Eyelight Enhances Perceived Emotional Responses to Cinema

Eyelight, in the eyes of a human portrayed on film, is a cinematographic means to augment the vividness of expressed emotions. This is used by both cinematographers and still photographers, and it is also expressed in Anglo-Saxon, Arabic, and Japanese literatures. Here, the effect of using eyelight in the cornea of the human eye on film is examined by eye-tracking individuals on a Swedish university campus, in order to study their perceptual responses to film characters with, or without, a glimpse of light in their eyes. The participants' perceived capacity to discern the emotional states of the film characters was also tested. Eye-tracking data were analyzed for entry time, fixation time, dwell time, hit ratio, and revisitors, while emotional decoding was captured through a self-report survey and by open questions. Our results demonstrated that film viewers' attention is captured 49% faster, and 11% less time is used per fixation to film characters' eyes when eyelight is used. In addition, 58% of our participants claimed that emotions were easy to discern from eyes in the eyelight condition, whereas only 36% claimed that emotions were easy to discern under the no-eyelight condition. Although our results concern the subjective impression of one's ability to discern the emotions of each film character, they offer preliminary support for the idea of using eyelight to enhance emotional communication in film and stills photography.