Adopting 'contextual cues' from cinema halls' setting creates same experience at home

A new study has revealed that the angle of viewing does not play a vital role in the cinematic experience, but presence of so-called 'contextual visual cues' played a greater role in actually drawing viewers into a movie.

The study found that if the surroundings were designed to be sufficiently stimulating, even a simple computer screen was enough to generate an intense cinematic experience.

For observing some 300 study subjects, researchers at the Institute of Psychology of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) had given a computer screen the attributes of a movie theatre; the test subjects barely sensed a difference between it and a normal cinema with a large screen. Even a cell phone display performed relatively well in a cinematic environment.

The findings have indicated that the larger the screen the greater the extent to which the viewers were drawn into a movie but the miniature movie theatre with the computer screen was not far behind, only just in front of the model with the cell phone display thus, the effect of screen size as a factor had been overestimated. It was not significant in statistical terms.

The researcher had added that what was significant was the difference in effect between the miniature movie theatre and the bare computer screen, that had caused the psychologists to conclude that the surroundings play a decisive role.