Comparing Transportation in 3-D and 2-D
September 22, 2011, 3-D User Experience Technical Summit, Hollywood–Sophie Janicke from Florida State University described her work on the relative advantage of 3-D technology to transport viewers into a narrative world.
The changing technologies in displays are also able to induce psychological effects in the viewer. These effects open opportunities for academia, creators, and technologists to change the nature of narrative and persuasion through underlying messages. In the future, these effects may be used to effect changes in attitudes.
The theory behind all of this is that transport into a narrative leads to greater involvement in the story. Any underlying messages are masked by the enjoyment experienced while watching the video. This level of enjoyment causes the viewer to lose some critical evaluation skills and 3-D has greater immersion which leads to greater transport.
For their first tests, they converted some broadcast episodes into 3-D. An episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” and one from “Numb3rs” focusing on organ donation were converted to 3-D. The hypothesis was that the underlying messages would affect viewers’ attitudes about donations. The factors contributing to greater export should imply greater narrative persuasion and greater energy.
The results were underwhelming. There was no difference between the viewers who watched in 3-D versus 2-D. One possible answer was that the conversions were not valid. There were minimal 3-D effects since the episodes were conceptualized and shot in 2-D. In addition, the genres may have influenced the level of enjoyment, since both are “heavy” dramas.
They decided that 3-D storytelling is necessary to have any effects. The video is not just light and color, but a composite of dimension and story. As a result, the next study used national 3-D content from ESPN and movies “Resident Evil” “and Extinction”. By adding presence to the other variables, they found that the viewers enjoyed 3-D more than 2-D versions of the same materials. The sports showed greater changes in physiological parameters than the movies, possibly due to greater emotional attachment and presence.
They tested for heart rate to determine level of attention. A lower heart rate is highly correlated to greater attention, but transport is not correlated with enjoyment. These studies gave different results from the previous study and from other 2-D studies. The choice of content may affect the responses and the relative novelty of the 3-D effect also contributes.
Dramatic narrative transport can benefit from the increased levels of attention and the implications for profit, product placement, messaging, ratings and other factors are all possible. The increased attention is most pronounced in people who have weak or no opinions on the topic.
