Overload as a Key to Immersiveness in Film: Feature Not Bug

Immersion is a key aspect of the experience of film. We want to be transported somewhere else, we want to be someone else, for the period of time we're watching a movie. People commonly complain when something "throws them out of the movie." Immersiveness is that sense of being there, or transcending, of making us feel like we're in that world.

Most people here are old, so you should remember the few months after Cameron's Avatar came out and fans were expressing feelings of depression that they could not live in this world. Avatar left some newfound furries



in genuine despair that they could not be cat people in an aggressively neon and pastel alien world. Avatar was visually immersive, but the story was generic, and this moment quickly passed. Avatar was only visually immersive.

Other films, especially films with a cult-following succeed in created a deeper sense of immersion by overloading the viewer with symbols and content. DUNE is a great example of this. The set designs and costume designs are marvelous, but the movie is also confusing AF. We have to learn of great houses, guilds, genetic memory, shield generators, the ecology of an alien worlds, and many other details to make sense of this world. The film flopped because it did too much.



It was oversaturated. It survived, however, because it was a like a sponge that could be squeezed for more moisture. You could watch it and learn more. You could read the books and look for details. There was enough of "there" there to make DUNE a distinct and rich place. It was such a clusterf****k of information and images that it was great in its own way.

Ditto for Blade Runner, which would reward rewatches with great little details in the background, and complicate the viewer's understanding of the film. The whole Deck-a-Rep thing wouldn't have been a "thing" if Blade Runner were not so insanely rewatchable and it is so rewatchable because it is kind of confusing -- it is so dense that it does not fully disclose itself on on viewing.

I think the thing can be said of Lynch movies, which are symbolically dense but refuse the viewer any sort of simple closure. You have to experience the film. What really happened in a Lynch film is usually a subject for debate, because Lynch isn't trying to tell a simple story.

You can't force a "cult film" to happen, and one would be ill-advised to simply "confuse the hell out of your audience," but textual overload can result in a richness that makes some films unforgettable, unlike the last thing you watched on Netflix.

I was lucky enough to catch one viewing of the rocky horror picture show in the 70s, and I think that epitomized the idea of immersion you talk about. The audience was filled with guys dressed up in fishnet stockings and makeup, the girls all looked like Magenta (i.e. a whore), everybody brought things like bread and rice to throw at the screen at key moments, and one guy in the front had what could only be described as an inflatable girlfriend.



Fortunately, I don't have to live with memories of wearing fishnet stocking and heavy makeup from my youth, but I've since heard of how movies like the tingler used to be very immersive. They used to try and bring the movie to the audience in ways that did not simply involve sitting in a urine stained seat while eating overpriced popcorn and having your arm grow numb because you didn't really feel confident enough to go from a hand on her shoulder to a hand on her thingies.

I don't really look for immersiveness in the films I watch. I don't resist it if it happens, but it is no longer the point for me, as it was when I was younger. I mostly look at films like something I dug up out of the dirt. I hold it away from me in my hand and turn it around to give it a proper look. I think to myself 'hm, a person made this, weird". Then, in the case of Baby Driver, I promptly bury it back where it came from and salt the earth.

I think we're all looking for some immersion to the extent that we're looking to be entertained for 90 minutes. We want to be distracted in hopes of being amused or even moved and that requires a narrative magic that minimally hooks us into that world.

It's just that some people are drawn to (or experience in some cases) deep immersion (the ones who go to "cons," and "ship," and write "fan-fics," and post to forums specific to an artwork) in which the experience of "being there."

On the one hand, there is no such thing as a purely objective anthropologist. On the other hand, not all of us "go native" and marry off into the tribe, either. So, although I am not sold on your account of yourself being a cold anthropologist who merely catalogues artifacts, I DO get your point that you are watching in a much different way than people who pine to live as a catperson on Pandora.

It is interesting to note that oversaturation seems to be a feature that can make a film flop at the theater, but then return as a cult classic, because of the rewatchability created by there being too much content, too much stuff happening, too much you need to know, too many symbols to understand. It's great for fans and horrible for producers who can only hope to milk re-releases and directors cuts after they take a huge loss.

I can recall being able to rewatch Blade Runner for years, picking up little details I had missed before and getting a different sense what it all meant. DUNE is just so bats**t crazy that it's great to see these wild sets and costumes and listen to people shout things like "SHAI HULUD!" -- these films effectively create the illusion that if you were to lift of the frame of the painting to see the canvas underneath that you would see more of that world.

Rock Horror is an interesting example in that it is saturated textually and extra-textually. The text is wonderfully bizarre, but the audience rituals of call-and-response, throwing objects, re-enacting, dressing up, etc. add depth through semi-formalized participation. That's a different kind of immersion, but the original film must have been immersive to some to have engendered that response.

Never claimed I was simply being a cold anthropologist. As I mentioned in the second line of my post, I'm more than happy to be immersed in something (to whatever extent) when that happens. It simply doesn't all that much anymore, at least to not in any significant way. I am now unable to really get away from the artifice of what I am watching. This doesn't mean films don't move me (they frequently do) or that I'm remotely 'cold' when I'm watching them Artifice isn't not an emotionally inert thing for me, it is simply my my way of viewing a film (or any piece of art) as an extension of the individual who created it. By watching what a film obsesses over I am watching the obsessions of a person. I don't always necessarily need the middle man of a compelling narrative, a relatable character or 'immersion' to get there. Those things all help immeasurably, but if they aren't there I can still find more than enough in a film to fall in love with it.

In short, while I can understand the misunderstanding here, there is nothing remotely cold about me holding art at arms length to look at it. Pondering over why someone created something brings me closer to the very personal act of creation. I think this is actually as intimate a way to look at something as rooting for a protagonist, and investing myself in their success, in whatever fictionally constructed narrative or world they exists in.

No worries. To be clear, I am not trying to tell you how you watch and appreciate films or how you should.

There is something which is clinical which tends to overtake film lovers as they continue to consume media (e.g., Twain on "Two ways of seeing a river") and there is an inevitable sort of detachment that overtakes us when we've seen the same thing again and again and again. There are benefits to this detachment, of course, as older eyes can detect patterns and catalogue them with ease even if a particular ride at the amusement park doesn't blow their hair back (because they've ridden many rides).

Even for those of us for whom there is more distance in viewing, however, oversaturated artworks also have something to offer, because they leave more there for us to potentially excavate in our more detached explorations of these stories. I think the main draw is the visceral immersion, but even, for example, when Blade Runner no longer emotionally moved me on rewatches (because I had memorized it) I found that there was still "detective work" to be done and much to still appreciate in terms of how it was all put together. In short, I think such artworks still have compensatory benefits for those of us who do not experience (or desire) as direct and overpowering an experience of that place which exits in the text.

You wrote an interesting OP and I agree with the thrust of it too. The above quoted section is true, at least it's true for me. I do want to exist in the world of the movie for the duration of the film. No that doesn't mean I want to actually live in the movie, how weird would that be!...It just means I want to be transported and immersed as you say in the film.

What often ruins it for me is when the director breaks my immersion by taking the movie on a completely different path. I watched a film last night that was confined in space and time (no not a sci-fi, it was a film noir). The events took place almost in real time as the camera followed a pair of would-be detectives around a couple blocks of New York City at night. It felt up close and personal and so was easy to become immersed in the film's world.

In contrast to that obscure noir was my experience with Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel...At the start of that film, the world building of the inner workings of the hotel was so inviting that I was sure I'd love the film. It felt like a place where you could hunker down and spend time there. But just as I got cozy by immersing myself in the world of this grand hotel, Wes had to go and take the story to a completely different location. That then broke the spell of the movie for me and as you say 'it took me out of the movie. It's not always easy to find a film that one can slip into for the duration.

The Insertion Problem

An associated problem with these realities is that the deeper these alt-worlds are, the harder it is to get the audience inserted into these realities.

1. Opening Monologue/Exposition - Blade Runner uses somewhat confusing title cards. Star Wars pulled off the early opening crawls (before we were given histories of intergalactic trade unions), largely on the strength of John Williams' score. DUNE hilariously has Virginia Madsen fading in and out of space with bits and pieces for the audience.



Although this can be done well (e.g., Fellowship of the Ring), this is a violation of "show don't tell" and amounts to a sort of cheat, a data dump, from the start.

2. Fish out of Water/Guppy - This is another option. Take someone from that world and have them serve as surrogates for the audience's ignorance. This strains when Decker (an "expert" Blade Runner) has to be "educated" by Bryant and Tyrell about the basics of Replicants. Very often we're put into a classroom and given a history lesson (e.g., Serenity), which places us in the position of a child learning things for the first time. Terminator handles this brilliantly with Reese giving exposition during car chases, getting us caught up with the future.

3. Flashbacks - Terminator also handles this brilliantly, via the PTSD dreams of Kyle Reese. Usually, this works better to explain character motivation, but it can be used for world-building.

4. Extra-Textual Cheats - Audiences of the original release of DUNE were handed out little cheat sheets explaining what the hell the audience was getting into, which only made everything more confusing. When DUNE came to TV, they tried tacking expositional material onto the original text.




5. Interpersonal Folk-Psychology - If you don't understand the universe yet, you can be content to understand basic human relationships. Thus, Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica makes it clear that Apollo and Commander Adama have father-son issues (oh dear!). This is a more indirect solution, as it does not involve dumping "strange new world" information on the audience such that they think "Will this be on the quiz?" but rather allows us insertion into the world without need of knowing everything (we have the foothold of familiar human relationships).

Personally, I like films that basically say "Keep up, dummies!" and don't explain much at all. Quite different from today's infantile action films which remind us of the MacGuffin and the stakes several times in the 3rd act, "Jill, if you don't disarm that bomb in the control manifold, Puppyville will drown in toxic radiation!" Nevertheless, the problem remains. The more immersive the world, the more challenging the insertion.