The Future of Entertainment-Nerocinema

Many of you know I have a love for medical science and technology, this tread is about a new type of viewing experience currently in development called Nerocinema and how it will affect our Star Wars viewing experience in the future.



Imagine this…you are sitting at home playing a game or watching a horror flick and the action seems to have taken a dive. The game or movie you’re watching is no longer as engaging as it was 5 minutes ago. Lucky you though because you are wearing a headband controlling the action on screen. This sweet headgear is monitoring your brain waves, looking for preprogramed patterns. The purpose of this is to create the most engaging and preconized experience possible. This is what nerocinema is all about, and it’s not science fiction.



Scientist recently performed an experiment that demonstrates your brains natural wave patterns as you watch a film. The test subjects were exposed to 4 different genres and directing styles ranging from fast cut and tight editing to no edit at all. They were: segments of an episode from Alfred Hitchcock's TV series, a segment from Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, an episode of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm (using lots of hand-held cameras and actors' improvisations), and the completely unedited film of people around Washington Square Park. The participants were evaluated in an MRI while watching in order to collect brain data.



They found that all the subjects showed a clear response from the tightly edited Hitchcock (65% ISC) to the looser Leone film (45%) to the still looser Larry David film (18%) and finally down to the entirely unedited film (<5%). The experimenters conclude that Hitchcock's ability to "orchestrate" responses in so many brain regions attests to "his notoriously famous ability to master and manipulate viewers' minds."

So what would this mean for Star Wars? This doesn’t exactly imply that scientist can come up with the perfect film in a lab but it does hint they can become consultants on set, helping the director create the most stimulating experience possible. Obviously stimulating doesn’t correlate to greatness but it helps in a way. The directors are still needed to add aesthetic and artistic vision.



In a perfect world this would be the ultimate cinematic experience but I think that it would be better for a video game (like KOTOR for instance) than it would film. Part of what we love about this Forum is our shared love for Star Wars, we constantly make up new topics to discuss. Imagine if we all had unique viewing experiences for Star Wars. Creating your own personalized story is great…until you want to talk to someone else about it. So as great a technological advantage as Nero-cinema is, I think I personally would prefer the standard experience.

What do yall think? As always I’d love to hear your opinion on this emerging technology.

 

this would be great for games like Fall Out or AC where your traveling from point A to Point B forever...i guess Black Flag addressed the issue a bit with the sailing around the world. that was cool. spearing sharks and whales off the side of the boat and what not. maybe just make a better fast travel system.

 

i loved every moment of it. one of the best games i ever played for sure. if you stick to the story and not any side quest its a pretty short game.

 

I'm not so crazy about the idea either to be honest. if they did get this up and running and turn it into a consumer product the results would be something like visual crack...it would constantly keep you engaged in the film or game... those long trecks through the world the developers make or dull points in movies would be used to get up and go to the bathroom or get some water...I'm not sure they can tell the difference between entertaining and stimulation...for instance one proposed use of this product is horror movies. imagine the jump scares they would put in to keep you tense.