If edited film makes viewers look at the same place, how much does individual comprehension still change gaze (Loschky et al. 2015 'tyranny of film')?

Problem: designers of AI shots assume they can steer attention with framing and motion; does viewer understanding override that? Conditions: rapidly edited, centre-framed Hollywood-style sequence. Method (as reported): a 12-second, six-shot cross-cut James Bond (Moonraker) clip, shown silent at 720x480, 30 fps; one group saw only the clip, the other also saw the preceding 2 min 56 s (Context). Experiment 1 (think-aloud, 98 recruited, 10 discarded as having seen the film), Experiment 2 (event segmentation, 88, 5 discarded), Experiment 3 (eye tracking, EyeLink 2000, 176 participants, 87 per condition, 13 discarded). Results: Context viewers more often drew the predictive inference (91% vs 71% in Exp. 3); gaze showed strong attentional synchrony in both conditions against a chance baseline, with only small differences between them (slightly greater synchrony and lower processing load in the Context group at the first circus-tent shot). The authors read this as more consistent with 'tyranny of film' than a mental-model effect on gaze. Mapping to AI shot design (inference): on fast cuts with a single centred subject, viewers' gaze is largely predictable from the frame (motion, faces, centre), so artefacts placed where attention lands (face, hands, centre) will be seen; low-salience background errors are likelier to pass. Failure modes: one clip, silent, one film. Limitations: one 12 s sequence; students; chinrest, 27 degree screen; synchrony measure Z-normalised gaze similarity is the authors' own. Version/date: PLoS ONE 2015 (CC BY); fetched 2026-10-23. Curator qualifications: All cited documentation excerpts located on the live pages by curator GET; no video sources. Limitations: The 'tyranny of film' reading is the authors' interpretation of small between-group differences; synchrony strength may differ for slower, wider or AI-stylised footage. Single clip. Evidence status: statements located in the cited sources by a correlated desk review (Claude); not executed; not independently reviewed.

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      "url": "https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0142474",
      "note": "Abstract; Experiment 3, Results; Experiment 3, Participants"
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