SUCCEED - EXPERIMENTS

Different perception

Everyone experiences the world differently. Some people are easily frightened by noises in the dark, others aren't. Some people like onions, others hate them. It's the same with movies. Some people are interested in the story, others like the cinematography. However, in movies, the difference in perception does not only change from person to person. But one also notices new details while viewing the movie a second time. This means one's perception changes a bit when you watch the movie anew. Inevitably this poses the questions: What if details in a movie indeed changes? Thus, Luki and Andres decided to make a "changing movie".

The replay experiment

Based on our knowledge there hasn't been a movie which changes slightly every time you watch it. There are movie where the viewer can decide how the story evolves (i.e. "Late Shift"). However in SUCCEED the main story stays the same but only small parts change. Of course we want to know if the viewer is interested in the changes and what changes he observes. First results show that persons think scenes have changed altough in reality they didn't. People get fooled by their own memory. Through a survey we'd like to find out more about this phenomena (survey only in german). In addition we count the number of viewings per person based on the visitor count of the website.

Experiment on subliminal frames

In 1957 James Vicary claimed that an experiment in which he repeatedly showed 1/3000-second ads "Drink Coke, Eat Popcorn" increased product sale. This experiment had a huge impact on the world and people were afraid of the so-called subliminal advertisment. However, the experiment was later declared as a fraud. Newer research studies suggests that subliminal advertisement is only possible when basic requirements are met. For example, thirsty viewers are more likely to buy Ice Tea if they've been shown subliminal ads of Ice Tea. However, if the viewers weren't thirsty the subliminal ad hasn't had influence on their behaviour.

It's also unclear who would be interested in such advertisement. Because a Coke next to the screen has at least the same influence on the audience then subliminal advertisement. And the public image of a company would be damaged if such subliminal advertisment would be made public.

We'd like to find out how flashing frames are perceived. Do they need to have a certain size? Does everybody see full-screen flashing frames? Our experience shows that it strongly depends on the person. The first test screening showed that some see all subliminal frames, others sees none. If you want to see all flashing frames you will have to be present all the time. When you blink in the wrong moment you could have missed a frame. In order to evaluate the different perception we created a survey (only german).

By the way it is possible to view the film frame by frame holding shift and tip shortly a arrow key. For rewind you can use the arrow to the left side. For forward you can use the arrow to the right side.