The Paradox of Suspense XI – Features of the Attention as Engine of Suspense

Essential to our ability to feel suspense on repeated viewings then is our attention. The attention is best understood as the system by which we select (focus on) which information or stimulus we should process.[1] That is, the attention is the system that allocates where and to what end our processing resources should be allocated. Visual attention is the process by which we can focus on specific visual stimulation such individual words on a page (without which of course reading would be difficult if not impossible). Auditory attention is the process by which we can choose to focus on our friends’ voice or the whistling of the wind.[2] So, the attention allocates how much of our (limited) processor power gets allocated to tasks such as listening, seeing, feeling, recalling and encoding data. Because our attention (our processor power) is limited we prioritise tasks to focus on.[3] This limitation explains why we fail to carry on a meaningful conversation with a friend while simultaneously attempting to work out who is sleeping with who in our favourite soap.

This ability and propensity to focus on certain information or stimuli over other information or processes also extends to our ability to process enfolding stimuli over recalling stored experience. Encountering an ambulance on the road is a vivid instance of our ability and propensity to favour processing enfolding stimuli over stored experience. That is, when we are driving along a road and hear a blazing ambulance siren we do not focus (draw our attention) on explicitly remembering our last encounter with a similar or identical situation[4]. Rather, we focus (draw our attention) on where the ambulance is, where the noise is coming from, which direction the ambulance wants to go and what, if any, actions we should take to avoid holding the ambulance up. That is, in response to the ambulance’s siren we prioritise processing the immediate stimuli[5] (flashing lights, the noise) over recalling similar or identical past encounters stored in the long-term memory. So, when we encounter vivid and emotionally arousing stimuli we can, and often do, focus on processing unfolding events as a priority over integrating it with our memory[6]. In regard to narrative fiction, they offer many vivid and emotionally arousing scenes, situations and scenarios which we explicitly attempt to focus on understanding and processing with the consequence being that we may not recall past encounters with those scenes and ones similar to them[7]. Therefore, we may experience uncertainty in response to narratives we have certain knowledge of because we can prioritise processing immediate and unfolding stimuli over recalling similar scenes or situations stored in our long-term memory.

 

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[1] John R Anderson, Cognitive Psychology and its Implications, 6^th Edition, (London: Worth Publishers Ltd, 2004), p. 519.

[2] Elizabeth A Styles, Attention, Perception and Memory, (Hove: Psychology Press, 2005), p. 185

[3] Ibid, pp. 212-214.

[4] That is, we do not integrate it into memory by squaring our current experience with those we have encountered in the past. This is not to say that past experiences cannot shape our intuitions and instincts, they are however, implicit processes not controlled or under the remit of the explicit processes of the attention.

[5] An article that illustrates our propensity to focus on processing vivid and emotionally arousing stimuli see L M  Hulse & A Memon ‘Fatal impact? The effects of emotional arousal and weapon presence on police officers’ memories for a simulated crime’, Legal and Criminological Psychology, 11, (2006), pp. 313–325.

[6] For the many ways this propensity affects the encoding state of memory see A Burke, F Heuer & D Reisberg, ‘Remembering emotional events’, Memory & Cognition, 20, (1992) pp. 277–290.

[7] Without this ability many films and novels would be unbearable. If we did automatically recall similar or identical encounters with fiction every time we encountered a new action film we would spend half the film thinking about old films and the similarities between them all. Of course this is not to say that we cannot recall similarities between what we are seeing now and past experiences similar to them. However, if we were all obliged to do this and did so often then it seems unlikely that more than one Steven Seagal film would ever be made.

Future Worlds: The Use of Colour and Lighting in Total Recall

Along with many other article styles i will be running a short look at the production of setting in Sci-Fi. Here is the first of a short run that will include Alphaville (1965), Running Man (1987) , Fahrenheit 451 (1966), Total Recall (1990), Blade Runner (1982), Westworld (1973) and maybe some others (if you’re lucky?).

 

Total Recall (1990)

Total Recall contains two central lighting motifs which communicate a definitive sense of place. Setting is important in Total Recall. Mars serves a plot function both as the conductor of Quaid’s dreams of a different future and as the site of his repressed past. In the Earth scenes thelighting is primarily the classical naturalistic white lighting which produces soft clear features and a sense of cleanliness and neutrality. The clean lines are important in the first part of Total Recall in producing a sense of clinical perfection at odds with Quaid’s dreams of a dirtier, rougher life as a pioneer travelling on the troubled red-planet Mars.

 

The Earth phase’s lighting creates a sense of an expansive nature, a conquered clinical world. A world not physically suffocating like Mars but spiritually suffocating. Although some of the clean cut lines of Earth are thrown into relief by the scenes containing Quaid’s escape from the company agents to Mars it is not until Quaid arrives proper in Mars that we witness a world opposed or opposite to Earth.

 

The colour red floods nearly every scene situated on the planet Mars. This produces both a sense of setting but also a seedy dirty environment. Richter’s face is illuminated by the bright redness of Mars’s continuous timeless glow; his character is defined by that mechanical, artificial, electronic glow emitted by neon lights in the claustrophobic Mars’ Streets. The doors behind Richter are also tinted by the redness of Mars, the structure of Mars defines him and more importantly his actions and character. The setting of Mars defines both the characters and the structures that surround and define them.

Every aspect of the mise-en-scene is defined by the redness of Mars. Total recall uses the rather overt, extravagant lighting techniques to imbue the scenes with a sense of place. Another affect of the use of red is that it imbues all the action with a seedy, aggressive, passionate and lusty atmosphere which helps communicate the moral vacuum that Mars signifies. The choice of lighting and colour in Total Recall communicates the atmosphere of both Earth and Mars and is very affective at foregrounding this.

Communication Of Era In Cinema (2)

This is just a short continuation of my earlier post concerning the communication of era in cinema. The actual printing technique, which produces the sepia-style affect found in films such as O’Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), is called Bleach Bypass.

‘Bleach Bypass printing is a process that involves leaving the silver grains in the emulsion layer rather than bleaching them out. This has the effect of desaturating the colour because it is akin to adding a layer of black-and-white to a colour negative’ In both Saving Private Ryan and O’Brother, Where Art Thou?  ‘the desaturation of the colour [by process of bleach bypass]. combined with the… brown palette of the settings… recalls the sepia tones that are used in historical photographs and thus contributes to the films’ emphasis on memory’ and the communication of a by-gone era.1

1. Maria Pramaggiore and Tom Wallis, Film A Critical Introduction, London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd, (2008), p. 173.