Accessing the Mind’s Eye and Ear: What Might Lab Experiments Tell Us About Film Music?

A psychological understanding of film music ought to be based on ideas derived from audiovisual phenomena in human perception and cognition, allied with experiments designed and calibrated specifically for film music rather than jerry-built from the prevailing methods in psychology and scientific analysis. Possibilities now exist for laboratory experimentation, which might change the way we understand film music and the approaches we take to it.