What Makes a Movie Story Interesting? The Answer from Cognitive
Psychology.
What makes a person find a story (or a story in a movie)
interesting?
This is Cognitive Psychology's answer. Below is the abstract of
a study (with key phrases highlighted) published in the British
Journal of Psychology; Kim, Sung-il (1999), Causal bridging
inference: A cause of story interestingness.' British Journal
of.Psychology, 90/1: 57-72.
"While the vast majority of previous studies on text processing
have focused on the structural importance of the text, the
affective variables, such as interest, have been ignored for
several decades. However, in recent years the concept of
interest has received increasing attention not only in the area
of text processing, but also of learning and memory in general
(Hidi & Baird, 1986; Renninger, Hidi & Krapp, 1992; Shirey &
Reynolds, 1988). Nevertheless, there is no theoretical model of
interest due to the lack of empirical study on the cause of
interest. The general purpose of this study is to investigate
the role of inference in story interestingness and to propose a
hypothetical model of interest."
Interest as an affective (emotional/feeling) variable comes
about if the story requires you to think (make inferences).
Participants in the study were given two version of the same
story. An example of a story follows. See which version you find
more interesting.
Version 1: A newly wed bride had made clam chowder soup for
dinner and was waiting for her husband to come home. Although
she was not an experienced cook she had put everything into
making the soup. Finally, her husband came home, sat down to
dinner, and tried some of the soup. The poor woman swore she
would never cook for her husband again.
Version 2: A newly wed bride had made clam chowder soup for
dinner and was waiting for her husband to come home. Although
she was not an experienced cook she had put everything into
making the soup. Finally, her husband came home, sat down to
dinner, and tried some of the soup. He was totally
unappreciative of her efforts and even lost his temper about how
bad it tasted. The poor woman swore she would never cook for her
husband again.
Participants found Version 1 of the story to be more
interesting. The difference between the two versions is the
additional sentence in Version 2, "He was totally unappreciative
of her efforts and even lost his temper about how bad it
tasted".
>From this study, we can further see how a story become too
involved. To make an inference requires having the necessary
contextual or background knowledge. If the audience lacks the
contextual or background knowledge to make the inference, than
that portion of the story is too involved. (Sometimes, the
contextual/background knowledge is culturally based. Hence, a
remake cannot always be a clone of the original.)
Even if the audience have the necessary knowledge to make the
inference, overdoing certain story telling techniques may render
the relationships between the 'facts' in a story too obscure.
This makes the story too terse. For example, with the contrast
technique, if the situations or events to be contrasted are
somehow too far apart in the rendition, that a relationship
exists between two or more story situations/events may not be
consciously perceived.
Sometimes, this terseness is delibrately done (as with teaching
tales) so that the inference lays dormant in the subconscious
until the time is ripe. Then, when the relationship/inference
suddenly comes to awareness, the "eureka" or "ah so" factor adds
its impact. (Feels like a revelation or the epiphany phenomena.)
Movies with a story that has meaningful premise and layered with
supporting subtexts, which is not too terse or involved in the
rendition tend to be well received by a broad spectrum of
people. (Off course, porn and violence based movies have their
audience.)
So if anything, (moderately) challenge the audience and the most
of the audience will respond. That's how the brains are wired.
For most people at least.
The 10 of Club's Movie Blog - Educing
premises and subtexts in stories from movies.