Alex Hong

Chawkat

Independent Research

19 February 2018

Heimdahl, Lisolette, et al. “Effects for Timing of Revealing Threats in Contents.” Japan
Society for Graphic Science, 2017, www.projektowaniegier.us.edu.pl/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/Effects-for-timing-of-revealing-threats-in-horror-contents.pdf.
Accessed 21 Feb. 2018.
 This source claims that the change in filmmaking over time means that the same

cinematography techniques would not work for every scare in every film. Instead, filmmakers

should look at how they are timing their scares when revealing the antagonist. A method called

“Shot Collection and Representation” (SCARe) is described and was tested by researchers in

Japan. SCARe uses a scene’s information, like the target, the shots, the timing, and the result of

the scene, to determine how that scene should be planned. Movies are made up of sequences,

which begin when a threat is present and end when the threat is gone. There are five types of

sequence: atmospheric (when there is no real threat), scare (there is a threat that can affect the

characters in a bad way), escape (where a character has the opportunity to evade the threat),

capture (when the threat abducts a character), and death (a character is killed by a threat). The

researchers also tested two sequences on two groups of test audiences: one sequence revealed the

threat early on, the other sequence did not. Based on the audience’s reactions, the researchers

created a new sequence of the atmospheric category, since the sequence was longer than the

presence of the actual threat. The test audiences were given the chance to comment on the scene

they were shown. Most of the audience said that they were frightened when they were sure that

something would happen, but it didn’t, and that the threat was more frightening when the threat

was not as clearly seen.

 The article was written by Liselotte Heimdahl, Yoshihisa Kanematsu, Naoya Tsuruta,

Ryuta Motegi, Koji Mikami, and Kunio Kondo. With a simple Internet search, some of the

authors’ other works were found. They are professors at the Tokyo University of technology, as

well as the Tokyo Metropolitan University, contributing to research on many film-related topics

like anime, camerawork, visual communication, and computer graphics. The source was

published in 2017, so the research is updated and relevant to most of the previously existing

research up to last year. The article was written for graphic scientists, but has many strong

points for filmmakers to think about. The experiment described in the article has a lot of helpful

information on timing and editing, something that all filmmakers can apply to their own projects

regardless of budget or whether or not they are unprofessional. The experiment the researchers

describe also reduces bias, because it had the test audiences look at different types of edited

sequences of opposite style (revealing the threat vs not revealing the threat). However, the

article had lots of minor typos (“storyoard” instead of storyboard, “she” when the authors meant

to say “the”), and while the grammar was not necessarily incorrect, it tended to be a bit awkward

on some occasions This could be attributed to the fact that it was written in English by Japanese

professors, so it is possible that English is not their first language. Information from this source

can be corroborated with information from Helpless Spectators: GENERATING SUSPENSE in

VIDEOGAMES and FILM, also written by professors involved with film. Both sources share the

belief that not directly revealing a threat to the audience can generate greater reactions of fear

from the audience than showing them the threat in plain sight.