While we hope that movie theaters studying the reaction of movie watchers will lead to better films that will jive with our adrenaline or emotions, the reality of the matter is that you’ll soon be paying box office admissions prices to watch your beloved Hollywood blockbuster and also ‘volunteer’ as a test subject to be filmed and studied. Video cameras in theaters have become the norm in recent years to thwart film piracy, and security firm Aralia Systems, which had implemented those anti-piracy cameras, has recently received $350,000 in funding to build a system to videotape movie watchers and their reactions to what is happening on the large screen.
As part of the camera system being devised, 2D and 3D camera technologies will be used to detect emotion, movement, and gauge the audience as a whole. According to Dr. Abdul Farooq from the Unversity of West England, who is working with Aralia Systems, “We will use 2D cameras to detect emotion but will also collect movement data through a 3D data measurement that will capture the audience as a whole as a texture.”
So how do we feel now having to pay to watch a movie, a film that comes with the privilege of being test subjects for movie studios?