Lingfei Luan

Film perception and cognition research, as interdisciplinary research lags behind the curve on issues, methods, and trends found important by its adjacent disciplines, such as film, communication, and psychology. It provides a scientific perspective for exploring the fundamental analysis issues to evaluate the film’s endogenous structure and exogenous power in the audience. It will mount the position of Chinese film research around the world by integrating the multidisciplinary theories and practice. 对目前中国电影研究学科性反思的提出，不仅是一种学术研究的重新审视，也是面临世界电影格局重组的根本应对策略。面对经济和文化等方面的冲击，中国电影研究需要顺应发展趋势：从传统的理论性研究汇入创作实践与理论体系交融的大方向，从单一的学科研究转向到跨学科的探索。电影感知研究正是解决电影跨学科问题的最佳研究方法，它将传统电影研究与其他学科的现实经验相结合，可以从根本上推进中国电影研究以及实践在世界电影产业舞台上的位置。

The analysis method and paradigm of film have become a controversial topic in the data-driven era. Film, is not only an attractive industry that can achieve filmmakers’ imagination but has become a perfect stimulus to understand human being’s mental activity. The core research in this study is to examine the impact of filmmaking experience and the role of narrative denoters from filmmakers’ construction to audiences’ interpretation. Based on previous studies and integrating cognitive approaches, the thesis re-explores the nature and essence of film and proposes an alternative term - narrative denoter - which can be used as the indication of message exchanging between filmmakers and audiences. Using a released film that has a complete story to do the experiment, this study investigates the relationship between major, film interpretations, event segmentation, and audience’s preference. The result showed that filmmaking experience does not impact the interpretation of film; however the identification of the narrative denoter played an important role in film perception and cognition; apart from these, the audience’s preference did not correlate with film interpretation. With respect to this result, the narrative denoter can be indicator to demonstrate the message transitions from filmmaker to audience. Suggestions were made for future cognitive film studies on using the narrative denoters as a new analysis unit.