Science of Asses in Seats

Now that NYTIMES.com has opened the doors to it's archives, I'm rummaging through it for shiggles.

I came across "The 150-Second Sell, Take 34" -- a great article about the science and art behind movie trailers. There are some good quotes about the needs to NOT connect all the dots for the audience.

But as films evolved, their marketing changed. Explicit hype pulled a Garbo and gave way to subtler hype. The man responsible for this shift was Stephen O. Frankfurt, the Young & Rubicam ad executive who brought America the Lay's potato chips slogan ''Betcha can't eat just one.'' In 1968, Paramount hired Frankfurt to come up with a trailer for ''Rosemary's Baby.'' Violating Hollywood's marketing rules, Frankfurt ignored the plot in favor of something starkly evocative -- an image of a baby carriage in silhouette, the grating sound of an infant crying and a cryptic tag line: ''Pray for Rosemary's baby.'' The movie was a huge hit, and the campaign became an industry benchmark.

Frankfurt, who is now 70, holds fast against unveiling a film's full storyline. ''Trailers today give it all away,'' he says. ''If the thing tells you too much, it eliminates your involvement, which is the first step to persuasion.''

This Is Your Brain on Bard

While listening to my favorite podcast for word dorks, "A Way With Words," they mentioned a study done in the UK about effect that Shakespeare's interesting use of language had on the brains of the audience.

The whole article is located on Physorg.com, but I've clipped some quotes below:

Shakespeare uses a linguistic technique known as functional shift that involves, for example using a noun to serve as a verb. Researchers found that this technique allows the brain to understand what a word means before it understands the function of the word within a sentence. This process causes a sudden peak in brain activity and forces the brain to work backwards in order to fully understand what Shakespeare is trying to say.

Professor Philip Davis, from the University's School of English, said: "The brain reacts to reading a phrase such as ‘he godded me' from the tragedy of Coriolanus, in a similar way to putting a jigsaw puzzle together. If it is easy to see which pieces slot together you become bored of the game, but if the pieces don't appear to fit, when we know they should, the brain becomes excited. By throwing odd words into seemingly normal sentences, Shakespeare surprises the brain and catches it off guard in a manner that produces a sudden burst of activity - a sense of drama created out of the simplest of things."

This really points to the central concept I'm beginning to dive into: the impact a creatively coded message has on the receiver.