Mitry was driven to explain the "why," "what if," and "how come" experiences that resulted after the "wow" experience in cinema. His theory uses psychology and phenomenology to understand how cinema can elevate the viewer from the everyday world.

Hollywood makes the most widely successful pleasure-giving artworks the world has ever known. The industry operates under the assumption that pleasurable aesthetic experiences, among huge populations, translate into box office success. With that goal in mind, Hollywood has systematized the delivery of aesthetic pleasure, packaging and selling it on a massive scale. In Hollywood Aesthetic, Todd Berliner accounts for the chief attraction of Hollywood cinema worldwide: its entertainment value. The book examines films such as City Lights and Goodfellas that have earned aesthetic appreciation from both fans and critics. But it also studies some curious outliers, cult films, and celebrated Hollywood experiments, such as The Killing and Starship Troopers. And it demonstrates that even ordinary popular films, from Tarzan and His Mate to Rocky III, as well as action blockbusters, like Die Hard and The Dark Knight, offer aesthetic pleasure to mass audiences. Hollywood Aesthetic explains how Hollywood engages viewers by satisfying their aesthetic desires. Visit the companion website at www.oup.com/us/hollywoodaesthetic

Ranging from blockbuster movies to experimental shorts or documentaries to scientific research, computer animation shapes a great part of media communication processes today. Be it the portrayal of emotional characters in moving films or the creation of controllable emotional stimuli in scientific contexts, computer animation’s characteristic artificiality makes it ideal for various areas connected to the emotional: with the ability to move beyond the constraints of the empirical "real world," animation allows for an immense freedom. This book looks at international film productions using animation techniques to display and/or to elicit emotions, with a special attention to the aesthetics, characters and stories of these films, and to the challenges and benefits of using computer techniques for these purposes.

In the late 19th century, modern psychology emerged as a discipline, shaking off metaphysical notions of the soul in favor of a more scientific, neurophysiological concept of the mind. Laboratories began to introduce instruments and procedures which examined bodily markers of psychological experiences, like muscle contractions and changes in vital signs. Along with these changes in the scientific realm came a newfound interest in physiological psychology within the arts - particularly with the new perception of artwork as stimuli, able to induce specific affective experiences. In Psychomotor Aesthetics, author Ana Hedberg Olenina explores the effects of physiological psychology on art at the turn of the 20th century. The book explores its influence on not only art scholars and theorists, wishing to understand the relationship between artistic experience and the internal processes of the mind, but also cultural producers more widely. Actors incorporated psychology into their film acting techniques, the Russian and American film industries started to evaluate audience members' physical reactions, and literary scholars began investigations into poets' and performers' articulation. Yet also looming over this newly emergent field were commercial advertisers and politicians, eager to use psychology to further their own mass appeal and assert control over audiences. Drawing from archival documents and a variety of cross-disciplinary sources, Psychomotor Aesthetics calls attention to the cultural resonance of theories behind emotional and cognitive experience - theories with implications for today's neuroaesthetics and neuromarketing.

This study analyses the value of semiotics in film analysis. It poses the question that if cinema is a language can it be understood through the techniques of linguistic analysis? The study includes signs, montage, codes, images and narrative.

How do movies engage us so thoroughly, capturing our sensations, thoughts, and emotions? This edited volume introduces psychocinematics, which brings together film theorists, philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists to consider the viability of a scientific approach to our movie experience.

Everyone knows the thrill of being transported by a film, but what is it that makes movie watching such a compelling emotional experience? In Moving Viewers, Carl Plantinga explores this question and the implications of its answer for aesthetics, the psychology of spectatorship, and the place of movies in culture. Through an in-depth discussion of mainstream Hollywood films, Plantinga investigates what he terms "the paradox of negative emotion" and the function of mainstream narratives as ritualistic fantasies. He describes the sensual nature of the movies and shows how film emotions are often elicited for rhetorical purposes. He uses cognitive science and philosophical aesthetics to demonstrate why cinema may deliver a similar emotional charge for diverse audiences.