Dalarna University's logo and link to the university's website

The purpose of this research is to answer a number of questions regarding viewers’ perceived emotional experiences to three film scenes, with two musical accompaniments each. One a complementary piece, and the second a contrapuntal piece. Firstly, the viewers’ emotional experiences to the film scenes with complementary, or consonant musical accompaniments were explored. Secondly, the viewers’ emotional experiences to the same three film scenes, but with contrapuntal musical accompaniments were explored. Finally, by using the BRECVEMA framework, the reasons for why the viewers experienced the emotions that they listed were explored.

The chosen method used to answer these questions was a design experiment whereby three separate film scenes with the moods or themes of ‘happy’, ‘sad’ and ‘scary’ were paired together with a complementary musical accompaniment and a contrapuntal musical accompaniment. An online survey was created asking respondents about their emotional experiences while watching these film scenes. The initial selection of people that were chosen to answer the survey were chosen by way of the ‘convenience’ selection method. Additionally, the initial respondents were then asked to forward the online survey to as many people as possible. When relating to questions surrounding perceived emotional experiences, free text answers were available to the respondents of the online survey. In total, sixteen individuals responded to the online survey.

The research revealed that when a contrapuntal musical accompaniment was playing over a film scene, the majority of respondents experienced conflicting, or contradictory emotions with regard to what they experienced for the exact same film scene, but with acomplementary musical accompaniment. The research also revealed that by using the eight BRECVEMA framework mechanisms, logical and reasonable reasons as for why the respondents experienced the emotions that they listed can be inferred.