Resumen de Narrativa fílmica aumentada mediante uso de postproducción no-fotorealista
Víctor Fajnzylber
It is stated that non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) triggers specific ocular behaviors that can have a real effect on the way of perceiving a cinematic narrative. The transdisciplinary interest of this thesis lies in the fact that the concept of “film narrative” is not something exclusive to cinema, but that can also be conceived as a set of audiovisual procedures applicable to virtual reality and video games. The fundamental idea is that NPR post-production provides a visual style that can modify the way of perceiving a narrative, beyond the audiovisual format where it is applied. The empirical research process is made up of three stages: (1) we questioned about the possible influence of NPR on cinematic perception in 2D cinema and stereoscopic 3D photography; then (2) we were interested in the ocular behavior, attentional and pupillary, of 27 viewers faced to a film produced in stereoscopic 3D format with NPR post-production, and finally, (3) we projected these results to study their application in the production of stereoscopic 3D virtual reality. The combination of NPR and stereoscopy is not a perceptual contradiction. Our experimental results in 2D cinema indicate that narrative comprehension is not significantly affected by NPR. In order to verify this first result, which points to the effect of perceptual modifications produced by NPR, we elaborated an experimental design based on the use of eye-tracking to collect data about ocular behavior of spectators of a 3D film. This allowed us to analyze ocular behavior in two dimensions: attentional and pupillary reactivity to NPR. We concluded that a NPR filter associated with a high level of abstraction could trigger an adaptive ocular response that may be described as perceptual anxiety: a lower exploration of the scene and a greater focus on the more expressive elements of the scene: bodies and faces of the characters. This ocular behavior, triggered by NPR, could benefit cognitive immersion, especially in cinematographic genres (fantasy, horror, suspense, science fiction) that use visual abstraction and cognitive uncertainty as an aesthetic effect to favor greater involvement of viewers in their narrative movie. The contribution of our study of visual perception lies in the understanding of the user-viewer: we propose a way of interpreting the relationship between visual style and immersion. Our results were applied to virtual reality production, in order to produce an immersive content, were the user behavior could be studied, using eye-tracking, as a way to guide the search for a better immersion in the proposed narrative. We combine scientific research and audiovisual production in a way that contributes to the creation of new knowledge about visual perception in 3D cinema and virtual reality.
