Of empathy through simulation, sympathy as a passive observer, and living the lives of the others

Cognitive scientists generally agree that our engagement with a fictional character is a major source of our emotional experience while viewing a film. Yet, the nature of such engagement is under a controversy.

According to popular belief, we "identify" with the protagonist of the story. We are angry when injustice is done to the protagonist as if it was done to us. We are saddened when the main character loses his loved one as if we lost our own. Our heart pumps when our hero is chased by a ruthless killer as if our own life is at stake. This seem obvious. Until you really think about it.

Identification can mean many different things. In the psychoanalytic theories of cinema, the viewer's identification with the hero is considered to take the form of an illusion that one is the character in the movie. In more modern theories, identification is often described as mental simulation of another person. According to the simulation theory of philosophy of mind, we simulate other people's mind by going "off-line" from our normal mental lives and adopting the target person's beliefs (i.e. the knowledge and representation of the world), desires, and even at least some aspects of his personality. If the simulation is successful, we end up with the right emotional outcome of the target person in the given situation (correctly imagined, if not actually felt). Many scholars, Oatley, Feagin, Walton, and Currie to name a few, believe that appreciating works of fiction involves simulating characters' actions, goals, plans and emotions in this manner.

However, there are compelling arguments against this view. Noel Carroll (2008) points out that the viewer often has quite a different emotion from the character in the film. When the heroine is sound asleep as the killer approaches her with a dagger, we don't experience her peaceful oblivion but our own fear for her. When we watch Alfred Hitchcock's hero in Vertigo climb the stairs to the top of the bell tower, what we feel is not fear of height but a concern for the man who has such fear. In watching Saving Grace by Sisch, we may feel sadness and admiration for Grace who is separated from her loved ones to complete a mission for saving the humanity, but we don't simulate her love for Dylan. Do we? Dolf Zillman's (1991) example of children shouting to the TV screen, "Watch out," as well as the same internal urge of adult viewers, testify for the gap between the point view of the viewer and that of the character. Therefore, Ed Tan (1996) says we usually experience the events in the film as "passive observers," rather than in the character's shoe. In Carroll's term, sympathy and solidarity, not empathy, are the main source of the viewer emotion. We don't imagine being the characters, but we feel concerns for them as a separate individual, and we feel strong affiliations with them.

This sounds convincing to me. But does this mean identification/simulation does not happen at all while we watch a movie? Amy Coplan (2004) contends that it is possible for us to experience the belief, desire, and emotion of the character while having our own separate belief, desire, and emotion at the same time. In other words, we can have empathy through simulation and sympathy as a passive observer all at the same time, and the fact that we have third-person emotions while watching a movie (as Carroll points out) does not mean we can't have an empathetic engagement with the character. In fact, Gaut contends that sympathy and empathy reinforce each other. The more sadness you feel in empathizing with Grace, the more concern you may feel for her.

At this point, I wish I had some solid empirical evidence on this matter. Unfortunately, I find solid scientific studies on this subject scarce at best. My general feeling is that our emotional experience during film viewing largely consists of sympathy and solidarity (the emotions as passive observers). But aren't there sparks of moments when we actually feel what the character feels as if we were her? Or is this a mere illusion?

Anyway, what does all this mean to machinima makers?

If you believe in empathy through simulation, you may consider enhancing the viewers' empathetic engagement with your character by aiding their simulation process and make it easier for them. This may mean minimizing potential gaps between your viewers and the protagonist in terms of their beliefs, desires, and personalities (so that the viewer's own mental state would not compete too much with those of the character during the simulation process). This would mean creating characters that resemble the viewers as closely as possible, and advancing the story from your protagonist's point of view.

If you believe that third-party emotions dominate the film viewing experience, you may consider experimenting with a variety of things. You may intentionally create gaps between the viewer and the character, and play with it to rouse different sympathy reactions in the viewer, ranging from concern to suspense. A good use of antagonist may facilitate solidarity between the viewer and the protagonist. Characters radically different from the viewers in term of their beliefs, desires, and personalities would not be in the way of evoking sympathy in the audience, as long as they are likeable.

To me these sound like valid strategies for making your story more engaging and appealing, and something to think about as a student of the craft of fiction writing. But in the end, we want works of fiction to do more than simply rousing our sympathetic reactions to a third person or getting us empathetically engaged with somebody just like us. We want books and movies to give us an opportunity to live the lives of the others, letting us experience the world from different perspectives and, perhaps, even with completely different souls. Do they ever succeed, or is it all just an illusion?

Or perhaps giving the viewer an illusion of an empathetic engagement with somebody radically different from himself is what a story-teller should strive to achieve. Creating an illusion of empathy sounds like a good topic for a future blog.

Work cited:

Carroll, N. (2008). Affect and the moving image. In N. Carroll, The Philosophy of motion pictures (p. 146-191). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Coplan, A. (2004). Empathic engagement with narrative fictions. The journal of Aesthetic and Art Criticism (62) 2, 141-152.

Gaut, B. (1999). Identification and emotion in narrative film. In C. Plantinga & G. Simith (Eds.), Passionate Views: Film, cognition, and emotion (p. 200-216). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Tan, E. S. (1996). Emotion and the Structure of Narrative Film: Film as an Emotion Machine. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Zillmann, D (1991). Empathy: affect from bearing witness to the emotion of others. In J. Byrant & D. Zillman (Eds.), Responding to the screen: Reception and reaction processes (pp. 135-167). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

The Human Face

By Kate

Do you feel what I feel on seeing this picture? That little knot in the heart. That subtle pang between the eyebrows.

I am often amazed at what an image of a human face, even completely out of context, can evoke in another person.

Psychologists call it emotional contagion. The theory roughly goes like this. We human beings have an innate tendency to mimic the faces (and postures and prosodies, etc.) of our conspecies with which we're interfacing. As we view others' faces, our own facial musculature instinctively assumes certain aspects of the expressions on them. The subtle muscle tones generated this way in turn create a feedback to our system and thereby produce the very emotion that is associated with the original facial expression.

An interesting theory, although I question if we have to actually mimic the faces in order to be infected with the emotions expressed on them. My own suspicion (as an armchair non-working psychologist) is that evolution must have endowed us with a much more direct route to be attuned with others around us. (In any case, I haven't encountered any empirical evidence that emotional contagion requires actual mimicry.)

Anyways, here is another image of the same actress in the same movie. (You guessed it, it is Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge. A fine movie, not my favorite, but that's not the point.)

Her expression is much subtler here. Barely noticeable. But this face still communicates something and draws you in. This is not just because this is a beautiful face (although I'm sure it helps tremendously). Look at the doll version of the same character.

This should be at least as beautiful as the original face, but it hardly does anything to me. I am completely disengaged.

By now some of you (if there is any of you stayed with me until this point) must have sensed where I'm going, given that this blog is about machinima, supposedly. Yes, I sometimes wonder if machinima can ever be as effective as live action films without real human faces -- these exquisite communication devices that bypass your mind and reason and speak directly to your heart. That powerful equipment tested and retested, modified, and built into the very core of who we are, through millions of years of evolution.

At this point I suggest that you watch the following video by Phil "Overman" Rice. (It's really funny anyway.)

So I Ran Over a Monkey from Phil Rice on Vimeo.

It's amusing and amazing. His facial expression at 4:17 into the movie... That subtle mixture of shame, regret and self defense as guilt slowly dawns on him in the process of seeking an escape but finding none. It's all there in that complex human face! Alright. I'm talking nonsense. But you must have gotten the point if you watched the movie. What a great choice it was to put his real face on the screen! Can we ever achieve this level of expressiveness with animated faces? Maybe some Pixar geniuses, possibly. But I doubt any animated machinima actor ever got close to the performance of Overman in So I Ran Over a Monkey, and we're not talking about a professional actor here. Seriously. (Well, the only exception I can think of is the perfectly neutral machinima face I love to use and overuse to the point of an abuse for the Kuleshov effect.)

So what's my point? That machinima is doomed? I suffer from my share of negativity, but I'm not that self-destructive. At least not in public. Whereas I do think machinima suffers from a heavy handicap for being deprived of the magic of the human face, I can see a number of ways in which machinima makers can overcome this shortcoming. Some further thoughts on this matter would make a good topic for my next blog. But now, I end this post with something that I hope would make you feel a little bit better.

Incubus production update

by Sherwin.



Casting is now complete. ScarletRhapsody (who played Claire in Death in Venice) will be playing Isabel Bennett, the heroine. Sisch will be the voice of Lydia Vogel, an artist and Isabel's confidant. Goofparade will be Julien Leroy, a renowned artist. And K4 is Nathan Bennett, Isabel's well-to-do husband. AnotherNewDawn will have a special appearance.

Rather than trying to further cut down the script, we've decided to move ahead and start working on it as it is. We suspect that, given the proportion between description and dialogue, that the 28 pages will probably translate to 24 minutes or so. And we'll adjust the pacing once we see what we have.

Since "Incubus" was written with Moviestorm in mind, we may have fewer of the technical challenges that we faced in "Death in Venice". For one, it's not in Venice. (Thank God.) There are still various hurdles and a never-ending amount of tasks ahead to create and improve the visual elements. I know we are spending a lot of time designing the sets, and that it doesn't feel any faster than before. But there's nothing in Incubus comparable to, for instance, a conversation on a gondola ride through narrow Venetian canals. Most of the settings are interiors, but they should look different, unique and appropriate. We've made some good progress over the last few days!

And so we end this year looking forward to a fun year of moviemaking and moviewatching. I got to watch a lot of (non-machinima) movies these last few days of 2009, and I have to say that the diversity, versatility and the power of cinema never cease to amaze me.

Happy New Year!!

A horrific dream begins

By Kate


For the last two months, stories and ideas were churning inside me, while I was racing to meet my life's obligations. Jutting down ideas during the commute, and thinking about the scenes into my sleep, I was waiting and waiting for this day to come.

So here I am with our next machinima project, and "Incubus" is its working title. (See the fairly self-explanatory picture above.) This is a story about a woman whose nightmare changes her life. I think "La Boheme" will make a nice ironic title for this one, as there are many rich artists involved in it (and there's another reason I wouldn't tell), but "Incubus" is just way too cool to give up.

This is going to be another unabashed Romantic affair (with the capital "R"). It's interesting that our machinima tends to be so unapologetically Romantic. I don't see myself, or my other writings outside machinima projects, fitting this description at all. The medium seems to define what we end up working on, and machinima seems to almost always lead us to wilder side of the imagined world.

The truth is, I was working on a more somber story until mid-November (working title: "Of Human Bondage") with a constant apprehension that the material might not be a good fit for the medium. Then this story happened...

I'm still writing up the script at this point. S started imported props for the sets. We are both very excited to submerge into this dark water in long winter nights.

Miscellaneous Musings

By Sherwin

While K is on a short break from posting on this blog, I thought I would try my best to fill in for her by just talking about what's been happening.

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The International Machinima Expo 2009 that took place just last week was the kind of event that provides the inspiration and energy needed by a lot of machinima filmmakers. Even though it was taking place in the virtual world of Second Life, being in the same virtual room filled up with a bedazzling number of different avatars representing members of our little section of the machinima community - that was a fun experience for us, who came back to moviemaking four months ago.

I also had a chance to catch a few movies I had not seen before playing in the screening rooms. Even though the streaming quality will be inferior to that of a video streaming website, the environment and the people you watch with makes it a whole different experience. I got to watch our movie "Death in Venice" with award-winning filmmaker IceAxe, who fortunately did not burn the theater down with his torch.

This event also introduced us to the world of Second Life. I took the chance to explore many areas, also with the intention of maybe using some SL footage in a movie. What's most intriguing to me is the wide variety of environments that exist, and many of these being quite detailed, especially considering how empty most of these places appeared to me. While the commercialism is hard to ignore, there are a few areas in which SL really appears to shine: as a medium for artists to create virtual worlds, and as an innovative tool for education and dissemination of knowledge (e.g. virtual museums).

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Moviestorm's recent announcement of their subscription service created a bit of a hoopla on both the TMU and the Moviestorm forums. The TMOA radio shows "The Storm Hour" and "Ken & Roger" have almost exhausted the topic. I do believe that the vast majority of us are willing to invest in this movie-making tool, and that the passion in the arguments stem mainly from our sincere concerns that the company remain a viable business in the long term. Being an engineer, my instincts are to leave these decisions for the business/marketing types and the number crunchers. The MovieStorm founders are prominent evangelists of machinima, so I trust that they will steer their ship accordingly.

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On a lighter note, I think we have settled on a machinima project for the coming Winter break. Since we moved from California to New England, winter has taken a whole new intimidating meaning in our minds. Staying home and watching the snow fall from our windows while discussing moviemaking minutia - that sounds like a good plan. Alternatively I could learn how to drive on the snow, but I'm currently trying to minimize my auto insurance costs.

It will likely be a shorter movie than "Death in Venice," as our current goal is to keep it below 12 minutes. This time Kate is starting the script from scratch (instead of a three-year old "The Movies" script), so we'll hopefully be able to take into account the strength and limitations of our machinima tool from the scripting stage (instead of bending the tools to fit the script). It's still early days so I can't say much more than that, but you will hear from us. :)

Post-Mortem

By Sherwin

It seems an opportune time to look back and dissect a particular aspect of our latest movie effort "Death in Venice". One decision that I personally believe to be crucial in setting the tone and mood was made about halfway - a month into production. At this time we had completed the first half of the movie, each scene separately filmed and connected to each other only in our minds. It was time to string these scenes together and see what beast we had created.

Our earlier mindset with the 10-20 minutes machinima "shorts" had been that the story had to be as efficient as possible. Kate crafted this script in 2006 which was lean and mean, in the sense that the information was fed to the viewer regularly and at an accelerated pace when compared to regular feature films. We were indeed cramming a lot of background information in a short period of time (e.g., five flashbacks within ten minutes), and expecting the viewers to keep up. Would this approach work?

In some movies in the past we plead to being guilty of information overload and expecting much from viewers. This is not a decision we've made casually, and it is one that we have debated and sometimes reverted. In case of "Death in Venice", we ended up slowing the pace for the first half of the movie to give the viewers a chance to breathe and catch up. The background information is necessary but it can be tasking. After all, this is the fragile point at which the viewer is still developing a connection with the characters and an understanding of the plot. Did our efforts fall short? It depends on who is watching and the attention they are granting the movie. It depends on the environment it is consumed in - low-end speakers or headphones, full screen or not, the bandwidth of the stream (or whether it is a download), the display monitor. These factors are out of our control, but we have to strive for balance and make a serious attempt at pleasing most viewers. The truth is, I cannot tell whether we succeeded or not, as I cannot watch this movie unspoiled as if for the first time. But I am glad we made the attempt.

Making a movie that doesn't connect to viewers can be a self-absorbed exercise in narcisism. At the same time, a 20-minutes drama machinima is not yet an established medium, one that some people still doubt even exists. I think of this movie making experience as an iterative and incremental experiment in which audience and filmmakers consciously or subconsciously adjust to each other, and meet in the middle where expectations are met and a connection is finally realized. "Death in Venice" was hopefully a step in the right direction for us.

Death in Venice soundtrack

I finally gathered all the Death in Venice original music files and sent it to TMOA. You can listen to it here as well (find the widget on the right side). :)

It is really fun to compose the music for the movie that you are helping to direct. We deliberately extended a few seconds here and there when we felt an extra little musical phrase would help. And of course there were long discussions on whether music is necessary at all in certain places.

There are a few recognizable recurring themes used throughout. One of them is a short motif from Verdi's La Forza overture which I found to be handy - this overture is the music you hear at the opening intro with the mask and that church on the other side of the Piazza San Marco - what's the name of that? There is also a 'revenge' theme, associated with Sebastian, and a 'love' theme - prominently played near the end of the movie.