Finding My Research Question

The newest study I have read is "Viewers' Interpretations of Film Characters' Emotions: Effects of Presenting Film Music Before or After a Character is Shown". This study adds another layer to how music affects us by seeing how we interpret an ambiguous scene if we hear music before or after it. When music was played before, the emotions were perceived as more intense and the mood of the music matched how the viewers interpreted the mood of the scene and character. This is because by priming the viewer with music, he or she would look for clues in an ambiguous facial expression that matched the mood of the music. When music was listened to after a neutral scene, the viewer can still continue to process the previous action using the new information provided by that music, and it provided the best emotional cue for interpreting emotions, since the scene's emotions were ambiguous. What was also found is that positive music led to a positive interpretation of the outcome or a character and negative music would create negative interpretations, like an outcome involving aggression or a character wanting to harm someone in the future.

This source is very reliable as it is a scientific study that also mentions many other studies that have been done on the same topic. This source adds more information to the other studies I have read thus far and is making me think on a deeper level about how much music really affects us as viewers.

This research made me start thinking about the idea that what really defines a movie's genre? The critics usually define it or tell us what the genre is, but the critics have to watch the movie in order to know, so it is the movie that is dictating the genre. But, what influences the viewer throughout the movie? Yes, the scenes played out on the screen and the plot line do influence how a movie is categorized, but if you think about it if a romantic movie or crime movie did not have any music in it, the categorization into a genre would be a little more ambiguous. It would take more time to categorize. Imagine the movie has a cut and dry plot of boy meets girl, they fall in love, a problem that breaks them apart follows the honeymoon phase of the relationship but then in the end they get back together. If that plot was accompanied by action music or dramatic music instead of the typical romantic music throughout, would it still be categorized as a romantic movie? There are many elements that go into categorizing a movie but I believe that music is the most important part. It determines a characters' likability, what we think will happen next, how well we remember the scene, and how we feel ourselves in congruence with the characters throughout.