The shape and psychophysics of cinematic space

Abstract

For the film goer who sits to the front and side of a movie theater, the virtual space "behind" the screen undergoes affine and perspective transformations. These transformations should, one would think, make the rigidity of objects on the screen very difficult to discern. Despite the fact that it has long been known that viewers are not very sensitive to such distortions, a phenomenon I call La Gournerie's paradox, the effect is without a good theoretical account. Two possibilities are: (1) that viewers rectify the distortions of Euclidean space through the use of information about screen slant, and (2) that sufficient information is preserved under these transformations so that perception may be unperturbed. This paper presents preliminary arguments for the information-preservation view and introduces a new technique, that of using simulated projection surfaces, whose use in experimental situations suggests that Euclidean rectification is not necessary. © 1986 Psychonomic Society, Inc.