Cinema Con Trade Show & Seminars
INTERNATIONAL DAY SEMINARS
Monday April 8, 2024
You Are What You Watch: Cinemas As A Cutting Edge Technology
(Palace Ballroom)
Presenter: Walt Hickey, Pulitzer Prize-winning Author and Data Expert
“The technology of cinema has far-ranging impacts, and what happens to viewers in a movie theater has massive implications for the whole world.
We are only beginning to comprehend the reverberations of movies.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning Author and Data Expert Walt Hickey, held a special presentation on Monday April 8, 2024, International Day the first day of events for Cinema Con’s Trade Show and Seminars. During this impressive and very informative talk, Author Walt Hickey delved into the science of the cinematic experience and exactly what happens to viewers when they attend a movie and how movies can have a significant effect on people. Hickey dives into how movies can have a measurable effect on people, and how they can track where viewers look, feel and the chemical reactions in their body or their nervous systems. From pop-culture names to effects on tourism, Hickey breaks down the data of the lasting effects of the movie-going experience.
According to his Bio, Walt Hickey is a journalist and data expert, and is currently the Deputy Editor for Data and Analysis at Insider News. Walt is also the writer of the daily morning Newsletter Numlock News, and serves as the president of the GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. He previously worked as the chief culture writer at FiveThirtyEight, and his work has appeared on ESPN, ABC News, Vanity Fair and Marvel.com. Walt graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in applied mathematics, which we can see has largely played a major part in his career down the line as he provides readers a deep and analytical perspective of film data.
“Movies are, in an extremely literal sense, emotional journeys.”
In this talk, Author Walt Hickey showed how theaters engage the mind and body at a physiological level, and how exhibiting a film can reliably inspire a reaction as few other technologies can. Hickey examines the immersion of cinema, the deliberate use of viewer time, and the everlasting effects of cinema as a distribution format. Throughout the very informative presentation he discusses how movies and TV affect everything and how
the power of entertainment reflects on our beliefs and everyday lives.
Attention
- Attention is the defining currency of movies.
- How Successfully a director is able to steer and manipulate attention is directly correlated to how memorable and liked the work is.
- But our environment has a lot to do with how we watch movies.
He explains the process of measuring attention through eye tracking, and how audiences focus on a section of the same screen area. A 2007 study tracked the eye movements of 20 subjects watching about 40 minutes of movie clips from
They are able to tracks where eyeballs are looking at a particular given moment, and can build out heat maps from given scenes. Watching movies has a meaningful impact on our bodies, and the only way we watch movies is through paying attention. To maximize that meaningful impact, and experience this tech to the fullest, we must maximize attention.
He breaks down the gradual increase of engagement, how eyes are to follow well-directed material and how movies are fueled by attention and increasing the immersion and ability to engage with stories. “Distracted viewing is a catastrophe.” It was very interesting learning about the difference between forms of entertainment and how for cinema the best thing they can offer is an uncontested, undistracted, immersive viewing experience. Meanwhile, there are also low-attention forms of entertainment such as Late Night and Morning Shows, low-attention entertainment is its own niche. Kids are an exception to the eye-tracking effects which makes sense as they can be so easily distracted.
Track Your EyeBalls – Learn more
“Formative experiences in a cinema can define a lifetime”
- Movie theaters have vast, outsized impacts on what goes on in society.
- The ramifications of a successful film can echo across the world and for years to come.
He delves into the impacts of cinema around the world and how movies can massively impact travel trends and cause an influx of tourism. They influence where we want to live, how we want to work and where we want to visit.
Pirates of the Caribbean ride wait times at Disney World see a major influx during the release of new films more people want to ride the rides.
Names
Another exciting statistic is how huge of an impact media and pop-culture have on people naming newborn babies after popular characters. There are maximum spikes in names after popular films and television such as Daenerys from the fan-favorite Game of Thrones. According to collected data there were 34 American children named Maximus from 1990 to 1999. Following the release of Gladiator, that jumped to 9,916 kids named Maximus.
Jobs
People are so inspired by movies that they can even inspire people to take on certain professions. After Jaws, you’ll find no shortage of marine biologists. American service members first showed heroism on a movie screen in Twister and inspired ne w storm chasers and meteorologists. Jurassic Park inspired a generation of dinosaur researchers and unlocked the funding to make it possible for young new Paleontologist.
Dogs
Even the purchase of specific dog breeds can be effected by a films impact, as people are getting dogs after movies. Data shows a major bump in Dalmatians
after the release of One Hundred and One Dalmatians in cinemas in 1961, and its impact again after its re-release in 1985, and 1991. From 1991 to 1996, on average 38,261 Dalmatians were adopted annually.
Music
Music can also be forever changed by a movie, as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1 is the third highest selling vinyl record of the decade.
Movie Theaters and Crime
What the audience at Cinema Con found super surprising were the movies theaters and crime statistics. As a study analyzed data from 1995 to 2004, and compared it to crime data to see how often violent movies inspired violent acts, that crime is actually down on nights that violent films hit cinemas.
“For every million people watching a violent movie, violent crimes actually decreased 1.3 percent.”
Cinemas make movies more valuable on streaming thereafter
According to data from Julia Alexander (Parrot Analytics) films that had a theatrical window and ran in theaters were later found to be particularly strong performers when appearing on streaming.
Movies can change Sports
- One single movie can change an entire sport. Archery is fueled by pop culture and archery role models such as the iconic Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games franchise. USA Archery saw a groundswell of interest in the early 2010’s particularly among young women.
- In a survey, 49% of girls who participated in competitive archery cited Katniss as having an influence on their decision to take up the sport.
Global affairs
- Following Top Gun, the Navy’s recruitment was said to have risen considerably.
- Tourism in Japan is up fueled by a global audience raised on anime.
- North Korean refugees repeatedly cite South Korean movies and TV as inspiration for their defection.
You Are What You Watch book released on October 24, 2023.
Enjoy a great reading experience when you buy the Kindle edition of this book. Learn more
Amazon
Virtually anyone who has ever watched a profound movie, a powerful TV show, or read a moving novel understands that entertainment can and does affect us in surprising and significant ways. But did you know that our most popular forms of entertainment can have a direct physical effect on us, a measurable impact on society, geopolitics, the economy, and even the future itself? In You Are What You Watch, Walter Hickey, Pulitzer Prize winner and former chief culture writer at acclaimed data site FiveThirtyEight.com, proves how exactly how what we watch (and read and listen to) has a far greater effect on us and the world at large than we imagine.
Employing a mix of research, deep reporting, and 100 data visualizations, Hickey presents the true power of entertainment and culture. From the decrease in shark populations after Jaws to the increase in women and girls taking up archery following The Hunger Games, You Are What You Watch proves its points not just with research and argument, but hard data. Did you know, for example, that crime statistics prove that violent movies actually lead to less real-world violence? And that the international rise of anime and Manga helped lift the Japanese economy out of the doldrums in the 1980s? Or that British and American intelligence agencies actually got ideas from the James Bond movies?
In You Are What You Watch, readers will be given a nerdy, and sobering, celebration of popular entertainment and its surprising power to change the world. – Amazon
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