CFI - Cinematic Forecasting and Investment Assurance LLC ™
Investor Opportunities in Motion Picture Profits through Feature Film Box-Office Forecasts / Pre-Production Script Development / Cinematic Archetype Casting / Component Formulation Design / U.S. and Global Market Consulting & Mass Audience Forecasting
The 4 Styles of Audience Approach to Media There are four different types of modern storytelling - and there are four different ways that an audience can pay attention to each type.
Those four categories of audience storytelling are specifically related to the inherent parameters involved in each style of attendance.
The FOUR types of modern storytelling are;
1. Staged Plays 2. Readings / Radio / Concerts 3. Television Programming 4. Motion Picture Theaters Each of these storytelling paradigms require a specific style of audience attentiveness.
Each style of attentiveness is a construction of four opposential parameters which are controlled by the environment in which the storytelling attentiveness exists.
The four different environments predicate how the audience prepares itself psychologically to pay attentiveness to each paradigm’s storyline.
1. Staged Plays (we are in a past of things we have HEARD before, waiting for the moment to arrive)
The audience, a. Knowing the end of the story, (journey precedence over goal) RB b. ENFORCING DIS-BELIEF (pos+ neg = psychological NEUTRALITY in suspicious direction) c. As they PRETEND that they are the Players and that the Characters are them. The environment is WIDE-FOCUSED & DISTRACTIVE as the audience listens, imagining the d. PAST storyline activities of the characters TELLING US what THEY COULD HAVE DONE. e. Singular story presented
2. Readings / Radio / Concerts (we are in a moment waiting for the future of things we haven’t HEARD before to arrive)
The audience, a. NOT knowing the end of the story, (goal precedence over journey) LB b. SUSPENDING TRUE-BELIEF (neg - pos = psychological SUSPECTABILITY) c. They BELIEVE that characters are themselves and that the audience is themselves. The environment is CLOSE-FOCUSED & CONTROLLED as the audience listens, imagining the d. FUTURE storyline activities of the characters TELLING US what THEY WILL DO. e. Multiplicity of stories presented
3. Commercial Television (we are in a future waiting for a moment to arrive)
The audience, a. knowing the end of the story, (journey precedence over goal) RB b. ENFORCING TRUE-BELIEF (pos + pos = psychological CREDIBILITY) c. They PRETEND that characters are themselves and that the audience is themselves. The environment is WIDE-FOCUSED & DISTRACTIVE as they watch, imagining the d. FUTURE storyline activities of the characters TELLING US what WE MIGHT DO. e. Multiplicity of stories presented
4. Motion Picture Theaters (we are in the moment of things we haven’t SEEN before, waiting for a future to appear)
The audience, a. NOT knowing the end of the story, (goal precedence over journey) LB b. SUSPENDING ‘DIS-BELIEF’ (neg - neg = psychological NEUTRALITY in credible direction) c. They BELIEVE that they are the Players and that the Characters are them. The environment is CLOSE-FOCUSED & CONTROLLED as they watch, imagining the d. PAST storyline activities of the characters TELLING US what WE SHOULD DO. e. Singular story presented
Within these four styles of media awareness are several psychological constructs that define the nature of approach by each audience.
The way a producer approaches its audience... is specifically predicated by the way its audience approaches the product.
(Many audience constructions add to these paradigms. A few of those are included and described below.)
THE CLOSE vs. THE WIDE FOCUS ENVIRONMENT
In Stage and Television, the visual or audio center of the medium is ambiguous. The wide range of activities requires a WIDE-FOCUS. They cannot draw the audience inward and must therefore project themselves outward. The size of the perceptual frame inside which they must conduct their activity is very small compared to the audience’s habitat.
To maintain attention, they must broadcast themselves outward toward the audience. This creates many distractions that the audience must approach with skepticism or speculation. This skepticism or speculation interferes with the audience’s ability to suspend “disbelief” and the audience must approach the medium with a different psychology than it would approaching the Readings or Motion Pictures. This audience must arrive prepared to ENFORCE A NEW (true or dis) BELIEF SYSTEM, rather than suspend one they all ready have.
Motion Pictures and Readings have huge perceptual frames that consume the entire environment surrounding the audience. The environment is specifically designed to draw the audience forward and trap them into a CLOSE-FOCUS on the storytelling. This gives the audience a protection from outside distraction and allows them the psychological vulnerability required to SUSPEND (dis or true) BELIEF and willingly follow along.
THE POWER OF THE CLOSE-UP AND THE PERCEPTUAL FRAME
In distractive, uncontained environments like Stage and Television, the medium must fight for attention from the audience who too easily can turn away or neglect the center of the focus. To fight for this attention, these mediums must present as large a vista as possible to attract the attention of the audience. Any attempt to focus on just the few objects available for a close-up in an already shrinking perceptual frame is way too risky.
Film and Readings, on the other hand, are contained environments that do not require the medium to fight for audience’s attention. These contained environments can afford many close-ups as they do not risk losing the concentration of their audiences to outside distractions. Their perceptual frame is huge – therefore, they can easily afford to focus on only limited objects within it.
LISTENING vs. WATCHING
On Stage and in Readings, the visual or graphic capacity is so miniscule that listening to the production is by far the strongest priority for the audience. Their paradigms require the provider of these storytellings to increase the visual attraction of their contents (in order to compete with the strength of the listening priority) and avoid disappointing the crowd. The sound is taken for granted and the visuals make or break the experience. In radio, stage or readings you still have to TELL the audience WHAT is happening, as it is very difficult to actually SHOW the audience HOW it is happening. But you will still want to try to TELL them as visually special, or spectacularly, as possible.
Motion Pictures and Television, on the other hand, have such strong visual capacities with which to provide for the audience’s graphic priorities, they must increase the value of their audio activities or they will lose the favor of the audience as well. The visuals are taken for granted and the sound will make or break the experience. But in filmmaking, you must avoid TELLING the audience WHAT is happening and you must, as often as possible, SHOW the audience HOW it is happening. But still you just have to make sure you SHOW it with great sounds in conversations, effects, backgrounds and music as well.
READING vs. WATCHING
If you notice, there is no channel response from the audience for 'reading' a story (only for 'readings' - as in - having someone else read you a story).
Creative writing classes usually fail to teach the difference between script writing and book writing, (or storytelling and story reading) and the difference between the audience's approach to each. Sometimes it's easy to think that "creative or imaginative writing" will translate to film and be successful there as well. It doesn't (as far as the mass audience is concerned).
Story writing 'for reading', is creative in the sense that it can take ANY form it wants because the purchaser has foregone being an audience member who watches or listens, to become an independent director of an author's writing. As an independent director, they can 'read into it' or 'read along with' or 're-read over ' or ‘read ahead' or 'read back' or 'read slowly' or 'read quickly' or 'read whatever way they desire to' ... and that makes the timing and the spacing of the reading experience completely OPPOSITE the experience of a 'captive audience watching or listening to the time and space scheduled performance of others'.
Because short story or book 'readers' can control the presentation (as they present the words to themselves), they can make themselves happy by reading it whichever way they feel "most comfortable" in doing so. (So we don't look at the reading audience as an audience that has any expectations of our presentation, or that we are responsible for helping to be made comfortable.) Readers will create the performance for themselves in whatever way they determine. You can offer them any form in writing, because THEY are determining HOW they accept it and HOW they read it into it.
In the four 'storytelling' arts (when the audience is subject to our presentation), we have to apply the art differently than we would if we were writing short stories or novels. That is why it is very difficult to make a well-read book translate well onto a film. The well-read book is a good 'read', but not a very good 'watch'.
Books just aren't written for the captive audience in a way that the captive audience watches movies. People approach 'reading for themselves' in a multitude of ways based on their own intelligence and imagination. (In fact, if you write a book based on the component organizations needed in film making, most adult readers will reject your writing as being too condescending or elemental. They will say you aren't unique or creative enough.) In other words, you didn't give them anything to decide for themselves. It was all TOO organized and homogenized, leaving them NO room for outside possibilities or their own imaginary speculation. They didn't get to use their own imaginations. (Your descriptions and events were too calculated and they didn’t get to form their own moving pictures in their heads.)
Book readers LOVE speculation because they can control it with their own imagination for themselves and by themselves without it having to make sense to anyone else. They get to be their own directors. (Even if you leave out huge chunks of data they will fill in the blanks for you, or they will wait for the chunks to appear at some other time or in some other work.) They take responsibility for their purchase because THEY get to determine how they use it and how they spend their time with it.
In the cinema that is just not true...
We determine how their time is spent and they get angry if we don't give them all the clues, or if we don't recognize the mass audience response to presentation rules. They expect us to fill in the blanks for them and to exact the cause and effect relationships fully if we are going to take the responsibility to read them a story that they are trusting in us to tell them completely. Otherwise, they would just read the story for themselves any old way they want to - and forget going to the theater to watch us do it.
So the 'creative, free-willed writing' learned in school for literature ... must now restructure itself and become the 'controlled, component writing' required to achieve mass audience appeal at the cinema. Which is to say that instead of ‘getting to be creative structurally', you have to 'structure your creativity to get to be'.
Sure, it doesn't seem very IMAGINATIVE does it. But don't think the mass movie audience is willing to read - or fill in - between the lines. They are terrible at metaphors. They hate 'creatively insinuated' or twisted, or divergent plot lines. (They like a twist inside the plot line, but not a plot line that gets twisted - if you know what I mean.)
And that's why the small, unprofitable audience that goes to art house theaters - is NOT the mass audience. (Ever notice how art house audiences are also avid book readers.) They like to be their own directors and imagine their own creative possibilities for the spaces you have given them room to speculate or imagine within. They want you to be 'creative' and leave them things to use with THEIR visual interpretation or imaginations with.
The mass audience doesn't like you leaving things to their visual interpretation or imagination. They want YOU to be ingenious enough to FULFILL (complete and glorify) their visual imaginations FOR them.
They want to see YOUR imagination fulfilled on the screen in a comprehensible and cohesive manner. That's why we use film and not paper. Film can SHOW us YOUR comprehensive and logical imagination (for us to just watch) so we don't have to use our own imagination, or visualize it, or interpret it ourselves inside our own minds. That's why we pay you ... and that's why we are sitting patiently in YOUR big dark room waiting for YOU to delineate your vision fully in a cohesive form on the screen, without any questions left unanswered, or without any gaps left in it for us to imagine about. That's storytelling. The opposite of story reading.
"The mass audience for one good film is larger and more profitable than the reading audience for one good book. There are far more people waiting a book to come out as a film ... than there are for a film to come out as a book."
Why? Because the mass audience is either; A. lazy, gullible, and entitled - or - B. exhausted, voyeuristic, and different.
But they are at the very least "people paying you to do it for them". And that's the deal.
The story must get more concrete as it progresses, not more detached or diverse. Don't try to write "in a creative manner" for the mass audience - but try to write "in a mass audience manner" creatively. Make sure you logically connect each cause and effect to the next cause and effect in a more concise, intense, or energized way, and in a more cohesive manner. (They will pay you well if you do.)
After all ... it is the mass audience appetite we are here to satisfy first, so they will satisfy us with their word of mouth and dollars second, right? (If we were just here to satisfy ourselves ... we would be done already.)
Make it clever AND make it fulfill the masses hunger. There are many other psychological paradigms attached to the four mass mediums -- including past moments vs. future moments, goals vs. journeys, RB vs. LB, positive re-enforcement approaches vs. negative ones, physiological-pretending vs. psychologically-believing, subjectively-assumed outcomes vs. objectively-analyzed suspense, the audience’s approach to players in relationship to themselves, the timing, and the type of characterizations and moral behaviorisms as well.
The numerous opposential priorities in each storytelling venue are complex in texture and require more space than we have here to fully describe them here. For further explanation of these quadrilateral continuums and the psychologies of audience response awareness and attentiveness, contact CFI™ at 310.777.8330
The Four Jungian AUDIENCE RESPONSE PSYCHOLOGIES of watching or listening to the four mass-media channels available in society
The KEYS to understanding the audience’s psychological approach to the four basic media channels is that they are patterns of opposites and that;
1.That we as an audience will always take our own private Time into comparison, when another Space is brought to us (i.e. radio/readings & television)
2. …but we will truly consider some other Space than our own whenever we take ourselves to an outside Time (i.e. motion picture & stage).
Four other considerations are also necessary to analyze and take into consideration are that;
The SPACE for the presentation is visually interactive and the characters look out on us (i.e. stage & television), - OR -it is NOT visually interactive and we only look in on the characters (i.e. motion pictures & radio/readings).
The TIME for the product is either haphazard (i.e. radio/readings & television), - OR -determinative (i.e. motion pictures & stage).
The SPACING of the product is either spaced in multiples (i.e. radio/readings & television), - OR -singularly (i.e. motion pictures & stage).
The TIMING of the presentation is brought to us (i.e. radio/readings & television), - OR -we take ourselves to it (i.e. motion pictures & stage)
…while we choose to eitherBELIEVE…or TRUST…or PRETEND…or SUSPECT the validity of the presentation.
Because of these four items above, the motion picture audience is “BELIEVING”– not trusting, pretending, or suspecting.
Betray that “belief” and your project will be a failure.
Everything that Exists, exists due to patterns of Opposites
Patterns of opposites create the existence of Every and ALL things.
Opposites come together into various patterns and create the objects and therefore the subjects we have to deal with . There is no way to escape these opposite patterns, nor the existences they create.
All THINGS have opposites ... Patterns of opposites create the four options for the existence of all things. To understand anything clearly, one needs only to understand the patterns of opposites that create the things that are desired to be understood.
The opposites that form the existences below are color coded so that their pattern relationships can be comparatively analyzed and evaluated numerically. The number of colors, and the patterns of those colors, will help the observer gain a visual relationship to the mathematical varieties contained within the existences that are caused by the specific patterns.
CINEMA
TELEVISION
STAGE
READING / RADIO
(VISUALLY)
PRE-RECORDED
(Verbally)
LIVE IN-PERSON
That Creates TRUSTWORTHY
That Creates TRUSTWORTHY
That Creates SUSPICION
That Creates SUSPICION
The above + PLUS + the BELOW
CINEMA
TELEVISION
STAGE
READING / RADIO
Closed Focus and CONTROLLED
Wide Focus and Distractive
Wide Focus and Distractive
Close Focus and CONTROLLED
Visual NON-INTERACTIVENESS
VISUAL Interactiveness
VERBAL Interactiveness
Verbal NON-INTERACTIVENESS
because the AudienceS
because the ACTORS
because the ACTORS
because the Audiences
are looking into the actor’s
SPACE so the audience can think about someplace else
are looking into the audience’s SPACE so the audience is thinking about their own place
are listening into the audience’s SPACE so the audience is thinking about their own place
are listening into the actor’s SPACE so the audience can think about someplace else
Visual NON-INTERACTIVENESS
VISUAL Interactiveness
Nerbal Interactiveness
VERBAL NON-INTERACTIVENESS
equals COMFORTABLE
equals STIMULATED
equals STIMULATED
equals COMFORTABLE
= EQUALS =
CINEMA
TELEVISION
STAGE
READING / RADIO
The VISUALLY
Comfortable DRAMATIC
The VISUALLY
Stimulated Dramatic
The VOCALLY
Stimulated-Dramatic
The VOCALLY
Comfortable DRAMATIC
= True-dramatic
= Melodramatic
= Melodramatic
= True-dramatic
(Prerecorded)
VISUALLY
(Live in-person)
VOCALLY
That Creates TRUSTWORTHY
That Creates TRUSTWORTHY
That Creates SUSPICION
That Creates SUSPICION
CINEMA requires
TELEVISION requires
STAGE requires
READING / RADIO requires
(NEG x NEG = pos)
(POS x POS = pos)
(POS x NEG = neg)
(NEG x POS = neg)
The SUSPENSION OF DIS-BELIEF
The ENFORCEMENT OF TRUE-BELIEF
The ENFORCEMENT OF
DIS-BELIEF
The SUSPENSION OF TRUE-BELIEF
CHURCH
WORK
PLAY
SCHOOL
Tells us what humans should do
Tells us what humans could do
Tells us what humans would do
Tells us what humans may DO
Could it also NOT be + an improbability or a falsehood?
Could it also be + a
probability or a truth?
Could it also be + an improbability or a falsehood?
Could it also NOT be + a probability or a truth?
THE professional critics’ advice is
dismissible…
THE professional critics’ advice is
dismissible…
A Professional critic’s advice is
NOT dismissible.
A Professional critic’s advice is
NOT dismissible.
CINEMA is…
TELEVISION is…
STAGE is…
READING / RADIO is…
In the MOMENT, waiting for a future (things we haven’t seen before)
In the MOMENT waiting for the past (things we haveseen before)
In the MOMENT waiting for the past (things we haveheard before)
In the MOMENT, waiting for a future (things we haven’t heard before)
This recorded FILM fantasy is NOT an improbability (or falsehood),
This recorded TELEVISION realityis a truth (or probability),
This live STAGE fantasy
is a falsehood (or improbability),
This live SPOKEN reality is
NOT a probability (or truth),
the Audience will BELIEVE
the Audience will TRUST
the Audience will PRETEND
the Audience will SUSPECT
The audience will
Take SERIOUSLY
The audience will
Receive COMPLACENTLY
The audience will
Take SERENDIPITOUSLY
The Audience will
Receive CAREFULLY
(pre-recorded)
(live in-person)
CINEMA
TELEVISION
STAGE
READING / RADIO
(NEG + NEG = neg)
(POS + POS = pos)
(POS + NEG = 0)
(NEG + POS = 0)
word-of mouth suspicion
word-of mouth trust
word-of mouth neutrality
word-of mouth neutrality
Through the actor’s
Eyes and Faces
Through the actor’s
Through Voices and Words
Through the actor’s
Through Props and Bodies
Through the actor’s
Through Music and Sound Effects
JOY OR PAIN
LOVE OR ANGER
PASSION OR DEPRESSION
ACCEPTANCE OR DENIAL
SMELLING
SEEING
TOUCHING
HEARING
REQUIRES
SUSPENSION
REQUIRES
ENFORCEMENT
REQUIRES
ENFORCEMENT
REQUIRES
SUSPENSION
CINEMA
TELEVISION
STAGE
READING / RADIO
The defensive mechanism of DIS-BELIEF
(normally required in a stranger filled groupenvironment)
The offensive mechanism of True-Belief
(normal in a personal
environment with vision)
The offensive mechanism of DIS-BELIEF (normal in any stranger filled group environment)
The defensive mechanism of
True-Belief
(normally allowable in a personal environment with vision)
FULL SIZE STAGE
half size stage
FULL SIZE STAGE
half size stage
GOOD SIGHT
not so good sight
GOOD SIGHT
not so good sight
GOOD SOUND
maybe GOOD sound
GOOD SOUND
maybe GOOD sound
NO INTERRUPTIONS
miscellaneous interruptions
NO INTERRUPTIONS
miscellaneous interruptions
LARGE GROUPS
small groups
LARGE GROUPS
small groups
LIGHTS OFF AUDIENCE
lights on audience
LIGHTS OFF AUDIENCE
lights on audience
GOING TO A LARGE HALL
staying in a small room
GOING TO A LARGE HALL
staying in a small room
We the audience are the characters as we are together in this foreign space
WE ARE THEM and THEY ARE US
The actors
are the actual characters because we are in our own space
THEY ARE THEM and WE ARE US
We the audience are the characters as we are together in this foreign space
WE ARE THEM and THEY ARE US
The actors
are the actual characters because we are in our own space