March 2010, by Sam Topham (BA Hons) Web Design, Hull School of Art & Design.

All rights reserved. ©

Sam Topham.

The Spectacle of Film:

Immersion in the Movies

Sam Topham
BA (Hons) Web Design
February 2010

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Contents Page . . .

Abstract Pg. 3

Narrative Immersion Pg. 4

Visual Process Pg. 7

Technological Growth Pg. 14

Too Much Immersion ? Pg. 18

References Pg. 19

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ABSTRACT

This paper will attempt to examine and analyse how and why cinema grew to
become the huge commercial success that it is today. It will also analyse how
the technology behind cinema has steadily grown with the demand for ever
more exciting and engaging films. Also, the notion of immersion will be
explored and why we seek to escape everyday life through entertainment,
leisure and other different types of media, and how this has changed over time.
Furthermore I will discuss how directors, film-makers and producers have gone
about creating a thorough sense of immersion within the films they create, be
it through use of effective plot devices and engaging narrative as well as
through use of increasingly advanced technology such as computer generated
imagery (CGI), stunning visual effects and more recently performance capture,
as used in James Cameron's 2009 epic – Avatar.
I shall also critically analyse the recent emergence of 3D within the film
industry, highlighting the advantages and disadvantages, from several
perspectives. Furthermore, I shall determine first hand, how, in my opinion,
directors use the technology to there advantage and how it helps to create a
better impact for the audience, especially if it results in a more immersive
experience.

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- Narrative Immersion

Throughout the course of history the human species has evolved in incredibly
smart and unique ways. Our skills and the way we learn those skills make us
individual and set us apart from non-cognitive species, enabling us to rule the
world and survive in the way that we do. Starting out as primitive,
unimaginative and somewhat unconscious species lacking 'life' , we have
evolved over millions of years both biologically and psychologically. Not only
are we capable of acquiring and retaining extremely vast amounts of
information over our life-time – but also able to learn an endless amount of new
skills and hone them to perfection.
The human race has evolved into an ever more advanced organism, with
prolific, powerful minds and a human consciousness, as well as developing our
own languages, which in turn enables means of communication bringing about
the ability to make informed decisions as well as reasoning, introspection,
creativity, innovation and problem solving. But as much as these abilities are a
brilliant asset to us all, we also encounter negative aspects within life. With the
stresses of work and everyday life – inevitably many people feel the need to
escape from their life, but more often the thing they really want to escape from
is their thoughts about their life - their various fears and worries, the negative
image of ones self, thoughts of unattainable desires, other peoples
judgements, as well as the inner ego’s discontentment with and resistance to
life in general.

The majority of people have lives that are reasonably satisfactory, with the
potential to lead happy and fulfilling lives, but they create their own sadness
and stress in the way that they perceive themselves, their life, others around
them and life as a whole. In most cases, it isn't their life that's the problem,
more their thoughts about it. Even a mind that isn’t especially negatively
inclined can become exhausting and irritating because of the ways in which

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the mind tends to 'spin' thoughts out of proportion and rarely takes time to
shut off these instinctive thought patterns. This is why, as humans, we take so
much pleasure in escaping the stresses and routine of everyday life by
becoming immersed in some form of medium.

This is not a new concept. There have been many ways throughout history that
we fulfilled this need, such as turning to religion, enjoying nature, visiting
attractions such as the theatre, fairgrounds, listening to music, and reading
books. For instance in the early 19th century, as the novel gained popularity, “it
was acclaimed and castigated precisely because of its capacity to submerge
the minds of readers in imaginary words.” [1] As time has progressed we have
sought after even more exciting and imaginative ways to escape, to break
through the burden of our everyday lives. We strive for the ultimate forms of
escapism, much like riding a roller-coaster; we enjoy the deceptive quality's
they offer, the mimicking of true fear and complete immersion in the belief that
danger exists whilst aboard them. Furthermore we relish the fact that,
simultaneously, we know that there really isn't any danger involved at all. We
know we can exit the ride at the end, unharmed.

Immersion is an intangible and equivocal concept. As understood from a

practical point of view, the term 'immersion' refers to 'the psychological
process of immersing or the state of being immersed'. So, immersion can be
described as a state of consciousness in which the viewer, reader, or audience
in this case, becomes so intensely focussed or engrossed in something that
they lose sense of their immediate environment. By becoming immersed in a
book, for example, suggests that the narrative world within the book has
become so intense and convincing that the reader looses the ability to relate to
the present tense and the immediate environment surrounding them.
Immersion can cause differing perceptual and cognitive changes in the mind
too, such as a distorted sense of time and alteration in spatial awareness. Its
these ways in which immersion taps into our senses and takes us away from
our true environment that makes it a fundamental asset in the development of
certain products, especially those that are entertainment-based, such as film,

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which aims to engage and immerse the audience in another world.

“At the end of the nineteenth century - in the era of the second industrial
revolution, falling working hours, rising disposable income, increasing
urbanisation, rapidly expanding transport networks and strong population
growth, resulted in a sharp rise in the demand for entertainment.”[2] Though
there were already many forms of entertainment in existence, one way in
particular stood out, and grew to become the most popular form of
entertainment to date, being used as a means for mass entertainment and
communication – that is of course films also referred to as movie's, or motion
pictures to be technically correct. This technique of capturing and then
replaying still images in sequence would later develop into an art form, known
as cinematography, a new concept, based on new technology. This would
shape the foundations of the world of cinema and grow to become the digitally
enhanced global phenomenon that we know today.
The techniques that movie's utilise in order to achieve this sense of immersion
can be broadly compared to how a thrill ride at a theme park works. Just like a
roller-coaster takes us on an emotional ride, triggering different chemical
responses throughout its operation, evoking screams, laughter and in some
cases crying - a movie takes the audience on a theoretical 'ride' that
transcends the mind into a radically different world, depicting amazingly
different perspectives of the world as we know it, all of these being portrayed
through the various genres to create different effects for the audience, as
envisioned by the directors and producers. Since the dawn of cinema, directors,
producers and film-makers alike have strived to increase the visual impact of
film, attempting to break existing barriers and heighten the level of immersion
for the audience. The illusion of motion has existed for over one hundred years
and after several major breakthroughs, the technological advances of the latter
part of the 20th century along with changes in how a story's narrative is shaped
- this form of visual immersion has become substantially more sophisticated
and engaging for the audience.

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- Visual Process

The essential function for all films is, of course, to accurately portray motion. I
use the word portray here because that's basically all films do, they portray
motion, nothing is actually in-motion during the viewing of films – hence the
term 'motion pictures', meaning a sequence of still images in motion. In order
for films to successfully portray motion, a certain amount of trickery is
involved, an illusion of the mind to be more concise. The process of this illusion
is highly ambiguous and some theorists within the scientific community still
don't fully accept it; but the generally agreed upon theory is called 'persistence
of vision'. It is important to have a basic understanding of how the human
visual system works before attempting to understand how persistence of vision
works.

The human visual system is composed of two basic parts – the eye and the
brain. The eye functions in a very similar fashion to the way a camera works.
The front part of the eye, which includes the iris, cornea, pupil and lens, work
collectively to focus light onto the retina, which is a thin, light-sensitive

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membrane which lines the inside of the eye. The retina acts almost exactly like
the film in a camera, or the digital sensor found in modern cameras. When light
strikes the retina, it stimulates nerve cells embedded in the surface of the
retina, these stimulations make up the 'image' and are sent via the optic nerve
to the brain, which handles the signals from the eye and then interprets, and
renders, the image of the world that we perceive. (See Fig 1) [3]. Technically
we do not see with our eyes, we see with our brain. The visual system is
classed as stereoscopic since there are two eyes, feeding two different sets of
information into our visual cortex, the brain then combines these, and along
with visual cues which already exist in our DNA through millions of years of
evolution, we are able to perceive depth and have accomplished three
dimensional awareness.

Fig 1. - HOW THE EYE FOCUSES LIGHT ONTO THE RETINA.

Persistence of vision is “a phenomenon of the eye by which an after-image

(caused by temporary burning of the retina) is thought to persist for
approximately one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina (around 0.04
seconds).”[4] In other words this implies that “everything we see is a subtle
blend of what is happening now and what happened a fraction of a second ago.
Within the context of film and video, this process is widely believed to account

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for our ability to perceive a sequence of still frames as a continuous moving
picture.” [5] So this means that the illusion that motion pictures create, work
by relying upon the brains inability to distinguish one photographic image from
another when projected at a rapid and consistent rate. It is this process that
produces the appearance of seamless movement from images that are, in
essence, still.

The concept of creating motion dates back to 19th century and is a product of
scientific endeavour, stemming from already popular forms of entertainment,
“such as panoramic painting and the diorama, cinema created a general
architecture for the production of ephemeral environments capable of
displacing the surrounding world, at least for a time.”[6] There are many who
claim to have produced the first moving pictures, and no one person invented
cinema. It was a series of innovations that led up to the idea of capture and
projection to a paying audience. As with many innovations, the idea of cinema
preceded the invention itself. To give an exact date of the emergence of the
idea, or the concept of cinema is difficult, but records show the first projection
of moving images dates from the 1850's, and the first patents acquired for the
viewing and projection of motion pictures were filed in 1860/1861. There were
many devices invented before and around this time that attempted to show the
illusion of movement, preceding cinema, far too many to list. Amongst the
most successful ones are the camera obscura, first constructed in 1645, which
projected views into a dark room , for painters. Also, the Edison company in
1893 successfully demonstrated the Kinetoscope, a device enabling one person
at a time to view moving pictures. Most of the early devices for projection only
allowed one person to view the moving images and this was a great problem
because as the idea and technology emerged, more and more people wanted
to witness the phenomenon of moving pictures.

With the invention of photography in the late 1890's, came further innovations
which would eventually enable cinema to become a success. The process of
creating negatives used for endless copies of the images was important for
cinema technology, as it enabled duplication and it made faster picture-taking

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possible. Another, the film roll, was one of the most important if not the most
important innovations to date - motions pictures in its present form only
became possible when rolls of celluloid film were produced by American George
Eastman of the Kodak Company. This film base made it possible to take many
pictures without having to change film, this was experimented with in the
1850's and became the standard with the introduction of the Kodak camera.

Prior to Eastman's great innovation, several people attempted to make motion

pictures. Most notable were Louis Le Prince, a Frenchman living in the US, and
William Friese-Green in England, but it was Thomas Alva Edison who sent one
of his assistants to work with Eastman Film to produce moving-pictures that
had the most success. By 1891, the device was successfully demonstrated and
the invention became readily available to all those who could afford. Known as
the Kinetoscope, it was a coin-operated device enabling one person at a time
to view moving pictures through a set of built in spectacles. The real inventors
of the modern movies however, were the French brothers Auguste and Louis
Lumière. They researched and patented several important processes leading
up to the invention of their own film camera – most notably film perforations,
as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector.

The first 'modern' movie, where projected moving images were presented to a
paying audience was accomplished by the Lumière brothers in December of
1895. The public screening which took place at Salon Indien du Grand Café in
Paris, is classed as the first 'cinema'. That day marked a huge milestone in the
world of cinema, the show featured ten short films, including the Lumière's first
film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory).
[7] At the start, the films didn't last very long, the ten short films varied 38-49
seconds long, and all were hand-cranked through the projector. from perhaps
only a few minutes, and “initially it seemed nothing more than a fad, a novelty
shown at fairs, but it quickly emerged as the dominant form of popular
entertainment.“[8] The impact that motion pictures had upon the crowds that

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watched was huge. The unsophisticated audiences of the day were wowed by
the apparent occurrence of motion before their very eyes, indeed some
audience members where physically shocked after witnessing the Lumières
short film (Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat). Over the next few years, many short
films would be released, a lot of which were just documenting rudimentary
things and life in general. By 1904 however, Narrative film began to become
the dominant form or film-making. Overtime the film makers realised that with
a definitive story, a beginning, middle and an end, they could create a more
engaging story for the audience, instead of just showcasing the technology,
they knew they must create a more immersive experience in order to win the
audience over and gain the massive profits which could be attained.

Following the emergence of cinema as a dominant form of entertainment,

immersion no longer referred primarily to a state of consciousness such as
religious rapture, the natural high of being at one with nature or being
engulfed by an intensely gripping novel, but progressively arose from the
technological power to project alternate worlds. It is the development of such
technologies that has enabled cinema to become such a successful form of
entertainment, gradually evolving to become the multi billion dollar industry it
is today.[9] Cinemas role of immersing the audience into the intended plot is
achieved through many different and varied ways, but the most common way
and effective way is to create suspension of disbelief within the audience. This
is achieved through use of effective plot devices, proper use of continuity
within the narrative, expert use of the camera and of course most recently, by
utilizing computer generated imagery and visual effects. Suspension of
disbelief is an essential factor for any kind of storytelling , for it is this theory
that makes it possible for us to be entertained. For example, when someone
watches a film, they know what they are watching is a two-dimensional
moving image on a screen and the location where they are watching it (usually
a cinema or at home) is usually nothing like the one that is portrayed on the
screen, but they temporarily accept it as 'reality' in order to be immersed and
hence, to be entertained. An obvious example can be seen from the very

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beginning of cinema, the audience at the Lumière brothers first show watched
and reacted to the two dimension black and white moving images even without
the presence of sound, this proves that no matter how 'unreal' the images
appear, the viewers will suspend disbelief for the sake of entertainment.

Suspension of disbelief has always been the key to producing good,

entertaining films, and film-makers have relied upon many different aspects of
film production to achieve such quality in their films. Since the early technology
could not produce an exceptionally immersive experience, the first thirty years
of cinema were characterized by the growth and consolidation of an industrial
base, and the establishment of the narrative form as well as the refinement of
technology. Over time the quality of films steadily rose with breakthroughs in
the process of capturing and projecting film. In the 1920's, a new technology
allowed film-makers to attach to each film a soundtrack consisting of speech,
music and sound effects which could be synchronised with the action on-
screen.[10] This greatly enhanced the impact of the narratives within the film
and was a massive breakthrough for the development of cinema. Not only did
the audience have the great visual awareness that the cameras perspective
offered but now they also had the audio to accompany it, building a more
immersive narrative, which is essential for the viewer.

The cinema industry grew hugely from 1905 onwards, it was distinct from other
forms of entertainment since it had its own venues and advertising. From
around this time, the business of cinema came to be seen as more than just a
fad or fashion like the skating rings and bowling alleys, but instead broke away
into a unique sector of its own within the economy. During this time a slow but
constant increase in its growth rate began: its emergence became quite rapid
compared with previous types of entertainment, and eventually the majority of
people would substitute attractions such as small-time music halls, bowling
alleys, popular theatre and skating rings to watch the latest movie at the
cinema. 'By the mid-1920s in America, 57 million people – over half the
American population - was going to see a Hollywood feature every week'[11].
As the demand for cinema increased so too did the audiences expectations in

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the technology and the quality of films being produced. In order to create a
greater experience for the audiences, shooting films in 'natural' colour was the
most logical step towards creating a more realistic scene on-screen. This was
first achieved through tinting and stencilling.[12] However, this was a costly
and time consuming process involving the hiring of many artists to hand colour
each individual frame on the film roll. By 1906, there had been several
attempts made at producing 'full colour' moving images, but these early
processes were cumbersome and expensive and as a result colour was not
widely used until the introduction of three-strip Technicolour process in 1932.
This enabled capture of the full spectrum of colour and was a massive step in
further enhancing the realism of films. Audiences at the time were once again
shocked and stunned at how close to real life the story on the screen had
become, just from the addition of colour. Now the classic love story had a
warmth to it, with vibrant reds to enhance the mood and effect, and simple
things such as fire now resembled the true earthy, orange tones that the
director had intended. The bland monotones of black, greys and white had
given way to a new, vibrant and colourful experience in cinema history and the
audiences fully embraced this. The experience of seeing a film in colour
heightened the immersive impact tenfold for the audience.

Throughout the course of cinema history, audiences have grown accustomed to

believing what they see in the cinema to be 'real', as far as the theory of
suspension of disbelief carries. This means that because of the ways in which
the cinema can displace and project alternate worlds, we as an audience must
adapt to the certain conventions in the process of this displacement. The full
ambiguity of the cinematic displacement of the world- which forms one of the
key thresholds of the modern experience, can be imagined only by considering
two key points of view, both directly reflect each other. Firstly is the extent to
which the image world constructed in cinema's interior space nevertheless
borrows its ideals from the outside world. As Deluze states 'With the cinema, it
is the world which becomes its own image, and not an image which becomes
the world'.[13] The cinema can, with freedom, bring us close to things or take
us away from them, and revolve around them, it simultaneously suppresses

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both the anchoring of the subject we see and the very nature of the world
which it constructs both on screen and off-screen. Therefore it is fair to say that
cinema substitutes an absolute knowledge and a second intentionality for the
mode of natural perception. Whilst audiences that viewed phenomenon such as
rippling water and swirling smoke saw a qualitatively different and new found
level of visual detail to eyes previously schooled by paintings, cinema's most
radical effect is not simply a function of the fact that things move inside its
frame. It is not the same as the other arts, which aim rather at exhibiting
something unreal through the world, instead the cinema makes the world itself
something unreal or a tale. This is what accounts for the feelings of anxiety
often felt at the end of a film, where the story on-screen perhaps portrayed a
world better than our own - its impact has been so immersive that we
temporarily forget our own existence within this lifetime, and hence when the
film ends, we must reintegrate back into our own style of life.
The cinema has a great advantage in causing such immersion because it lacks
a centre of anchorage and of horizon, much in the same way the trains on a
roller-coaster lack constant bearing otherwise they would not instil in us, the
emotions that they do. The other key factor in cinemas functioning stems from
the alignment of the spectators eye with the camera point of view itself. The
audiences identification with the movie camera's extremely mobile gaze has
become the defining factor for all future forms of modern technological
communication, in the visual sense. It is from this that the construction of a
new and profoundly inhuman school of thought has been enabled. The camera
allows us a view into worlds which were never previously thought possible.

- Technological Growth

There is no doubt that the quality and immersive impact of films has greatly
increased alongside the evolution of the technology which makes creating the

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films possible. Throughout history there have been numerous improvements
and innovation in both the capturing of images as well as pre-production,
editing and post production stages of the film industry. Arguably one of the
major milestones to have a positive impact on the creation of films is the
introduction of 3D technology. This technology has the power to create the
illusion of depth in a motion picture, it does this using the stereoscopy process.
The process is derived from early attempts at stereoscopic photography. In
order to create the illusion of depth, a special 3D cine-camera with stereoscopic
ability is utilized, unlike the standard camera with only one lens, the stereo
camera is used to record the images as seen from two perspectives. The set-up
is configured so that the dual lens's sit roughly two inches apart, this simulates
the average space between human eyes. The two perspectives are then
recorded, edited as normal and then special projection hardware usually
involving some form of eye wear are used to provide the illusion of depth when
viewing the film. This eye wear works using a filter system, as the viewer
watches the screen, only the image captured by the left camera will be allowed
to enter the left eye, and vice-versa for the right camera and the right eye.
Although the technology for creating 3D films has been around for a long time,
the technology for viewing these films, as essential as it may be, has for a long
time, been lagging in its development. This explains why 3D cinema hasn't
always been a popular choice for audiences. The first and most commonly
associated 3D technique is the anaglyph technique, this method requires the
viewer to wear a pair of glasses with red/green filters in them. This filtered the
image on-screen into the left and right eye respectively, producing a crude but
still viewable 3D image with a fair amount of depth. Much like the take-off of
cinema itself in the early twentieth century, 3D at first was nothing more than a
novelty, a fad which amazed audiences but in general would not retain any
great interest. However throughout the 1950's and 1960's, and after the huge
commercial success of “Bwana Devil” - the first colour stereoscopic feature in
1952, 3D saw its first boom in popularity, especially in the US film making
industry.

In April 1953, two groundbreaking features were released Columbia's Man In

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the Dark and Warner Bros. House of Wax, both of which were shot in
stereoscopic 3D but more importantly both had sterephonic soundtracks. Many
feature films were produced in 3D around these times and this proved a good
method for getting movie goers back into the cinemas and away from
television sets, which were causing a steady decline in attendance. 3D was
successful for several more years but eventually, sometime around 1954 the
first decline in the theatrical 3D craze started, this was mainly due tothe poor
viewing conditions in most theatres and the expensive, complex equipment
required to exhibit 3D movie's (silver screens, polarized glasses, double
synchronized projectors, special lenses etc.) Indeed reviewer, Hollis Alpert of
The Saturday Review wrote, "It is the worst movie in my rather faltering
memory, and my hangover from it was so painful that I immediately went to
see a two-dimensional movie for relief. The polarization process darkened the
image so that everything seems to be happening in late afternoon on a cloudy
day. Nigel Bruce will either loom up before you or look like a puppet." [14] The
effectiveness of 3D at this time was not effective in immersing the audience
further into the action on screen, instead it hindered immersion since the
audience had to strain in order to properly perceive the depth that was
intended.

As films have developed from short documentary's into full feature narrative
epic's with somewhat unbelievable plots, the main tasks for the producers is to
make the unbelievable – seem believable. This can be achieved with great
story lines, quality acting and professional camera work but when it comes to
the huge blockbusters such as James Cameron's Titanic, there is only so far you
can push the technology to achieve the amazing visual effects needed to make
such a film believable. The next major technological milestone in the cinemas
history was the introduction of CGI, or computer-generated-imagery. This is a
technique which allows a huge amount of creativity within films and can push
the boundary's of what can be imagined on screen – an absolutely essential
and highly effective tool set in advancing the immersive impact of a film. CGI,
of use of CGI basically makes it possible to create anything the film-writers,
directors or producers etc. can imagine and render it on-screen. This is

16
achieved using a combination of graphics which are created using powerful 3D
imaging software on computers and a technique known as chroma-keying. The
directors will hire visual artists to produce anything from a baron landscape,
alien characters, all the up to explosions, tsunami tidal waves and hurricanes.
The obviously has amazing potential for creating the ultimate experience for
the audience. In the the Jurassic Park for example, instead of having to
produce full or half scale models of the dinosaurs for the scenes, they can
create a digital replica and have it animated whichever way they choose. In
order to combine the live action footage shot with the actors, they film on huge
sound-stages with every wall lined with green fabric, the fabric is evenly lit
across the whole stage. This means that when the action is captured is this
way, the CGI created in pre-production can be added in digitally using the
chroma-keying method which essentially replaces anything coloured green in
the live action footage with the computer-generated-imagery.

Of all the innovations in the history of the moving image, one of the most
important breakthroughs is the invention of the virtual camera, as used within
computer generated environments. This allows the director to position and
animate a 'virtual' camera anywhere within a 3D scene. In my opinion, this has
had the most spectacular impact of the immersive impact of films since it
allows the audience to travel through time and space in whatever fashion the
director had intended. The virtual camera is not limited to such things as a
tripod, steadicam, camera dolly or crane rig, instead the virtual camera can
'defy gravity' as far as the audience are concerned. The virtual camera has
made it possible to produce extremely fast-paced, exciting shots which are
more often than not impossible with capture using a standard cine-camera.

Immersive environments such as the cinema, are so called because the

participant is sensually immersed, surrounded by computer-controlled media.
In the early days
of cinema, a simple black and white projected image provided the audience
with quite a bland version of 'reality' that barely wrapped around them visually.
Accompanying sound with film was added and added a 3D sound-scape to the

17
experience. Today the experience is vastly different with huge advances in
technology, both the screen size, depth of audio and now the introduction of 3D
have all contributed massively to place we can goto escape. 3D spatial aural
technology is part of the experience even more so at present and will continue
in the future – which is not surprising given the commercial success of surround
sound systems in the consumer audio market. In the chapter on immersion in
her book Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray states, 'We seed the same
feeling from a psychologically immersive experience that we do from a plunge
in the ocean or swimming pool: the sensation of being surrounded by a
completely other reality, as different as water is from air, that takes over all of
our attention, our whole perceptual apparatus.[2] When sights and sounds in a
cinematic environment are particularly well designed and coordinated, the
mind follows the senses. Belief, or at least the suspension of some disbelief,
follows what is sensed.
If something can be seen, heard and almost felt, if not also felt, then it can be
believed.
In my opinion, since cinemas first introduction in the early 20th century, its
steady and then rapid increase in popularity has been due to several factors.
Mainly from the demand for escapism from the burden of everyday life, ranging
from the harsh depression from the early world wars to the simple need for an
escape from the routines of modern life. Human beings have always needed
this escapism as a way of coping with life, their problems big or small, or
simply for pleasure. We seek the ultimate way to immerse in other
environments and cinema, thanks to the huge technological advances and
innovation within the industry, can provide us with this. Greater and greater
developments will always be made in future, one massive step in improving the
immersive impact of film is using the IMAX format. This format uses colossal
screens, typically 22 metres by 16 metres, with the largest screen at the LG
IMAX in Australia covering 8 stories high. This format covers almost all of the
audiences peripheral vision, further enhancing the immersive effect since the
audience can no longer see black spaces either side of the viewing area.
Combined with 3D, this experience offers the most engaging and detailed level
of immersion.

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- Too Much Immersion?

Delivering the sights and sounds by immersive media can cause a strong
visceral and cognitive belief in what is experienced. The feeling one
experiences after leaving cinema, that reintegration with life, is a short
process, but a very significant one. Most films set out to achieve this feeling for
it is this feeling which means you have, either thoroughly or to some degree
become completely immersed in the films storyline. One film which has taken
this to the next level is the 2009 James Cameron's epic – Avatar. The film is
based upon the story of wounded ex-marine Jake Sully, who must visit the lush,
Earth-like planet Pandora in the Alpha Centauri system. Pandora is inhabited by
the Na'vi, ten-foot-tall blue skinned species of wise humanoids who live in
perfect harmony with nature, worshipping a mother goddess called Eywa. Jake
must enter the planet via an Avatar, a genetically grown Na'vi which is powered
by a mental link. “According to CNN, online forums have sprung up to support
people experiencing depressed, even suicidal thoughts "because they long to
enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora," the film's intricately rendered 3-D
setting. Despondent fans have unleashed over 1,000 posts on one site, Avatar
Forums, expressing their disgust with the relatively non-idyllic planet Earth and

19
the human race. “[16] The level of technology used in this film to create an
immersive experience has been pushed to the limit. It has created such a
profound impact on some audience members that they have become, in a
sense, too immersed into the storyline. The film has projected a world so
believable that when the audience try to integrate back into society they have
problems in doing so, mainly psychologically based. After further research into
said 'Avatar Depression', I stumbled across a website called Avatar Forums,
here there appeared a blog that had over 1,000 responses relating to
depression after watching Avatar, the comments did express some concern
over the films truly-believable setting. But after reading deeper, its clear to see
based that most comments do not state that they are clinically depressed or
seriously considering suicide. It's all hyperbole, used to express just how
emotionally moving the film is. It makes one wonder, "Is it something about the
movie's that has changed? Is our relationship to film different now?" - I believe
the latter is true.

WORD COUNT: 5,967

References
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 [Accessed 6th March 2010]

[7] "La première séance publique payante" - Institut Lumière [Internet], Available from:
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[13] Deleuze .G Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (1986)

Cinema I : The Movement-Image 1st ed. London : The Athlone Press

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[15] Murray, J. H. (1997). Hamlet on the Holodeck - The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace.
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[16] 'Avatar' depression syndrome? (January 2010) - People are reporting 'suicidal' feelings
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