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Emotional Film Experience

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Emotions in Technology Design: From Experience to Ethics

Part of the book series: Human–Computer Interaction Series ((HCIS))

Abstract

Technological developments in the film industry have enriched the audio–visual language over the years, and made it possible to represent subtle aspects of the world so that audiences could experience fictional stories as realistically as possible, and be emotionally engaged and interested. This chapter reviews recent research and theories regarding emotional engagement, interest and empathy as complex cognitive emotional viewers’ experiences. In addition, we will discuss the use of non-narrative factors such as music or colour to elicit emotions. But more importantly, we will introduce methods and techniques that can be used to study viewers’ emotional responses to films. Our basic claim is that films, like other technological artefacts, can be studied using the methods of user experiences. Integrating ideas and methods from film theory, users’ experiences and cognitive psychological approaches to emotions might provide a useful framework to understand viewers’ experiences of films.

The work in this chapter was supported by Aalto Seed and the doctoral school in the Faculty of Information Technology (University of Jyväskylä). It is based on the author’s unpublished doctoral dissertation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

    Jose Cañas-Bajo

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  1. Jose Cañas-Bajo
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Correspondence to Jose Cañas-Bajo .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Rebekah Rousi

  2. VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Tampere, Finland

    Jaana Leikas

  3. Faculty of Information Technology, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Pertti Saariluoma

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Cañas-Bajo, J. (2020). Emotional Film Experience. In: Rousi, R., Leikas, J., Saariluoma, P. (eds) Emotions in Technology Design: From Experience to Ethics. Human–Computer Interaction Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53483-7_7

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