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ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ НАУКИ
Poznin Vitaly Fedorovich
Doctor of Arts, professor of TV and radio journalism Saint Petersburg State University Skripyuk Igor Ilyich Ph.D. in Psychology, assistant professor of advertising, Saint Petersburg State University
SCREEN IMAGE IN TERMS OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COMMUNICATION
Abstract: On-screen work exists only in a system "object - subject" ("film - audience"), so knowledge of the psychology of the viewer's perception is crucial for both creative practice and theory of film art. Due to the properties of memory, storing past experience as a spectator and received information from the screen, audiovisual work can not only trigger the corresponding emotions for the viewer, but also create in his imagination artistic screen image. Short-term memory helps to form a shaped association. Long-term memory is actively involved in decoding metaphors by the audience, full aesthetic perception of which requires the recipient's life and artistic experience. This is particularly important in the perception of contemporary films, which are characterized by the coexistence of different chronotopes, use of intertextuality, quotation, combining of incompatible.
Keywords: communication, audiovisual products, perception, memory, semiology, parallel editing, distance montage, panoramic shooting, overlapping, film metaphor.
Problem definition. In the twenty-first century screen culture is extensively increasing its social space, therefore it is important to examine and take into account in practice the psychology of perception of audiovisual product - it's crucial not only for the researchers of film, television and multimedia creative work, but also for creative workers. One of the major factors influencing the perception of the viewer is the memory factor, the study of which this article is devoted to.
Analysis of recent researches and publications. Problems of the psychology of the perception are considered in the following publications: La psicologia delle arti oggi / A cura di R. Tomassoni. Milano: Franco Angeli, 2002; Sokolov A. G. Nature of screen art. Psychological laws. - M.: Publishing House A. Dvornikov, 2004; Leontev A. A. Psychology of film perception // Applied psycholinguistics of speech communication and mass communication. - M: Smysl, 2008; Gray, Gordon. Cinema : a visual anthropology. Oxford • New York, 2010; Berezovchuk L. N. The movie perception: the micro-level of the film storytelling // Ananievskiy read, part 2. Contemporary applied directions and problems of psychology, St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg state University. 2010; Markina O. S. "Socio-psychological peculiarities of perception and understanding of the film" (dis. Ph.D. in Psychology), 2010. However, these works are devoted to the general laws of perception of the screen image and sound, the processes of perception of cinematic narrative and aesthetic information.
Specification of unsolved aspects of the problem. This article explores an understudied aspect of the psychology of perception of the screen image, namely the role of the memory of the recipient in the perception of screen work and the problem of co-creation role of the audience in a process of creating on-screen image.
Definition of the article purposes. The aim of the article is to identify the role of long-term and short-term memory of the recipient in the perception of the screen image and to determine the mechanism of participation of the spectator in the creation of visual art image.
Main part of article. Nowadays there is a plenty of definitions of "communication". A working definition of communication is "a specific exchange of information, the process of transferring the emotional and intellectual content" [10, p.11]. Communication processes pervade various sides of human life, so it's completely natural that it is interesting for both academic researchers and practitioners for a long time. The first extant communication model was offered by ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle who wrote in his "Rhetoric": "It is composed of three elements: the speaker himself, the subject about which he talks, and the person to whom he talks; and it is the ultimate goal of all "[2, p. 99]. Due to its universality, this model became a prototype for almost all currently known models of communication, in particular the models of: G.D. Lasswell, T.Nyukomb, J. Gerbner, Shannon - W. Weaver, Charles Osgood - W. Schramm, M. Defler [1.; 12].
In other words, with all the diversity and specificity of these communication models they always consist of three basic elements: a sender, a message, and the recipient. Cinema is totally an example of communication as an information exchange between individuals through a common system of signs for them [5]. The basis of the cinema is the interaction of subjects : the creators of film products and the audience (the viewer). However, any information exists only if there is someone or something who can perceive it. Otherwise, it remains a "thing in itself." "The problem of classical film theory - Gordon Gray rightfully notes - is that it almost does not concerns one of the most important elements of cinema - its audience" [6, c. 104].
In the recent years, significant progress in the digital creative work shifted the attention of researchers to the use of new technical and technological means in the process of creating an on-screen product. But independently on how technologies are changing, the laws of perception of the screen image and sound remain unchanged. Hence, in our opinion, the most perspective
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direction of study both from the theoretical and practical points of view would be the use of all the achievements of psychology that were accumulated over many years.
Sender and recipient of the message in cinematic communication is a person with mind and its highest level of development - consciousness. The subject of the message is an audio-visual product, which the authors try to make more understandable, comprehensible, engaging, emotional.
Among the existing mental processes in the context of "the movie and the viewer" a particular interest, undoubtedly, represents the perception as a cognitive mental process of a holistic reflection of objects, phenomena, situations of the objective world in the aggregate of their properties and parts during a direct impact on the senses. Analyzing the perception of the audiovisual product that audience has, the following operations (levels) of perception may be pointed out: object detection in the perceptual field; the distinction of the individual features in the object; execution of the identification action (identification and recognition); formation of an image of perception ( "operational unit" of perception).
The viewers perceive film production in different ways, choosing and focusing on specific details and elements while ignoring others. Perception also depends onprevious experience and human settings, the content of his activities and his individual features, in other words - from his apperception. People watch and listen to the same things, but they see and hear different things. Overcoming of this obstacle is possible through taking into consideration the general and individual psychological characteristics of the audience. Knowing the psychology of the viewer's perception of the screen image is important not only for the film art theory, but also for the practice of film making. A number of contemporary theorists and practitioners of film sphere, in particular, V.N. Zheleznyakov [7] and A.G. Sokolov [12], by analyzing the use of expressive means in the on-screen art, emphasize the importance for film makers to know the psycho-physiological features of perception of visual information.
This article will focus on an aspect that has not been examined in the works about the psychology of art, namely - the role of human memory in the process ofperception of screen images.
The very first phase of the screen images perception, recognition and distinction of objects on the screen, is the result of interaction between the long-term, short-term and sensory memory.
Through sensory memory (plus - the inertia of our sight), the viewer is able to perceive a series of discrete static images (24 frames per second - in the film and 25 frames per second - on television) sent to the screen as a smooth integral movement of the object. Thanks to the long-term memory the viewer quickly recognizes the on-screen objects and sounds that he has seen and heard in real life.
Short-term memory and operating memory help the audience during the film or television program to identify on-screen characters and the environment that surrounds them.
Concerning the phenomenon of the perception of the recipient of the screen image, there are several theories that explain how the viewer quickly and easily recognize what he sees on the screen. So, Christian Metz [9] assumes that the audience quickly learned to perceive the dynamic screen "picture" because they already had an experience of the perception of the reflected image in the mirror, where everything seems to be real and virtual and illusionary, at the same time.
Following the concept of virtuality, this comparison is quite suitable, except for one essential point: the viewer still sees the surrounding reality in the mirror, and the reflection in the mirror is perceived as a reality. On the screen, firstly, we do not always see the reality that is familiar to us, secondly, even familiar objects or events on the screen may be significantly transformed by means of special optics or camera angles.
From our perspective, the hypothesis of Joseph Anderson and Barbara Fischer [16, p. 3-12] that the human perception of motion in real life and movement on the screen are not much different from each other is more reasonable. It doesn't matter whether we are witnessing the real thing, looking at the reflected in the mirror objects, or whether we are watching what is happening on the screen - the laws of perception of the static and the moving images is essentially the same. Recognition of the objects on the screen is the result of the constant comparison of what we see with what we have already seen in the real life.
Reflecting on the semiology of visual communications, U. Eco emphasizes that the main thing here is "to comprehend how it happens that graphic and photographic sign, that does not have any material element in common with things, can be similar to the things, can resemble things" [14, p.126]. Another widely known semiotician, Roland Barthes, supposed that the photo in fact represents a message without a code, when "there is no need to put between the object and its image mediating code instance" [4, p. 379]. Even more radical view on this matter had a well-known director and theorist of cinema Paolo Pasolini who believed that the basis of the perception of cinema signs-images is, above all, their communicative-mimetic nature, and considered that the specifics of film language is that the movie itself reflects the reality, being its analogue: "the difference between cinema and life, to my mind, is insignificant, and the general semiology, describing the life, can be used as well to describe the film" [17, c 135-137.].
Terms "denotative" and "connotative" which are used in semiology in relation to the screen (and also to the real objects) can be interpreted in the following way. Denotative meaning implies some typical features that are common to a particular object or phenomenon; semantic information, being additional in relation to denotative information, represents a connotative meaning. And our long-term memory plays a huge role in determining the denotation. Due to the fact that the human brain stores invariant set of objects and phenomena, we quickly and appropriately perceive their copies in the photos and on the screen, after that we recognize additional, connotative, inherent to the particular object features. This determination triggers projection-identification process in the perception of the viewer so that
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the viewer quickly recognizes and classifies the subject, its type or sort, and so on.
We have talked so far about the memory function in the process of psycho-physiological perception of the on-screen image. But the use of the person's ability to store a variety of information also allows filmmakers to create an artistic screen image.
So, panoramic shooting and motion shooting are perceived only because of the peculiarities of short-term memory buffer that allows us to imagine a complete picture of the area that gradually appears during a pan on the screen and then disappears from our sight.
One of the first serious researchers of the nature of cinema, Bela Balazs [3], considered that the specific visual means of a new kind of art includes a close-up, editing and angle, but somehow forgot to mention a pan, although the first panoramic shooting with motion was made in the first year of the existence of cinema. Meanwhile, panoramic shooting and motion shooting, extending the screen space, above all determine the specificity of the cinema (not in vain most filmmakers has started to be interested in the shooting of virtuoso and very long plans with motion).
Thanks to our operating memory we way use such a creative technique as a parallel editing when episodes interspersed, occurring at the same time, but in different places. It's important to note that when D.-W. Griffith's used this technique for the first time, the producer and the distributors did not believe that the audience will be able to accept two on-screen actions, taking place in different places, but relating to the same event.
A separate study should be devoted to the role of the viewer's memory in shaping the artistic on-screen image. Thanks to long-term memory the spectator is able to create various associative chains in his imagination. So, many visual metaphors are appropriately perceived by the viewer simply because before watching the movie he keeps in mind the verbal source of film metaphors. For instance, a frame with a sculpture of Christ walking with the cross on Calvary, appearing on the screen after the episode with a woman who carries on her hands an illegitimate child, immediately retrieves from the memory viewer a phrase "everyone carries his cross" ( "The Kid", dir. Charles Chaplin , 1921), and reared lion constructed as a assembly of three sculptures is perceived by the viewer in the context of the episode as a visible metaphor, thanks to the stored in its memory a catch phrase from the Bible, "and the stones will cry out" ( "Battleship "Potemkin ", dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1925). Many similar metaphors and comparisons, referring to the stored in the viewer's long-term memory verbal analogy ( "treat people like a cattle", "to ascend the corporate ladder", "restoration of the monarchy", etc.), can be found in silent films of C. Eisenstein "Strike" and "October".
In all fairness it should be noted that such allusions were poorly perceived by the ordinary audience because they were obviously artificial, deliberate and did not fit into the context of the episode. The use of such visual metaphors was much more natural in the silent films of V. Pudovkin. In the paradigmatic episode of the film "Storm Over Asia" (also known as "The Heir of Genghis Khan", 1928) bandaged hero, fearing being
poisoned, tries to drink water from the aquarium, but drops it and falls to the floor. Beside him, on the carpet, the aquarium fish impotently beats. A well-known verbal metaphor "like a fish out of water" in this case represents an organic embodiment, through a unified visual and narrative context, creating eventually an expressive artistic image.
Transformation of an absolutely specific onscreen image into a metaphoric image is the result of some kind of double encoding, namely - an overlapping of two codes - mimetic and semantic, that immediately enriches what the viewer sees on the screen by a new meaning.
Direct editing comparisons and metaphors based on the figures of speech and verbal idioms stored in the viewer's memory ( "turn into a smoke," "shattered life", "crowd is like a flock of sheep," "time is like a water", etc.) can now be found only in film- and TV- publicism. But in the modern movies, with active use of digital technology, verbal comparisons and metaphors, that are stored in our mind, are more and more embodied on the screen literally. In the film "Amelie" (dir. J.-P. Jeunet, France, 2001) this approach is used to implement the metaphor "her heart melted "; the film "Down House" (dir. R. Kachanov, 2001) visualized a verbal metaphor " sand is pouring out of her" - sitting in the chair elderly woman on the screen turns into something friable.
Due to long-term memory effect, figurative associations may appear in the viewer's mind even without direct object emergence on the screen, with which a particular screen image is compared. Thus, one of the television reports was about a Japanese who by will of fate appeared in our Kalmyk steppe. At the end of this story the hero looks sadly at the setting sun. Big red sun disk is in the center of the screen parallelepiped, and it immediately reminds the Japanese flag, which is well-known for the majority of viewers. It means that the image is not born as a result of the linking of two frames, but as a result of the editing, happening in our mind. As M. Yampolsky rightfully noted, "the spectacle, that is not immersed in the memory, not allowed to Mnemosyne sources, remains a meaningless set of incoherent fragments" [15, p. 8].
Thanks to our long-term memory, even shooting angle is able to bring into the picture a metaphorical sound, if it visually conveys the meaning of such phrases as "look down" or, on the contrary, "look up". Similarly, the slowdown of the speed of a subject on the screen at the climax (a disaster, a threat to life, etc.) has an impact on our perception and creates a metaphoric image of "time that seems to have stopped at this point"; and an accelerated motion of the people on the screen visualizes the vanity of life.
As for the role of short-term memory and operating memory in the process of creating an artistic onscreen image, it's crucial for the whole process of the screen work perception and creating an artistic image as a result of linking the distanced images in our perception. Thus, a specific image is perceived as a metonymy if only we have already drawn attention to this subject, shown in the previous frame. In the S. Eisen-stein's "Battleship" such a thing as pince-nez, gets a
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metaphorical meaning twice, and with different features. The first time it is a ship's doctor pince-nez. At the beginning, we see how he examines through his pince-nez a wormy meat and confirms that it is edible. Then we see the same eyeglasses hanging on the shrouds after rebellious sailors have thrown the doctor overboard. In this case, the pince-nez is perceived not only as a metonymy, but also as a metaphor for revenge. In the famous scene of "Odessa Steps" we see the pince-nez on one of the women, examining the red flag on the "Potemkin". When the shooting of civilians by soldiers starts, the same eyeglasses appears in one of the frames, but pierced by a bullet, and the subject becomes a metaphor for the senseless cruelty.
An ordinary film usually has a small duration, so while watching it the viewer quite clearly stores the images of all the characters and all the places, in other words - all the on-screen space and time. Let's shortly define this buffer short-term memory as a recall, or, using the Greek word, anamnesis. It's important to mention that the theory of "distance montage ", proposed by the brilliant master of the montage film Artavazd Peleshian [11], is based on the use of recalling (anamnesis), thanks to which we are able to connect a retained in the memory previously seen image with other images that appear later on the screen.
Let's examine how we create in our brains an artistic image when connected through the meaning frames are not close to each other and are separated from each other in time. In order to make the viewer tie two frames, separated from each other by other frames, in a kind of logical or associative chain, firstly, the spectator must receive a psychological setting (not in vain A. Peleshian is constantly talking about the sound support of this type of editing) and, secondly, the distance between these associatively linked frames should not be too large, otherwise it will be hard for the viewer to link them together.
"Distance montage", you might say, is a special case of associative editing. Therefore, in order to trigger in a viewer's mind, while he's watching a movie, a desired association, connecting in his perception two frames located at some time distance from each other, these two visual images, firstly, must have something in common, and, secondly, immediately get ingrained into the memory of the viewer, thus, they must look quite unusual and expressive.
It's necessary to clarify this idea on the example of the episodes of the film masterpiece "The Cranes Are Flying." At the beginning of the film we see a frame with characters in love, shot from above through the span of the Moscow Crimean Bridge. This plan is imprinted in our memory because it was shot in an unusual, expressive foreshortening. After some time we see again on the screen the same spot, filmed with the same unusual angle. But now we see on the road anti-tank hedgehogs. Remembering previously seen frame and linking these two distanced images in our mind, we get an image of destroyed peaceful time that changed the life of the capital and the fate of our heroes, so as a result of the connection of these two similar in shape and, at the same time, different in meaning frames the abstract notions of "peace" and "war" transforms into a
sensitive screen image.
Also an unusual shooting is used in the widely distanced from each other frames in which Boris rushes upstairs in Veronica's house. For shooting it, following S. Urusevsky's project, a special unusual "lift" was designed and constructed in the pavilion: it went up and rotated simultaneously, allowing the operator to accurately keep the actor, running up the stairs, in the frame. When the same and similarly unusually shot staircase appears in the visions of the dying Boris, the audience, recalling the earlier seen peaceful images of this entrance, now perceive them as an image of a severally interrupted life, which could be wonderful and happy.
Thus, thanks to the short-term/operating memory, editing in the perception distanced from each other, but related through the common elements frames, the audience is involved into the creation of artistic and philosophical images - "war and peace", "betrayal and debt", "life and death, etc., so there is a semantic approach ("closure") of two distant from each other images. At the same time, an important point is not only a graphic similarity (as in the examples above), but rather semantic similarity. For example, in the A. Peleshian's montage film "The Earth of the People" (1966) in one of the episodes we see appearing several times a memorable frame with sitting in a mournful pose woman in black, interrupted by the bustle of exiting to the platform passengers. After some time on the screen there is a funeral scene, and the audience, recalling that woman, connects in its perception these two frames.
One of the easiest variants of the "distance montage" - the figurative refrain, a psychological basis of which is still the same operating memory that allows us to quickly identify the familiar image when we see it again. For example, in the movie "Powakkatsi" (dir. G. Reggio, 1988) the audience sees three times on the screen slow panorama of children faces looking directly into the lens, as if looking in the eyes of the viewer (the effect of the "fourth wall"). In the context of the film, this refrain is read as an alarming question: what will we leave in the world to future generations, what should they expect from the future?
Thanks to the operating memory, in the similar way the viewer perceives the technique of a looped composition ("rondo") - when the film or episode ends with the same image, with which they began.
Another important aspect for the analysis of aesthetic perception of the on-screen works - artistic experience of the recipient. As it's fairly noted by the psychologist N. Zhinkin, perceiving apparatus for decoding on-screen images constantly continues restructuring under the influence of the experience of artistic perception during the whole human life. [8] For example, an artistic technique of parallel editing, once opened by D.-W. Griffith, was suspiciously assessed by the distributors, but today has an active development. Just recall the "Nashville" (1975) and "Short Cuts" (1993) (dir. Robert Altman) and "Magnolia" (1999) (dir. P. Anderson) to make sure that the perception of these paintings requires the viewer to make a certain intellectual effort that enhances the effect of participation, the active viewer's complicity in what's happening on the screen.
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The same thing happens in modern films with multiple variants of a plot ( "The Double Life of Veronique" (dir. K. Kieslowski, 1991), "Run Lola Run!" (dir. T. Tykwer, 1998), "The Butterfly Effect" ( dir. E. Bress and J.M. Gruber, 2004), "Mr. Nobody" (dir. J. van Dormael, 2009), etc.) the viewer must not only constantly remember what he has seen in a movie in the previous episodes, but also notice what has changed in each repeating episode. For example, in "Run Lola Run!" we see a change not only in the ending of each of the three episodes, but also a change of some details within the repeating scenes. Even more difficult for the viewer is to perceive two parallel developing stories with the same heroine, whose life would have been different if she had enough time to jump into the departing subway train ("Sliding Doors!", dir. P. Howitt, 1998).
In addition, it's necessary to note that the authors of contemporary post-modern works create an art space relying basically on a long-term memory of the viewer. It's a kind of intertext, quote or paraphrase what we have known for a long time from other cinema, literature and other sources. But we should pay attention to the fact that there is a special role played by a thesaurus of a specific viewer. For example, in the film "In Memory of Theresia" a well-known film critic Yampol-sky [14] continuously uses examples of explicit or implicit quotation from various literary sources in the cinema. However, we can state that 99% of viewers and readers have no idea about the fact that famous film "About Nice" ( "A propos de Nice ...", dir. J. Vigo) is somehow connected with the previously written essay by Guy de Maupassant "A propos de rien ... "[15]. In other words, the viewer must store in its memory the literary or cinematic text that the director of the film took as a basis of the visual image. Otherwise, the viewer is like the one who perceive a parody of some work, not having a clue about the original.
A factor of memory plays a special role in the perception of movies, where there is a combination of several kinds of artistic space: the space in which the hero acts in real life, the imaginary space and the dreaming space (oneiric). For example, in the films, such as "Last Year at Marienbad" (dir. A. Resnais, 1961), "La belle captive" (dir. A. Robbe-Grillet, 1982) temporal sequence is constantly disrupted, and often even a logical connection. In the D. Lynch's movies you can see a completely free manipulation of screen time and space, what is more typical for a structure of a short-term memory of sleep: in his films chronology of actions is often broken; time can be slowed down or accelerated; the same time period may be repeated, but in a different interpretation, so that as a result sometimes it is difficult to distinguish on the screen conditionally real space, imaginative space and oneiric space; these art spaces intersect or co-exist in parallel. This kind of film storytelling as well as the perception of movies with variable structure of a plot that requires a certain viewer's tension, creates an aesthetic pleasure of an brand new type.
Conclusion and offers
The full perception of any space-time art is not
possible without such factor as the memory of the recipient. However, in the on-screen art, a specific feature of which is an editing as well as the possibility of binary semantic image encoding depending on the context, short-term and long-term memory make it possible not only to perceive the content of the film, but also enhance the viewer's complicity in the process of the creation of artistic images. Knowledge of the mechanism of the perception of the screen works is very important for creative staff in film and TV industries as well as for the screen art researchers.
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