of items increases; therefore, the computational time increases [ 39 ]. To overcome this disadvantage, computation and training of the algorithm are performed offline so that when the systems are back online, recommendations are made easily [ 40 ].

The K -means filtering algorithm is the most basic collaborative filtering technique. It is from this technique that other filtering concepts are developed. The computation technique to arrive at the predictions may not be the same; the mode of working mimics the K -means nearest neighbour [ 41 ]. The other algorithms are developed to overcome the K -means clustering limitations.

4.2. Principal Component Analysis K-Means

This is a content-based movie filtering technique that improves on the K -means clustering technique. The major components in the movie are used to classify the movies before recommendations can be made to the customers. The K -means algorithm calculates the closeness of a feature to the centroid using the distance from the mean point. However, the principal component analysis creates a covariance matrix to calculate the eigenvectors and eigenvalues [ 42 ]. Therefore, it widens the scalability to find better comparisons to make the movie suggestions [ 43 ]. To illustrate this, assume a K -means algorithm computes the similarity of a single feature at a time. This implies the computational time and accuracy are compromised. However, using PCA, a covariance matrix of various features is created; hence the scalability is increased and computed faster. If there are similarities that fall within the matrix, they can be found easily, and its eigenvector is computed. Suggestions close to such an eigenvector are then made to recommend the movies [ 44 ].

Steps in Conducting Principal Component Analysis

Structure of the tuples.

Where r i is the movie rating, u i is the user characteristics, and i i is the item characteristics (movie characteristics). A and B will give a 2D matrix of dimension m × n matrix, while C will give a 3D matrix of dimension m × n × o .

• Calculation of the covariance matrix: A covariance matrix of the dimension of the data formulated in the previous step is computed.
• Calculation of the eigenvectors and eigenvalues : The covariance matrix calculated will be a square matrix of the dimension of the data. It is used to compute the eigenvalues and eigenvectors which characterize the data. The computed eigenvectors are sorted in decreasing order according to the eigenvalues; a future vector is constructed [ 45 ].

4.3. Principal Component Analysis Self-Organizing Maps (PCA-SOM)

Self-organizing maps (SOMs) is a technique based on neural networks; it is an unsupervised learning technique, and there is no need for intervention of humans during the learning phase. It is vital in clustering data without knowing the class memberships in the input data [ 46 ]. The self-organizing feature map (SOFM) is known for detecting the features inherent in particular items which is important for the features in the movie recommender systems. SOM also uses topology-preserving mapping, which implies that the algorithm preserves the relative distance between all the points in the initial dataset [ 47 ]. Therefore, it effectively achieves the objective of transforming the arbitrary dimensions into a 1D or 2D discrete map. PCA is integrated with SOM because it is easier for the PCA to convert the matrices generated by SOM to eigenvectors and eigenvalues for ranking in the order of significance [ 48 ]. The steps in working out PCA-SOM are listed below:

• Obtain data without any rankings or classifications;
• Data modelling;
• SOM classified the data using unsupervised learning to bring together that which has similarities in features;
• PCA takes over from the classification achieved by SOM, checks the principal components, and comes up with further classifications of the dataset;
• The decision to make the suggestion.

Initialization: Once the data are obtained, random values are chosen for the weight of the initial vectors. The weights of the vectors represent the neurons in the data, and their values are also computed [ 49 ].

Sampling: A known sample x is drawn from the input space with a known probability. This is the activation pattern that is applied to the lattice. This pattern maps the x dimension to be proportional to the m-pattern in the new lattice [ 49 ].

Similarity Matching: The best matching is found at time step-n using the minimum Euclidean distance between the neuron centroid.

Updating: The synaptic weight of the neurons is adjusted using the formula below:

where η n is the learning rate, h j i x n is the neighbourhood function of i x winner neuron. These two are dynamic to obtain the optimum results.

Apply PCA: After the synaptic weights are derived from the minimum Euclidian distance from the formula above, the PCA process in creating the eigenvalues and eigenvectors is used further in processing the data to obtain a more accurate estimation [ 50 ].

Decision: After similarities are matched, the suggestions are made.

The great features of SOM that make it a good tool in recommender systems are:

Insights into the input space: The method uses unsupervised learning to classify the data by weight vectors and give output in a feature map. The cold starting is significantly reduced [ 51 ]. The user can then input data in light of the initial output features shown.

Topological arrangement: The feature map of SOM works by mapping the field of the input pattern to a spatial location in the output grid [ 52 ].

Density Matching: Once the input is fed into the system, any alterations in input distribution are equally represented in the output grid so that there will be a good representation of the highest density areas with the most matches and lower density areas with fewer matches [ 49 ].

Feature Selection: The SOM algorithm selects the best attributes for the non-linear distribution in the input data so that it can effectively match the similarities to the grids [ 50 ].

4.3.1. Advantages

Since it is based on unsupervised learning, it automatically updates the features and functions [ 53 ]. It is flexible to new input because it learns by itself. It is suitable for unidentified new inputs, for example, new movies that have no ratings or new users where there is no data about them. The new movies may be recommended when the system extracts their features, and the new users will not experience a cold start because they have somewhere to begin on the output feature map [ 54 ]. It is also faster in computation since it easily organizes complex data and makes a good representation of the mapping for easy interpretation.

4.3.2. Disadvantages

The major drawback is that feature classification may not be according to the expected output; therefore, the unsupervised learning classification algorithms have to be initialized often to maintain the relevance of the clustering [ 55 ].

5. Metaheuristic Algorithms for Movie Recommendation Systems

Metaheuristic algorithms are high-level methods or heuristics which have been developed to search, create, or select a heuristic that may produce a satisfactory solution for optimization problems. Metaheuristics find wide usage in almost all aspects of optimization problems. For example, metaheuristics have been used in design optimization [ 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ], process optimization [ 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 ], structural optimization [ 64 , 65 ], knapsack problems [ 66 , 67 ], workflow scheduling [ 68 ], image segmentation [ 69 , 70 , 71 ], etc.

5.1. Genetic Algorithm

This is a hybrid filtering algorithm that uses the improved K -means clustering and is combined with the genetic algorithm (GA). It uses the PCA technique to partition the high dimensional space into clusters hence reducing the complexity of computations when making intelligent recommendations. The method has higher performance characteristics; hence it makes better recommendations. The steps of the recommendation system are outlined below:

5.1.1. Data Preprocessing Using PCA

The first step is processing the data, extracting it from the original high dimensional space into a linear relatively low space with denser features that carry the information. The PCA feature extraction technique has been very effective. It combines the data represented by the principal component with the highest eigenvalue with the significant information after ranking them. The components with lower significance are ignored but components with higher significance are given prominence. After the linear reduction, only a selected number of components from the rank is fed to the GA-KM algorithm for classification.

5.1.2. Enhanced K -Means Clustering Optimization by Generic Algorithms (GA-KM)

The objective is to make sure that the users/neighbours with like-minded interests or features are grouped. Therefore, it performs it in two stages which are K -means clustering and GA algorithms.

5.1.3. K -Means Clustering

The technique, as discussed, centres its clusters around centroids based on the linear distance from the central feature. The correlation of distance from the central point determines the similarity index. If it is too similar, there is convergence; if there is a high dissimilarity, then the dataset is sparse. As discussed, it suffers a cold start, and its first centroid may be based on the local optimum rather than the global optimum. The steps in K -means clustering are selecting the centroids, assigning objects to the closest clusters, computing the sum of squared distances from the members in the cluster, and checking for convergence in the computed objects. The procedure for computation is similar to that discussed.

5.1.4. Genetic Algorithm

This mimics biological evolution as explained by Darwin’s theory of evolution. The algorithm uses the population of individuals as chromosomes; the chromosomes represent possible solutions to the evolution problem [ 29 ]. Each of the chromosomes contains the genes with the survival ability. Therefore, through natural selection, the chromosomes with the highest quality genes have the highest chance of survival and are fit for reproduction for the next generation. The iterations are based on selection, crossover, and mutation. Selection picks just a proportion of the genes to breed for the next generation. Crossover swaps two parent chromosomes to be recombined into the offspring. Mutation randomly alters the value of a gene to produce offspring. The processes extend the diversity of the offspring. The processes end when the fitness conditions in the environment/context are met.

The GA algorithm is used to prevent premature convergence in the K -means algorithms. The centroids in K -means are considered the chromosomes; the fitness function to evaluate the quality of the solution is:

The fitness value is the sum of the distances of the inner points to the cluster centres. The values are minimized to find the optimal partitions. To find the optimal partitions, the three generic operators precede the construction of the offspring based on the survival fitness principles; convergence occurs when the fitness criterion is satisfied [ 72 ]. The pseudocode of the algorithm is summarized below:

• Initialization

Parameter initialization: Set the maximum iterations, population size, cluster numbers, probability crossover, probability mutation, and fitness function to minimize the total distance of every sample to its nearest centre;

Population initialization: Randomly generate the initial population for each of the k -centers.

Selection operation;

Cross-over operation;

Mutation operations;

Obtain the initial k -centres with optimal fitness values;

K -means optimization: generate new clusters with k -centres.

When tested with the MovieLens dataset, the algorithm has better performance features especially in reducing the cold-start problem [ 29 ].

5.2. Firefly Algorithm

The algorithm is also bio-inspired from the fireflies and combines it with a fuzzy C -means clustering technique. In the natural world, the fireflies are pulled to the brightest firefly using the light signal. Each firefly pulls the other, but the brightest has the highest attractiveness, and other fireflies are clustered around it. Similarly, the algorithm centres its suggestion on features of the users with the highest attractiveness (highest user ratings) [ 55 ]. If a movie has the highest rating from many users, the movie recommender system will make subsequent recommendations based on movies rated highest by users with similar characteristics [ 73 ]. The algorithm for the recommender system is highlighted below:

• All the fireflies are unisexual, and every firefly pulls to another firefly.
• The attractiveness of a firefly depends on its brightness, and the other fireflies will be pulled closer to the brighter one (feature reduction using the firefly algorithm).
• This brightness is related to a primary function in the FCM.
• FCM allocates memberships and utilizes them to show data elements from one cluster to another.
• The FCM separates a finite set of elements X = X 1 … .   X n from the memberships into a set of c fuzzy clusters; hence it comes up with a list of cluster centres C = C 1 …   C 2   . The partition matrix W = W i   0 , 1 ;   i = 1 …   n ;   j = 1 … c expresses the degree to which each element X i is placed into a cluster C j . The aim is to reduce the objective function to optimal. C a r g   ∑ i = 1 C ∑ j = 1 C W i j M   X i − C j 2   (6)
• Then the fuzzy C -means clustering f l m m = 1 ∑ K = 1 C   x i − c m x i − c k   2 n − 1   (7)

The recommender system efficiency and performance are generally higher than the traditional K -means clustering.

5.3. Artificial Bee Colony

This is a bioinspired algorithm that makes recommendations based on the workings of the bees in finding flowers for the best nectar [ 74 ]. The bees are mainly divided into two groups. Scouting bees go out to scout flowers with the best nectar, and the employee bees follow after the best flowers have been found [ 53 ]. It is worth noting that several scouting bees are sent out and come back with information to the hive regarding the quality of the nectar found. The employee bees will filter out the low-quality nectar from the information and follow the scout bee to the source of the best nectar. Similarly, the artificial bee colony in recommender systems works as an improvement of the K -means clustering algorithm [ 75 ]. In the K -means algorithm, an assumption is made that the data is based on a centroid where the closeness of the feature to the centroid feature determines the recommendation. In an artificial bee colony, there are many centroids (just as there are many flowers), and information from or to these centroids will bring a variety. From this variety, the user may choose what is best suited for them; henceforth, the recommendation system will bring recommendations close to the centroid chosen [ 76 ]. It is a good method to solve the sparsity, scalability and cold-starting problem. The user will choose the best suited feature from the first random set of options available. Subsequent recommendations will depend on the K -means around that particular choice. The steps are summarized below:

• Initialize the system users and movies in a matrix;
• Use the K -means clustering to find several centroids of various product features. This finds several centroids for clustering;
• Selection of the nearest clusters;
• Calculation of the estimated rating values from the user history;
• Use the artificial bee colony to select the closest to user likes based on ratings and features;
• Reclassification of the users for further iterations;
• Coming up with the recommendations.

ABC determines the community of vectors that explore the similarities in the neighbours. The objective function is then continually reduced when narrowing down to the nearest possibilities [ 77 ]. The aim is to minimize the objective function below:

The objective function is controlled by succeeding iterations determined by the detecting vector z → as below:

From the succeeding iterations, the points with the most similar features are selected, and the system recommends the movies to the user [ 78 ]. For instance, an initial allocation of the centroids may be classified as horror movies, thrillers, comedy, or thrillers. If the client selects thriller movies, a further classification may be Hollywood thriller, Bollywood thriller, etc. If the client selects any from these, the subsequent recommendations will be based on this particular centroid [ 74 ]. As seen, it has an advantage because there are always initial centroids that the user can select that further narrow down the selection. Optimization is reduced by the detecting vector to optimize the suggestion to the most viable suggestions [ 79 ].

5.4. Cuckoo Search

The cuckoo search algorithm is a combination of K -means clustering and the use of Levy’s flight function. In this process, the K -means algorithm divides the MovieLens Dataset into different clusters. This is performed using randomly selected centroids [ 14 ]. Measures such as the Euclidian distance and cosines are used to find the distance between centroids, and the features and/or users are reassigned to the closest cluster with similar characteristics.

The cuckoo search algorithm gets its inspiration from the cuckoo bird. The cuckoo bird does not sit on eggs to hatch; rather, it searches for the best nest with optimal conditions and lays eggs for the host bird to sit on to hatch [ 80 ]. If the host bird identifies the egg, it may throw it away or abandon the whole nest. Similarly, in the recommender algorithm, if the centroid does not present the optimal solution, the centroid is abandoned for a new iteration until no re-assignment happens. The pseudocode for the recommender system is outlined in the procedure below:

5.4.1. K -Means Clustering

• Initialize the number of k clusters;
• Random selection of centroids using K -means clustering;
• While no centroid is changed, assign each data point to the closest centroid and calculate the new centroids;
• Assign data points to the closest cluster mean.

5.4.2. Cuckoo Search Algorithm

• Begin the fitness function f x ,   X i =   x 1 ,   x 2 … ;
• Initialize the random population of n host nests (centroids from K -means);
• Calculate the fitness function value for each nest;
• Find the ith cuckoo randomly by Levy flights, and calculate its fitness, Fi ;
• Select a nest (centroid);
• If ( F j > F i ) ; replace j with the new solution;
• The unqualified nests (centroids) are abandoned and new ones built by Levy flights function;
• The best solutions found are ranked and suggested to the client.

The cuckoo search algorithm has higher precision, recall, and a lower MAE than the PCA- K -means, hence higher performance characteristics. The computations can also be performed offline so that recommendations are made when the system is online, making it faster to make suggestions to the user.

5.5. Grey Wolf Optimizer

This is a recommendation system that is based on mimicking the leadership and hunting tactics of the grey wolfs [ 81 ]. The algorithm first conducts feature selection using the grey wolf optimizer (GWO) method, before clustering using the FCM method [ 82 ]. The algorithm pseudocode is listed below:

• Load the GWO culture;
• Initialize the coefficient points r, Q and R;
• The appropriateness of each explorer is estimated X α   X β   X δ ;
• Carry out iterations to determine the appropriateness of entire explorer negotiators;
• Return X α representing the position of centroids by GWO;
• Randomly select the cluster centres based on fuzzy means;
• Load the fuzzy clustering formula matrix and estimate f l m m as in the formula below: f l m m = 1 ∑ K = 1 C   x i − c m x i − c k   2 n − 1 (10)
• Determine midpoints B (k) = [ c m ] with F (k) ; continue with iterations until ||F( k + 1) − F( k ))) < ε;
• Return to the newly formed cluster centres and make recommendations based on the cluster centres.

This recommender system has a relatively better performance.

5.6. Other Metaheuristic Algorithms

Some researchers have used other metaheuristic algorithms to develop movie recommender systems. For example, Papneja et al. [ 83 ] developed a movie recommendation using a whale optimization algorithm. Tripathi et al. [ 84 ] hybridized a map-reduce-based tournament along with a WOA to achieve a superior recommendation experience.

6. Model Metrics

Various aspects have to be measured apart from the accuracy to make sure that the algorism makes the right predictions. For example, the algorithms may be highly accurate but have too much logarithmic loss. Accuracy is not the only metric to determine the performance efficiency of a model. The metrics are discussed below:

6.1. Mean Absolute Error (MAE)

This is the average difference between the predicted values and the original values. In our case, it is the average difference between the choice of the movie by the customer (user) from the suggestion made (prediction). It gives the variation between the suggestion and what the customer chose. The only disadvantage is it does not give the direction of the error [ 85 ]. Generally, a low mean absolute error is desirable. The mathematical formula for MAE is shown below:

where n s is the number of samples, y ¯ i is the predicted suggestion, and y i is the true feature that the user picks/wants.

6.2. Mean Squared Error (MSE)

This gives the square of the MAE (the square of the average difference between the original values and the predicted values). The advantage is that it makes the large errors more pronounced so that the model focuses on the large errors and their causes [ 86 ]. In addition, it is easier to model the linear programming models in the computation of the slope using the mean absolute error since the differences will be clearer. The formula for the MSE is shown below:

6.3. Log Loss

This is a cross-entropy loss given by probability estimates. It is used in neural networks and recommender system optimizations. It calculates the probability of the suggestions rather than giving only discrete predictions, especially during the ranking of the suggestions [ 35 , 87 ].

6.4. Confusion Matrix

This is one of the most used metrics in determining the accuracy of a model. It is mainly used for classification problems, especially when the outputs expected should have more classifications [ 34 ]. The various characteristics of the confusion matrix are shown in Table 3 .

Characteristics of a confusion matrix.

As noted earlier, the movies are clustered based on the features or the users. In clustering, the true represents the actual classification of the movie, while the predicted gives the predicted classification of the movie before recommendation [ 88 ]. For example, a movie may be classified as a comedy when it is a thriller movie. The user may choose to think it is a comedy because of the characters only to find it is a thriller movie. The movie may be classified as a thriller, and it is a thriller; hence the users get what they want. Such variations happen in the movie classification; hence there is a need for accurate predictions.

True Positive: This points to a case in the recommender system where the actual suggestion was positive, and the client selection of the movie was positive, i.e., the system suggests what the client needed. An example is when the movie is classified as a comedy when the client needed comedy and selects it [ 89 ].

True Negative: This happens when the actual classification is negative, and the prediction is also negative. In our movie recommendation example, if the movie is not a comedy and our algorithm does not classify it as comedy, this output is termed as true negative [ 90 ].

False Positive: This happens when the actual classification is negative, but the system predicts it as positive [ 91 ]. In the movie recommendation system example, the actual case may be the movie is not a comedy; yet the prediction algorithm classifies it as comedy. The actual movie is not a comedy, hence negative, but the prediction is comedy, hence the term positive.

False Negative: This happens when the actual data is true (positive), but the prediction is negative (false) [ 87 ]. The actual classification is true; yet the system predicts it as negative. In the movie recommender systems, the actual movie is a comedy, but the system predicts not comedy.

6.5. Precision

This assesses how many of the true positives are true positives. It gives a fraction of the true positive predictions to the total positive predictions [ 92 ]. The mathematical format is shown below:

6.6. Recall/Sensitivity

This is used as the fraction of true values from the total true values [ 35 ]. In our recommender systems, it gives a fraction of what is classified as comedy out of a total of what is comedy. The fraction of the true values out of the total true values is mathematically modelled as below. Note that false negative is true, but the algorithm classified it as else:

Precision focuses on capturing the classifications correctly, while recall focuses on whether the system is able to capture the features we want though they may not be correctly captured [ 34 ].

6.7. Accuracy

This is the fraction of correct predictions with the total predictions. The accuracy is mathematically modelled as below:

Accuracy as a metric should be used only when the data are balanced and have various classes [ 93 ]. It should not be used as a metric when the data are skewed (have a majority of only one class). For example, if the data are made of 100 movies, and only 5 movies are comedies, the rest are different genres such as thrillers. If the algorithm wrongly predicts all the movies as thrillers, it will be 95% accurate because 95% are thrillers, and only five are comedies. However, from a rational standpoint, the algorithm failed to classify comedy movies. In a recommendation system, the client would think that none of the movies in the datasets is comedy and not watch; yet there are five top-rated comedy movies. Therefore, accuracy should be used when the dataset is well-balanced.

This is simply the harmonic mean of precision and recall. It shows how precise the system was and how it never missed significant instances. If the F 1 score is high, the model performance is high [ 94 ]. The mathematical formula for precision is shown below:

6.9. Computational Time

This is the time that the algorithm takes to come up with the final solution in the prediction. If the systems take long, they may be unreliable if the users want an immediate response before they select the movies to watch. The algorithms should ensure that the best results are found within the shorted period possible [ 53 , 95 ]. A high-performing system returns the most efficient results within a relatively short period. It increases its reliability and dependency. Sometimes the data to be analyzed may be too large to give immediate results. To overcome this limitation, the computations are performed when the system is offline so that the output is shown when it is back online for effective prediction suggestions [ 96 ].

7. Problems Associated with Movie Recommender Systems

7.1. cold start.

The best target audience for a recommendation always depends on the previous user characteristics and the features of the products they watched. A comparison is always made on the characteristics of the user was and the features of the movie and the rating given to the movie. However, in some instances, there are no user characteristics that can be used for a recommendation if the user is new, and nothing is known about them [ 97 ]. Sometimes the user may not be new but has used a different device when accessing the movies’ websites hence there are no stored cookies that can trace the user history.

A cold-start problem occurs when the recommender system is not able to make any suggestions to the user because the user is new or there is no information available about the user [ 98 ]. The problem is common in collaborative filtering which uses only user details to make recommendations of the best movie. The problem is overcome by using content-based filtering, context-based filtering and hybrid filtering. In content-based filtering, the movies are classified by the features such as the main characters, the genre etc. The new user will select any genre based on the content. A context-based filter is based on some of the user information derived from the device such as location, and the operating system, and correlates them with what other users from similar contexts are using. In hybrid filtering, the content, context, and user characteristics are used, therefore, if the recommender system does not have any information about the user, it will use the content and context to make the first recommendations [ 99 ]. The subsequent recommendations will depend on the hints of information available.

7.2. Accuracy

If the database for the recommender systems has few movies, the system will have higher accuracy. If the database is large, there tends to be a lower accuracy because the pool of information searched is too large. To counter the problem, the K -means algorithm reduces the computational time by restricting the computation to a certain number of iterations or selecting only the top-N number of movies for recommendations [ 100 ]. However, if some of the movies have never been rated, they are likely to be biased in the searches [ 101 ].

To increase the system accuracy in making the recommendations, some of the algorithms have employed sophisticated search criteria that will conduct a thorough search and match the product features to user and item characteristics [ 102 ]. In addition, two or more algorithms are combined to allow the perfect user and feature analysis and come up with the desired output. Some of the classification processes such as the PCA-SOM conducts the logarithmic computations offline so that they give recommendations easily when they are online. It reduces the computational time and increases the recommender system accuracy. In modern recommender systems, cold-start problems and the accuracy is solved by having a dialog box where the users can type in the features they need, and recommendations will be given according to what matches the search words [ 103 ].

7.3. Diversity

New movies in the recommender systems rarely appear among those that are suggested to the users. The new excellent movies may end up not being watched because of the lack of being rated by the users. Some of the excellent movies also may not be rated, leaving the recommendation system blank about whether the movies are great for a specific class of watchers or not. To overcome some of these challenges for new movies and movies that are not rated by the users, the diversity aspect is introduced by the recommender systems. In diversification, the new movies or unrated movies are given priority so that they can be noticed by the users [ 104 ]. If they are pleasing, they will be rated and watched more. From this information, the recommender systems will make subsequent decisions on whether to recommend the movie or archive it. From the number of watches, it will also classify the movie according to the features or user characteristics [ 102 ]. Diversity is often used to recommend new debut movies to increase their marketability and presence. It increases the diversity of the user to try out new features or new products.

7.4. Scalability

While sparsity and diversity aim to increase the chances of movies with new features appearing in top searches, scalability aims to solve the problem of increased computational time and increase the performance of the recommender system. Scalability ensures that there is a balance obtained between accuracy and computational time. If it is necessary, some of the classification computations are performed beforehand so that by the time the user comes to select an item to watch, the system makes an almost immediate recommendation with high levels of efficiency [ 105 ].

7.5. Sparsity

Sparsity in the movie data relates to the large volume of movie data in the system, but the users only utilize a few of the features or resources. It is common in K -means clustering where the data is interpolated linearly and gives fewer perspectives to the non-linear data [ 106 ]. Recommendation systems may sometimes be biased by only suggesting the most rated or the most liked movies based on a limited assessment of all the possible cluster features. By using the top-N theory to make the recommendation, those that do not meet the threshold of these can find better algorithms that consider the sparsity of information available [ 107 ]. Some of the methods such as PCA-SOM map all the features on a lattice; hence the user can find most of the features. WOA also widens the scope of the search by using both linear and orthogonal systems to find the desirable features and make recommendations that are sparser and more diverse. Generally, implementing systems that consider non-linearly related data is efficient [ 108 , 109 ].

8. Discussions

The current movie recommendation systems have to work in contexts where there is so much data to be considered before making recommendations. Both user and context information are so varied that the accuracy and precision of the systems are brought to real tests. For example, most of the user information is shared through social media platforms to generate interest in the movies. The MovieLens dataset was created approximately 20 years ago when there was little or no developments in the use of social media where users share movie information to create interest. However, current technologies need to analyze the content, context. and user characteristics in social media platforms to recommend the right movies to the customers. Some companies have taken steps to integrate analytics in their recommender system algorithms. They ask the customer to connect to their social media accounts such as Twitter, YouTube, and Meta not only for advertising but also to analyze the activity of the user on these social media accounts to recommend the best movies for them. Through connecting to these platforms, they analyze the previous history of the user and recommend appropriate movies. This significantly reduces the cold-start problem since new user information can be obtained.

Context-based filtering is gaining traction in the movie recommender systems. It has been adequately used in product recommendations on e-commerce platforms., for example, the most discounted products during black Fridays, the holiday products during Christmas seasons, etc. Movie recommender systems that integrate time stamps to recommend the best movies in various contexts should be studied and developed. For example, it will help recommend movies for children learning during the day and children lullaby movies when it is time to sleep at night.

There are various advances in the use of blockchain technology, and some of these applications may affect the efficacy of algorithms in movie recommender systems. Blockchain technology enhances user privacy through user data encryption; yet collaborative filtering depends on the availability of user information so that it can match the features and characteristics before making recommendations. If user information is concealed by the blockchain systems, the algorithms have to use advanced methods to prevent a decline in the accuracies such as the use of context and content-based filtering.

9. Conclusions

In this article, movie recommender systems have been described and classified. The various types of recommender systems are introduced and discussed. Special emphasis is given to explain in detail the various machine learning and metaheuristic algorithms commonly deployed in movie recommendation research. The various model metrics that summarize the quality of the model are discussed at length. The problems associated with movie recommender systems are also summarized in a structured way and discussed. A total of 77 articles strictly on the area of movie recommender systems are included in the study, and their major conclusions are presented. In addition, 32 other related articles on metaheuristics and recommender systems (not for movies) are also introduced in various sections to present a coherent and meaningful review. One of the limitations of the study is that the Scopus and Web of Science databases were not directly used for selecting the articles for review. In contrast, EBSCO Academic Search Premier, ScienceDirect, IEEE Library, ResearchGate, SpringerLink and the ACM Portal were used for the literature search. Nevertheless, more than 80% of the reviewed papers were found to be indexed in Scopus while more than 60% were available in the Web of Science database.

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, S.J., N.G. and R.Č.; data curation, S.J., N.G. and J.S.M.; formal analysis, S.J., N.G., R.Č. and J.S.M.; investigation, J.S.M.; methodology, S.J., N.G. and R.Č.; supervision, R.Č.; writing—original draft, S.J., N.G. and J.S.M.; writing—review and editing, R.Č. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Posted on March 21, 2020 at 8:07 pm

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How to write a research paper about a movie?

The movie industry is ever-growing along with the technology producing it. There is always that new sound and mesmerizing video editing that make movie lovers obsessed with their favorite film. The movies elicit opinions and emotions that warrant discussions thus creating a need for a research paper that intend to find out why a movie is loved compared to others. The popularity of a movie id dependent on a lot of factors that the research intends to find out. Here are techniques from already written essays at Essay Kitchen on how to conduct and write a research paper about movies. 

What is a research paper?

A research paper is an academic writing that analyzes and argues a certain point. The researcher provides their perspective on the topic and additional information and findings from other sources. A good research paper, however, isn’t dependent on having an interesting topic rather it’s about following the research paper’s instructions carefully. There are three types of approaches for a research paper one can choose from: argumentative, expository, and analytical. When writers works with book review topics , Choosing the right approach can go a long way in improving the research paper.

Check professional examples

To understand the best practices and structures of an essay, you can look for professional examples. Services which provide Research papers online have a ton of examples that showcase how to best write an essay. There is a certain structure that is required for writing to be considered a research essay that a writer is required to implement. A research paper is different from other writings such as a research proposal with the difference lying in intentions of the two essays. A research paper is intended to gauge a student’s academic knowledge on a subject while a research proposal is a writing meant to persuade an audience on the importance of a research project. Looking at professional examples will aid in the differentiation.

Search for a pre-written essay

A writer should search for a pre-written essay on movies to search for additional information and most importantly avoid plagiarism. Reading pre-written essays on the topic according to services which provide research papers online aids the writer to understand more of the topic and gives inspiration and ideas on how to formulate their paper. Also, it enables the writer to decide which approach to the topic is unique and not following the viewpoints of others. It awakens the imagination and allows research on areas the previous essays failed to cover. In writing, honesty is integral to the reputation of a writer and thus plagiarism is not allowed according to conditions of https://edujungles.com/paper-writing-service . Looking at past essays about movies will ensure that the writer does not perform any regulations when speaking on the same topic or can acknowledge the original author if they quote their passages.

How to choose a movie?

Choosing a good movie is what determines what your theater experience will be like. These are the points to consider when choosing the perfect movie:

The audience should be a consideration when choosing a movie and you should ensure that the movie best appeals to a certain audience. Age and explicit content are the factors that draw the line on which the audience is entitled to watch which movie.

Choosing an essay about movies should follow a theme emanating from either an occasion or mood of the day. There is a variety of themes to choose from such as love, justice, friendships, and history

The genres include action, animation, comedy, romance, adventure, fantasy, and thriller. All these genres provide an identity to the movie therefore one should choose a movie they best identify with.

The list for actors is endless and everyone has had a favorite actor at some point. You can, therefore, choose a movie because your favorite actor played a role in it

Create a writing plan

Creating a writing plan is essential to having a conclusive research paper on movies. A writing plan will outline the movies being considered and the pros and cons judged. The movies are therefore graded regarding viewer ratings, starring actors and genre of the movie. A good writing plan will ensure that you cover the reasons why and movie is considered more appealing than the others and a personal opinion if that is the description of a good movie essay. A writing plan ensures efficiency and excellent time management that provides the writer with the freedom to make time for resting.

Write from your heart 

Movies are fun and a personal opinion creates a bond between its lovers. Being open to how you feel on Netflix movies is what provides authenticity.

The last step of a research paper is proofreading. Plugins such as Grammarly will help you get rid of the spelling errors and plagiarism.

Movies are an interesting production and new techniques continue to emerge every day. To complete an ideal research paper on movies, the writer must show their understanding of the movies and provide a discussion that is supported by facts. A personal opinion on the movies is also welcomed as it offers a new perspective regarding the movie. For instance, the protagonist of the movie may be well-liked but in your opinion, you don’t find him likable. Getting to research to prove your point of thought is what makes a good research essay.

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Three Great Documentaries to Stream

Ethan Coen’s survey of a rock ’n’ roll icon, Frederick Wiseman’s take on haute cuisine and a searing portrait of PTSD are this month’s picks.

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By Ben Kenigsberg

The proliferation of documentaries on streaming services makes it difficult to choose what to watch. Each month, we’ll choose three nonfiction films — classics, overlooked recent docs and more — that will reward your time.

‘Of Men and War’ (2015)

Stream it on Kanopy . Rent it on Amazon , Apple TV , Fandango at Home , Google Play and Kino Now .

Any politician who makes decisions about sending soldiers to war zones ought to see this tough, moving documentary, which follows several post-9/11 American veterans as they receive treatment for PTSD at a program in Yountville, Calif. Filming lasted from 2008 to 2013. There is a tragic coda to the events onscreen: In 2018, long after the film’s completion, three women who worked at the program were killed after being taken hostage by a former participant .

What we see in the documentary — directed by the French filmmaker Laurent Bécue-Renard — are veterans, all male, working to reacclimate to civilian life and to reconcile themselves to their new fragility. They, and their significant others, recognize that they have changed dramatically from who they were before they deployed. (“You don’t feel as strong as you used to be,” one says. “You feel defective.”) In group therapy sessions, sharing doesn’t come easily to men who have been asked to be stoic professionally. The presence of cameras, however unobtrusive (the direct-cinema pioneer Albert Maysles gets a thanks in the credits), presumably made things even harder. Nor do the vets immediately have trust for one another. More than once, someone storms out of a session.

The patients aren’t identified in any formal way — the closing credits list first names — but we do get to see several stories unfold over time. Some men share horrifying memories from overseas. One recalls kicking in a door and accidentally killing a small girl. Another remembers having to flatten out a corpse in which rigor mortis had set in. Still another recalls smelling his own facial flesh cooking after an explosion. One man grapples frankly with why his marriage, after his return, is now in jeopardy. “I’ve come to realize I have no clue what it’s like to be a woman and marry a man that’s twice your size and that’s lethal and in the military,” he says.

But there are hopeful stories, too — of reconciliations, of new parenthood, of modest breakthroughs in dealing with anger or in redirecting guilt. “Of Men and War” doesn’t impose a tidy narrative arc on the material, which, by its nature, resists easy resolution.

‘Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind’ (2022)

Stream it on Amazon Prime Video .

Hardly an essential backstage showcase but something that any Coen brothers completist will want to take a look at, “Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind” is a product of how Ethan Coen spent the early days of the pandemic. It’s his first documentary and his first directorial credit without his brother, Joel. ( “Drive-Away Dolls” came later.) But it also isn’t something he shot.

By accounts, T-Bone Burnett had approached Coen and his wife, the editor Tricia Cooke, about making a movie on the rock ’n’ roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis. The two built a documentary out of a trove of archival Lewis performances and interviews. (The project “came to us two or maybe three weeks into the pandemic, when everybody was still afraid to go outside,” Cooke recalled to Rolling Stone .) The result doesn’t claim to be anything more than the editing exercise that the origin story suggests — but Cooke and Coen can really edit. And at 73 minutes, “Trouble in Mind” presents a thorough overview of Lewis’s musical career and takes its bow at just about the maximum time that an audience could reasonably be asked to spend in his presence. How he moved his hands so wildly and still hit the right piano keys is a source of enduring wonder. But he was also a noxious egomaniac who in old interviews makes unapologetic wisecracks about marrying his 13-year-old cousin, which he infamously did.

The ample performance clips often let the songs play through. The numbers include “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” (anyone who didn’t like that song “had to have a problem — with music,” Lewis says); “Lewis Boogie,” which he performs with his cousin Mickey Gilley; and “I’ll Fly Away,” which he sings with Little Richard. (The song is no stranger to Ethan: Allison Krauss and Gillian Welch’s rendition was on the Burnett-produced “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.) Additionally, there’s footage of Lewis at a gospel recording session in Nashville in January 2020. The interviews are, well, something to see, with Lewis extolling his own brilliance again and again and on occasion even coming across like a Coen character. (Returning from the hospital after being treated for a ruptured stomach, he delivers a TV interview holding a comically large cigar.)

Shown at Cannes in May 2022, before Lewis’s death that October , the film had a screening at Film Forum in New York in January and is now, with little fanfare, available to stream.

‘Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros’ (2023)

Stream it on PBS.

Frederick Wiseman’s “Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros” chronicles the workings of a three-Michelin-star restaurant in Ouches, France. While making it, the director was able to eat his lunch there. It won’t be long into this four-hour film before viewers become intensely jealous of that fact, although they may be grateful not to face the paralyzing indecision of choosing from such a voluminously stocked cheese cart. (The maître fromager’s recitation gets one of the film’s biggest laughs.)

Wiseman, being Wiseman, is interested in much more than simply showing off the cuisine and the cooking process. “Menus-Plaisirs” captures the workings of just about every imaginable aspect of the restaurant, from the arguments over menus to the sourcing of ingredients to preparations for customers who don’t want this or that item in their meals. At this restaurant, being picky frankly seems gauche, but the staff members handle it all with grace.

The ballet of table setting and good service are part of the picture, too, as are the dining experiences of guests who are perhaps overly besotted with their food’s aromas. “Menus-Plaisirs” is also a portrait of the head chef, Michel Troisgros, and his sons, and the degree to which he is willing to take charge and to delegate. He interacts with guests in French and in English. He chides an employee for improperly prepping brains and directs him to recipe books; when in doubt, he says, consult Auguste Escoffier or the Larousse Gastronomique . He gets into an extended back-and-forth with one of his boys about whether a dish of kidneys, passion fruit and sriracha is missing something. Might it be supplemented with white asparagus al dente? The son thinks the asparagus will dilute too much of the flavor. And nobody, nobody appears to love the flavor of passion fruit as much as Monsieur Troisgros.

Wiseman closely guards the distribution of his films; most can be streamed on Kanopy, which is available through certain libraries and academic institutions. But “Menus-Plaisirs” will stream for free on PBS until April 20. It’s the pop-up restaurant of Wiseman features.

An earlier version of this article misspelled a word in the name of a documentary directed by Frederick Wiseman. It is “Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros,” not Troisgrois.

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Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs faces sweeping sex-trafficking inquiry: What the feds have, need to prove

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Over the last few months, a legendary name in the music world has faced a series of shocking allegations of sexual abuse.

In civil lawsuits, four women have accused Sean “Diddy” Combs of rape, assault and other abuses, dating back three decades. One of the allegations involved a minor. The claims sent shock waves through the music industry and put Combs’ entertainment empire in jeopardy.

Now, the hip-hop mogul’s legal troubles have worsened considerably.

Law enforcement sources told The Times that Combs is the subject of a sweeping inquiry into sex-trafficking allegations that resulted in a federal raid Monday at his estates in Los Angeles and Miami.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ L.A., Miami homes raided in sex-trafficking inquiry, sources say

Agents search Sean Combs’ Holmby Hills and Miami mansions as part of a federal inquiry into sex trafficking allegations, law enforcement sources said.

March 26, 2024

Authorities have declined to comment on the case, and Combs has not been charged with any crime. But the scene of dozens of Department of Homeland Security agents — guns drawn — searching Combs’ properties underscored the seriousness of the investigation.

At the same time as the raids, police in Miami arrested Brendan Paul, a man described in a recent lawsuit against Combs as a confidant and drug “mule.” Miami-Dade police took Paul, 25, into custody on suspicion of possession of cocaine and a controlled substance-laced candy, records show.

Paul was arrested at Miami Opa-Locka Executive Airport, where TMZ posted video showing Combs walking around Monday afternoon. An affidavit reviewed by the Miami Herald alleged that police working with Homeland Security found drugs in Paul’s bag. There is nothing in Miami court records connecting Combs to Paul, who was later released on $2,500 bail.

The arrest, however, is the latest in a string of legal woes tied to Combs.

Sources with knowledge of the sex-trafficking investigation into Combs, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said federal authorities have interviewed at least three women, but it’s unclear whether any are among those who have filed suit.

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In the wake of multiple lawsuits filed against him, former members of Combs’ inner circle told The Times that his alleged misconduct against women goes back decades.

Dec. 13, 2023

Legal experts say it could take time to build a criminal case against Combs but note that the civil suits could offer investigators a road map.

Dmitry Gorin, a former L.A. County sex-crimes prosecutor who is now in private practice, said the allegations in the lawsuits would likely have been enough for a judge to grant search warrants for Combs’ homes.

Investigators probably would seek authorization to “search for videos or photographs on any devices connected to the target ... anywhere where digital images can be found in connection to sexual conduct that would have been recorded,” Gorin said.

Shawn Holley, an attorney for Combs, did not respond to requests for comment, but Aaron Dyer, another of his lawyers, on Tuesday called the raids a “witch hunt” and “a gross overuse of military-level force.”

“Yesterday, there was a gross overuse of military-level force as search warrants were executed at Mr. Combs’ residences,” Dyer said in a statement. “This unprecedented ambush — paired with an advanced, coordinated media presence — leads to a premature rush to judgment of Mr. Combs and is nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits. There has been no finding of criminal or civil liability with any of these allegations.”

Combs has previously denied any wrongdoing.

Gorin and other legal experts said investigators could be focused, in part, on the sexual assault allegations involving a minor. If a minor is moved across state lines for the purpose of sex, “that is enough for at least an argument ... of sex trafficking because somebody underage cannot consent,” Gorin said.

“Sex trafficking for adults usually involves some sort of coercion or other restraints,” he said, and can be tougher to prove. Prosecutors would need to show you “encouraged somebody to engage in sexual activity for money or some other inducement.”

Coercion, he added, is not limited to threats of violence. It could involve being held against one’s will or someone simply saying, “I don’t want to participate in group sex, and now I’m being forced to.”

Homeland Security investigates most sex-trafficking operations for the federal government. Legal experts say one possibility why the agency could be involved in this case is because the women involved in the allegations against Combs could be from other countries.

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Meghan Blanco, a defense attorney who has handled sexual trafficking cases, said they can be “incredibly difficult cases to prove.”

“They have [in the Combs case] convinced one or more federal magistrates they had enough probable cause for one or more search warrants,” Blanco said. “Given the scope of the investigation, it seems they are further along than most investigations.”

Combs’ legal troubles have been building for months.

His former girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, the singer known as Cassie, accused him of rape and repeated physical assaults and said he forced her to have sex with male prostitutes in front of him. Joi Dickerson-Neal accused Combs in a suit of drugging and raping her in 1991, recording the attack and then distributing the footage without her consent.

Liza Gardner filed a third suit in which she claimed Combs and R&B singer Aaron Hall sexually assaulted her. Hall could not be reached for comment.

Another lawsuit alleges that Combs and former Bad Boy label president Harve Pierre gang-raped and sex-trafficked a 17-year-old girl. Pierre said in a statement that the allegations were “disgusting,” “false” and a “desperate attempt for financial gain.”

After the filing of the fourth suit, Combs wrote on Instagram: “Enough is enough. For the last couple of weeks, I have sat silently and watched people try to assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy. Sickening allegations have been made against me by individuals looking for a quick payday. Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family and for the truth.”

Last month, producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones filed a federal lawsuit against Combs accusing him of sexually harassing and threatening him for more than a year. The suit includes mention of Paul in connection with “the affairs ... involving dealing in controlled substances.”

On Monday, the suit was amended to include Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. as a co-defendant in the lawsuit.

Cuba Gooding Jr. added as co-defendant in Lil Rod’s lawsuit against Diddy

Cuba Gooding Jr. is added as a co-defendant in a lawsuit against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs. Record producer Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones accuses the actor of sexual assault.

Blanco said prosecutors “are going to look carefully for corroboration — the numbers of people accusing the person of similar acts.” Beyond that, they will be looking for videos, recordings and cellphone records that place people in the same locations or text messages or other discussions at the time of the alleged acts.

She said prosecutors are trying to build a record of incidents that happened some time ago.

Douglas Wigdor, a lawyer for Ventura and another, unnamed plaintiff, said in response to reports of the search warrant issued against Combs: “We will always support law enforcement when it seeks to prosecute those that have violated the law. Hopefully, this is the beginning of a process that will hold Mr. Combs responsible for his depraved conduct.”

Wigdor on Tuesday called his clients “courageous and credible witnesses.”

“To the extent there is a prosecution and they want our clients to testify truthfully,” he said, “I think they will and that will be damning evidence.”

The searches Monday in L.A. and Miami sparked worldwide attention.

Diddy’s ‘Love’ producer Lil Rod accuses him and associates of sexual assault, illicit behavior

Rodney ‘Lil Rod’ Jones has filed a bombshell lawsuit against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs accusing the media mogul of sexually harassing and threatening him.

Feb. 27, 2024

His 17,000-square-foot Holmby Hills mansion, where Combs debuted his last album a year ago, was flooded with Homeland Security agents who gathered evidence on behalf of an investigation being run by the Southern District of New York, according to law enforcement officials familiar with the inquiry.

Two of Combs’ sons were briefly detained at the Holmby Hills property as agents searched the mansion in footage captured by FOX11 Los Angeles.

Both Blanco and Gorin said prosecutors will have to examine the accusers’ motives for coming forward and whether they are motivated by financial gain. They are sure to look for inconsistencies in any allegations, they said.

Any defense, Blanco added, will question why the accusers are only now coming forward and whether they have an incentive beyond justice.

“It comes down to credibility,” she said.

Times staff writers Stacy Perman and Nardine Saad contributed to this report.

More to Read

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March 29, 2024

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Inside the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’ raids: Emptied safes, dismantled electronics, gun-toting feds

March 28, 2024

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Richard Winton is an investigative crime writer for the Los Angeles Times and part of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2011. Known as @lacrimes on Twitter, during almost 30 years at The Times he also has been part of the breaking news staff that won Pulitzers in 1998, 2004 and 2016.

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