Gadgetory

measuring people's responses to entertainment has in the past been pretty low-tech people might answer a survey give thumbs up or five stars in an app or simply describe how they felt while they were watching something but now scientists have access to a variety of biosensors that can tell them exactly how people are responding to movies and TV shows what gets their hearts pumping or what makes their faces flush in this physiological data has the potential to change how movies are made in the future in fact it's doing that right now Dolby Labs has been around since 1965 for most people the company is synonymous with that label you see on movies that tells you the sound has been remastered or the color has been enhanced but inside its headquarters in San Francisco Dolby has been working at a lesser-known project to watch people while they're watching movies the scientists Adobe want to know whether people are cognitively involved or stressed or aroused and they want this biophysical data to better saw their technology the idea being that Dolby can show its Hollywood partners that a certain color or surround sound or even high dynamic range will elicit a stronger response from people one of the lede image scientists from Pixar in charge of inside out he says and the babies born inside out would you get this diffused white screen what we wanted there was pain we wanted people to feel physiological pain because that's what happens when a baby's born and so it's this way of now thinking about the physiological response is part of what we can create in the color space we can create that in this multi-sensory space and that's really powerful to the creator's that's Dolby chief scientist poppy Crum she's a neurophysiologist who on any given day is conducting 15 to 20 experiments with willing subjects I was curious to hear what these biosensors are telling poppy and her team so I decided to try on the sensors myself one of the beauties of this particular device so again it's an EEG which stands for electroencephalogram it lets us measure small changes in the electrical signals from your brain through your scalp my in the matrix yes and what's this these are a few other sensors that we're going to put on you one of these is going to measure your heart rate another one of the sensors is a lie detector and off to your left that's actually your thermal image by sweating oh the data that's popping up on the screen right now from the sensors I'm wearing what is that telling you so what we've done is we're just amplifying some of those channels and this is your raw EEG signal from each of those electrodes here you have your GSR response and here's your heart rate so what are the kinds of things that would cause aside from fire like it's pretty serious spike sports matches those are great examples where if there's something like a penalty kick where there's anticipation or things that surprise you things that are rousing so you can actually tell when people are aroused absolutely do you test it on sex scenes oh so when we use the word arousal I like to use the word excitement typically maybe I was jumping to conclusions okay yeah so be careful up there these biophysical labs have existed at Dolby since 2012 but over the past couple years poppy and her team have really ramped up the program this is partly due to the fact that these kinds of sensors are readily available now but it's also due to the fact that there are now displays bright enough to trigger these kinds of reactions in some cases the team is using devices that get up to 20,000 candelas per square meter in terms of brightness and that can have a surprising impact on the human body we have discovered it if you present flame a picture of flame realistically enough your body actually starts to flush your body is just over the eons has adjusted and adapted such that when it sees flame it assumes hot that kind of insight is fundamental in helping us shape the technologies that drive the stories that you and I love to go Doby is hardly the first entertainment focused company to study human emotions broadly speaking this kind of effective computing has been studied for decades but industry experts say it's becoming much more common in entertainment in recent years companies like Netflix and Hulu have used eye trackers to better understand how people are reacting to their app interfaces these types of biophysical experiences are becoming more and more important we need to understand experiences about engagement how you're emotionally connected to the experience are having and how our technologies can help us enhance that enrich it as much as possible of course all of this bio sensory tracking could raise questions around the ethics of potentially using the data in a more manipulative way if filmmakers or sound producers know that they can trigger an emotional response then isn't it possible for those tools to be abused or say an advertiser uses these tools to sell you something like this Lexus ad which offers nothing but the sound of an engine revving in which by the way was mixed by Dolby but ultimately when it comes to entertainment that's sort of what you want you're going for an intensified human experience core of our technology and the existence of our company has always been an understanding of human experience and how can we take what we experience how our brain experiences world how our body's experiencing really use that to build intelligent technologies basically we're more immersed in video than ever before whether it's on a giant movie or TV screen on our relatively small smartphones or even right on our faces like with VR headsets and Dolby scientists along with many others in the industry want to know how that's going to make us all feel especially if entertainment becomes indistinguishable from the realities around us so the next time you feel your face flush or your heart race or your armpit sweat during a movie or TV show you might not be the only one in fact it might have been enhanced to trigger exactly that sort of reaction I've been reading a lot about sharks lately