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Scott Brown on How Movies Activate Your Neural G-Spot
Here’s a typical “date night” with me and Hollywood: I don’t know what I want to see. Neither does Hollywood. But it bangs on my eyeballs and eardrums like Stanley Kowalski anyway. Sometimes I come away from the multiplex reasonably satisfied; other times I’m bummed beyond measure. It’s like some endless, brutal visit to the optometrist: This explosion or that explosion? This superintelligent shark or that zombie anaconda? It’s all so clumsy, so imprecise. Which is why I’m thrilled to learn that Hollywood has found a way to improve its hit rate. Not with better filmmaking — God forbid, we don’t want artistry gumming up our popcorn flicks — but with science. Get ready for the optimized moviegoing experience, where every instant is calculated to tickle your neural G-spot — all thanks to functional magnetic resonance imaging, soon to be every director’s new best friend.
That’s the dream of MindSign Neuromarketing, a fledgling San Diego firm with an ambitious, slightly Orwellian charter: to usher in the age of “neurocinema,” the real-time monitoring of the brain’s reaction to movies, using ever-improving fMRI technology. The company uses the scanning technique to track blood flow to specific areas (especially the amygdalae, those darling little almonds of primal emotion) while a test subject watches a movie. Right now, the metrics are pretty crude, but in theory, studios could use fMRI to fine-tune a movie’s thrills, chills, and spills with clickwheel ease, keeping your brain perpetually at the redline. MindSign cofounder Philip Carlsen said in an NPR interview that he foresees a future where directors send their dailies (raw footage fresh from the set) to the MRI lab for optimization. “You can actually make your movie more activating,” he said, “based on subjects’ brains.”
MindSign has already helped advertisers dial in their commercials’ second-by-second noggin delight and has even assisted studios in refining movie trailers and TV spots: One of its “videographs,” mapped over a trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, clearly shows viewers’ brains lighting up whenever a monkey appears onscreen. (Of course, if there’s one thing we don’t need a computer to tell us, it’s that monkeys are funny.) Now the company wants to replace that ancient analog heuristic, the dreaded focus group. Carlsen claims that focus group members not only misrepresent the likes and dislikes of the broader population — they can’t even articulate their own preferences. Often, they’ll tell a human researcher one thing while the fMRI reveals they’re feeling the opposite.
Neurocinema helpfully speeds up a process Hollywood began years ago, namely the elimination of all subjectivity in favor of sheer push-button sensation. By quantifying which set pieces, character moments, and other modular film packets really lather up my gray matter, the adfotainment-industrial complex can quickly and efficiently deliver what I actually want. Movies won’t be “made,” they’ll be generated. Michael Bay, with access to my innermost circuitry, can really get in there and noogie the ol’ pleasure center. And here’s the best part: Once the biz knows what I want, it can give me more of the same. I’ll soon be reporting levels of consumer satisfaction previously known only to drug abusers. My moviegoing life will, literally and figuratively, be all about the next hit.
“But now movies will be more formulaic than ever!” purists whine. Au contraire, aesthete scum. “Formula” is for suckers. It implies narrative — peaks and valleys. What MindSign seems to be offering is a new model — not formulaic, but fractal. Forget ups and downs, suspense and release. What if every moment were a spike, every scene “trailer-able”? In fact, movies will become essentially a series of trailers, which, incidentally, are far better-loved than the oft-crummy features they encapsulate. Movie houses will become crack dens with cup holders, and I’ll lie there mainlining pure viewing pleasure for hours. Why not? I can’t decide what I want to watch anyway. Luckily, Hollywood is there to make those tough choices for me. And to show me the zombie shark I never even knew I was dying to see.
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