The 20th annual Symposium will be held on Thursday, April 23, 2009.

How People Respond to Film Based upon Reactions to the Films El Laberinto de Fauno and Las 13 Rosas
Norris 104, 8:30 AM

Jessica  Clarke,   '09 58
   Majors: Spanish, Political Science
   Hometown: Muskegon, MI

Sponsor(s): Julia Medina
Support:  

Abstract: 
People respond differently to different types of film, so a filmmaker must have specific goals in mind when creating a storyline for a movie. Each kind of film evokes different emotions from the viewer, and I am interested in which kind of films are the most impactful and why. I hypothesized that people would respond more favorably to a film that appears to be a fairytale, such as the film El Laberinto de Fauno, than they would to a film that appears more realistic and historically accurate, such as the film Las 13 Rosas, even though they are about a similar topic (in this case, the post-Spanish Civil war terror). The director and the writers have a huge amount of control over how people react, and my study looks at just how much control they may actually have based on the ways in which they approached the subject of the Spanish Civil War. I used a model based on the scientific method in order to gather data from fellow students who viewed both movies. In my presentation, I will present this data and explain its significance to the film industry.

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