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The Psychological Tenor of Motion Picture Audiences
... inside the Cinematic Suspension of Disbelief
The only thing worse than being a producer of money losing films ... is to be the guy who told his friends to go see it and has to face their disappointment as well.
Whenever your audience enters the motion picture theater, they enter a para-logical realm of voyeuristic pseudo-reality. The cinema is an environment designed for escaping the common reality, a place for stepping beyond their totally mundane existence and exploring the vast verasimilitude of the screen. It delivers a new adventure, a new beginning, a new realm, and a new opportunity for a reality not found anywhere else in existence … and the intimately interactive psychology they employ inside of it is as special as the medium itself.
To participate in this journey, the audience must withhold their skepticism and thus “SUSPEND disbelief” or the journey is futile. (Without suspending disbelief, they might as well just stay home and watch TV commercials in which they must opposingly “support belief”.)
This darkened, secluded space in which they enter is seriously designed for four mental-emotional constructs. (1st) Mental Conception, (2nd) Mental Perception, (3rd) Emotional Judgment and (4th) Emotional Behavior. Millions of dollars in audio delivery and visual acuity have been spent to make it compatible with all four cerebral perceptions.
In this warm spacious hall they find a soft, safe seat. It is a quiet, magnificent cavern designed for reverence and respect. It is a dimming, silencing chamber constructed to exclude interference and protect its members from outside interruptions and distractions. It is a silent, comfortable, and space-traversing cathedral whose sole purpose is to intimately transport the hopeful travelers into another life and into an intriguing situation.
This is a silent and secure magic carpet that quietly prepares the audience to disregard and deny their own previous existences and be swallowed by another. It solemnly and seriously prepares their hearts and minds to focus intensely on worlds and relationships they haven’t known – yet it encourages them with a silent and sacred confidence that they'll be in tune with the players and secure in whatever they experience. That they can trust in the producers to get them home safe and sound.
So the audience is lifted out of emptiness and into a new reality as the auditorium cherished for keeping them safe, slowly darkens and disappears. They are lifted up towards their window on the universe as it fills with light and sound. Whether together or watching alone doesn’t matter. They are isolated from one another by their silence and yet unified by purpose within this new adventure -- this intricate journey into a life gone parallel yet none the less important. They are hypnotized and mesmerized by sight and sound. No matter how deadly, no matter how strenuous, no matter how dangerous -- they are assured by the suspension of disbelief in the stillness that THEY will still survive.
The audience can suspend their fears and suspend their doubts and suspend their suspicions now.
They are safe -- they can open their hearts – they can open their minds.
This new reality is in your hands.
You are trusted to keep them suspended and free from the dull, everyday reality they left waiting outside. You must not interrupt their ingenuous susceptibility. You must not disturb their trance. You must avoid ANYTHING that interferes with their suspension of disbelief -- anything that drags them back to actuality. You must avoid any component that disrespects their trust and you must eliminate any scene that makes fun of their willingness to believe.
Do not disappoint them or they’ll blame YOU for that betrayal of their vulnerable openness and quickly they’ll warn others not to suffer your same ignorant disregard.
In the middle of such disappointments, they’ll reserve the benefit of the doubt ONLY for themselves. They use it to protect themselves from the pain so they can try again, hoping that the next time, you learned to do it better and won't betray them again -- or that someone else besides you will be there to satisfy them.
Your audiences are placing their own personal reputations on the line whenever they share their opinions (of what you’ve produced) with their associates. They will reject doing so -- if and when you fail to support their psychological expectations. They will deride you and defile you and exile you when you have failed to justify the beliefs they suspended for your best interest. YOU asked them to attend. You hyped and begged them into coming. You have the responsibility of preventing their disappointment.
And since you make them pay up front, even before they are allowed to truly examine the product for themselves -- don’t expect them to be kind and forgive you, should you betray them and keep their money. They will do all they can to prevent others from getting ripped off and mistrusting you too.
THE POWER OF AUDIENCE RESPONSE PSYCHOLOGY
and your audience's "SUSPENDED DISBELIEF"
The audience is the final determiner of the viability or profitability in any entertainment product. Over the hundred-year history of cinema, the reaction of the audience has either pronounced the glory or forced the failure of companies from giant distributors to independent studios. Until recently, it was impossible to evaluate the intrinsic neurological response hiding deep within the psyches of the mass audience. Until recently, there was no scientific or medical equipment that could measure activity in the brain or record the thought or emotional patterns of an audience. This inability to explicitly measure the process of thoughts and feelings inside a live theatrical audiences prevented producers from understanding them with any more than reactionary hindsight -- and that is never enough.
Old reactive methodologies do not prevent component errors before principal photography. Correcting unforeseen errors in filmmaking was just as ‘hit or miss’ as it ever had been. Motion picture test screenings merely gave producers a warning they used to either switch endings or shelve the project completely. A new methodology that could accurately formulate the entire spectrum of cinematic componentry into success BEFORE production commenced, was previously impossible. A technology that abolished the audience reactive errors BEFORE money was spent, didn't exist. Now all that has changed. Recent advances in scientific measuring devices have exposed the innate psychological effects of an ‘audience in response’ and the priorities they establish. Of all the aspects measured in the response to cinematography, the most outstanding is the audience’s power to “suspend disbelief”.
First, it must be clarified that mass audiences do not suspend ‘belief’ (as some have supposed) but actually suspend their own ‘DISBELIEFS’ instead. There is a very important semantic distinction between the two thought patterns as follows:
Audiences must sustain their belief in reality instead of suspending it -- or -- they’ll find no relationship with your material to the existence they personally believe in. If audiences were to suspend what they believe (to be the believable), it excludes them from allowing their own beliefs to connect to the story or to the players within it. Using the “forget what you already believe because anything is possible” approach will leave them void of personal beliefs with which to relate to your film … or to relate to others while sharing your film with them.
Suspending ‘belief’ is a contradiction to intrinsic human truths held dear inside their lives -- and their human lives are what they are being told is being addressed by the movie. Audiences cannot become involved mentally or emotionally with a story if they are told they must forget or suspend their knowledge of what they already believe. (Suspension of belief is only acceptable when a character in the story is obviously irrelevant to reality and is an irrational device meant to deliver an obscure message, such as a talking animal or an on screen cartoon animation.)
SUSPENDING “DISBELIEF” -- HOW
AUDIENCES TRULY APPROACH YOUR STORYLINE
Audiences actually suspend their ‘disbelief of what might not be true’, so that they can be shown something that may be true. This ‘nothing is impossible’ conception allows audiences to experience personal relationships in dramatic or unique storylines; whereas the ‘anything is possible’ or suspended ‘belief’ approach minimizes that relationship and voids audience connectivity.
Allowing the possibility of improbabilities to exist -- and having faith in the storyteller to associate the belief in their own lives with the life on the screen -- is the true key to magnificent filmmaking.
For an example:
When asteroids threaten the earth’s existence in a recent film or two, we suspend our doubt and disbelief of this happening in that the odds are incredibly miniscule this could happen contemporarily -- and sustain belief that the improbability might happen tomorrow -- or we will fail to attach ourselves personally to thoughts and emotions experienced on the screen.
And as another example of the contrary;
When a plot point becomes ingrained in audiences through use in a large number of stories, (e.g. a loved one stows away on the vehicle sent to intercept the danger) this activates a theatrically pre-conditioned belief that would be wrong for audiences to suspend belief of when watching again. "Suspending belief" cannot accommodate the pre-existence of CONDITIONED story points. Therefore, only a fortuitous suspension of doubt (or disbelief) will allow for it to be happening again -- thus compensating for the overly used affect and still allow the storyline undisturbed credibility.
IF audiences refused to suspend their common defenses or their ability to doubt, any story that’s bigger or more unbelievable than those they have actually experienced themselves (and every aspect of film outside their meager parameters) would have to be born monotonous and follow the lowest common denominator of the average human experience or intelligence in order to be acceptable. And for imaginative, creative storylines ... that would mean disaster to the furthest possibility.
Suspension of doubt and disbelief is precisely HOW each mass member in the audience psychologically participates with the rest of the audience in the fascinating art of storytelling. They do it intimately, yet together, in a form of mob psychology you can’t find anywhere else -- not at home watching television -- nor in live theatre. This tender loving audience sneaks into the dark together to suspend their doubts and put their willing trust into whatever the storyteller delivers to them. They trust in that he will keep them safe from monotony and mediocrity -- and take them all somewhere they’ve never ever been before. They trust with all their hearts and minds that the storyteller will lead them correctly.
This is an intimate trust and a tender faith for the love of storytelling which audiences keep stored, quietly and sacredly within their deepest selves. They trust and believe and then believe and trust in order to accommodate your imaginary consequences -- consequences which add moreness to their lives and yet protect them from true disaster. This is a sacred trust and tender belief, given lovingly and willingly to the storyteller in whom which the audience places their hearts and unrestricted belief. Screw up that trust … and you’re this week’s bad flavor.
It is also important to note that only storylines (including character roles and plot points) will receive that precious suspension of disbelief -- NOT the actual actors performing them. Actors must at all times present themselves believably in order to accommodate the audience’s trust.
The acting of players must be truly believable at all times, as they do not receive an audience’s suspension of disbelief. Players are strictly accountable to the audience as the human ambassadors presenting the story’s imaginary characters and they must be as real and as honest and as believable as they can be while they present the fantasy or the fantasy is empty. (Data on player believability and how we precisely identify it before filming is available privately.)
IN FILMMAKING, AUDIENCES ARE "HOPING FOR THE BEST"… the suspension of disbelief.
In television viewing they use an opposite psychology.
TV Audiences use the psychology of "believing in the worst"… the enforcement of true-belief
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