Eye Motion: Experience, Emotion, & Emulation.
by Oliver Spicer
I. Experience
Screen size is one of the overused arguments in the attack of home viewing and celebration of a traditional cinema experience. It is the easiest explanation - physically making sense due to the large image from a projector towering over the glaring screen of a laptop, television, tablet, even phone.
But the true culprit for why many claim you have not seen a classical masterpiece or the most recent visually driven blockbuster unless you’ve sat in a crowd of a cinema is something different altogether. If rethought, screen size is less of a problem than assumed - as a device can easily become the relative size if brought closer (a large television across the room, a laptop on a desk, even a phone right by your nose). Of course sounds are more dramatic, colours are true to the filmmaker’s vision - but other aspects are also equal such as most digital projectors still using a 2K resolution that is close enough to the 1920x1080 of HD devices and streaming services.
Instead, what is actually significant is how the spectator looks at the film - how their eyes absorb the information of the frame. And for this it is screen distance that holds films lovers hostage to their cinemas.
Viewing distance replaces the blame placed on screen-size due to how distance effects looking. When a frame is shown to a viewer, their eyes naturally move across it - attracted to certain elements in the frame due to rules of composition and lighting that have been understood since early art and perfected in the renaissance. If the screen is too close (laptop, phone, television) then these elements are harder to focus on individually - with an ability to look at the whole screen at once actually being detrimental to experience. Cinemas offer an optimal distance to split the mise-en-scène aspects apart, with the moving eye acting as a kind of inner editing for the spectator that separates the meaning of an image only to recombine it to form a new complex interpretation analogous to the soviet principles of montage theory.
Fluttering of the eyes when watching a film is also more noticeable at greater viewing distances, resembling that of the REM (rapid eye movement) phase of sleep that is linked with dreaming - which cinema has drawn on in specific films along with the suspension of disbelief and symbolic imagery used in all film. IMAX cinemas ruin this connection by oversizing the screen and forcing spectators to move their entire head as if focusing on a tennis match. But this is still better than a short viewing distance that makes the viewer glare at the same spot for the length of a feature.
From this explanation, it is shown how significant the act of viewing is on experience. And as it is the job of filmmakers to tame every aspect of a film to incite emotion in the audience, it is equally true for eye movement.
II. Emotion
The development of film language can be simplified as the ability to induce meaning out of every aspect of a film - which can equally be applied to the movement of eyes. The emotions derived by eye movements can be explained through real life scenarios, psychology, and biological mechanisms just as the intimacy of close-up can be explained by how we interact in everyday relationships, or the associative power of montage explained by adaptations causing the brain to naturally create cause and effect chains.
Screen direction and its consistency in a scene can be seen as a simple use of use movement, which refers to which direction the main subject of a shot is moving. Preserving screen direction is useful for dialogue scenes - but even more significant for action sequences such as chases or battles that require the audience to know the position of characters in order to build tension. When eyes continuously scan one direction to the next, tension is wound up until the screen direction abruptly changes and an altercation occurs - emphasised by a shock through disorientation.
A similar effect is present in conversation, where the eye bats back and forth to who-ever is speaking. This forms an invisible wire that links the characters to show their relationship, with the speed of the switching being related to the intensity of their conflict. If the eye has to move far apart horizontally, they are emotionally distant from each other - and if there is vertical movement they are separated by status.
The rule can be altered for objects within a scene, with a prime example of a character staring at an object in their hand where the spectator again goes between the two. This also implies a relation, with the character linked through the eyeline to the object of their desire (think of Indiana Jones and the golden idol in the opening of The Raiders of The Lost Ark(Spielberg, 1981)) or that the object is somehow symbolic of the character themselves (still Harrison Ford, but now the ending of Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982) as he inspects the origami unicorn that is frequently obsessed over compared to other visually astonishing shots ).
This also highlights how a character’s own eyeline can be used to direct the gaze of the audience. However, the most impactful uses of eyelines is when they are broken. A character staring offscreen generates suspense, with the spectator's focus now trapped within the walls of the screen. A character looking away from a point of focus can be used to create a variety of effects through visual dramatic irony, horror if a monster - comedy if something funny - or deeply emotional if it is a situation the character is trying to avoid by averting their gaze. But we do not share the same power, forced to watch whatever they are ignoring or ignorant of.
Aspects that the spectator focuses on can also be seen as creating shapes within the frame. Lines between two subjects have previously been mentioned, but triangles created by three subjects can trap the movement of the eye in a continuous loop - showing how the three are intertwined (The ‘Mexican Standoff’ in A Few More Dollars(Sergio Leone, 1965)). A square pattern can be read as equally confining but with an added sense of stability and order. If the spectator’s eyes are guided to move in a circular path it feels trance-like (Used in multiple shots in Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013) to create a disturbing effect). Other complex shapes can be formed, with the harshness of angles and size providing multiple more aspects that can be altered for effect.
III. Emulation
A still frame allows the eye of the spectator to naturally wonder, technically free but guided to certain elements by leading lines and lighting. But if the filmmaker would prefer to make sure the audience looks at the scene in a certain way - an emulation of eye movement by the camera is required. Each movement of the camera can be seen as having an equivilent to looking in real life, with pans like scanning a room and zooms squinting to focus in on specific objects.
Although this is a plea for the spectator to be passive by not being trusted to look at the right element - it can also create interesting movement combinations, as the viewer still selects aspects in the frame to look at even when moving. If panning and one subject is meant to be the centrepoint of the scene, the viewers eyes will move in the opposite direction - creating a sense of frustration that only intrigues the observer about what they saw. Movements of the eye in the same or opposite direction - forming similar or different shapes over time - can then be used to create even more complex interpretation.
It can also be argued that all visual cinematic language is an emulation of looking. This interpretation is offered by Walter Murch’s book on editing titled ‘In the Blink of an Eye’ that is centred around the idea that a cut is alike to moving your head to look; the blink that occurs to refocus your eyes and attention being the momentary cut that bridges shots. Sequences then become the experience of a invisible person in the scene, who looks around at interesting elements to connect - leading to wider spectatorship theories that comment on how this imagined viewer and the actual audience interact.
Conclusion
Whether for emotion or experience, natural or emulated - movements of a spectators’ eyes can be seen as impactful on the interpretation of a film and should be considered alongside other aspects of form when analysing scenes and cinema as a whole.
by Oliver Spicer, January 2022
