PB4 Update [8]

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For my PB4, I plan to conduct an interview, and centre my visual piece around that interview. Planning for my interview, I got in contact with ReSPIN, a prevention project run by North East Primary Care Partnership.

I wrote an email containing the following:

 

 

 

“Hey there, I’m a Media Student at RMIT University. I’m looking to conduct an interview with somebody who has had trouble with gambling, particularly with slot machines. This interview can be an opportunity to help raise awareness about the alluring ‘hooks’ of gambling and give insight to other people struggling with the addiction themselves. I will be delving into the immersive effects that slot machines and gambling rooms have on the mind, and how easily people can be pulled in.

I’ve been researching Poker Machines for the last few months, in fact I produced an essay recently auditing all the techniques that casinos and gambling rooms use to keep people playing for as long as possible.

You can read it here if you like: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/joshua-houston/2017/09/03/joshua-houston-pb3-gambling-room-audit/

I understand the devastating effects that it can have on people, as my brothers have been victims to compulsive gambling themselves.

The interview will just include myself and someone working the camera. I’m looking for an individual who is comfortable talking about their experiences, and sharing their thoughts and feelings, and I would be perfectly happy to film the interview in a location that is comfortable and close for them. The interview will feature questions about the first time the participant used a slot machine, how the addiction manifested itself, and the effect it had on their life. The final product will be published on my blog linked above, and used predominantly as a portfolio piece to show when applying for interviewee participants in future endeavours. A release form will need to be signed, but ethics approval won’t be necessary as the interview will technically be public.

If you know any individual who would like to participate in a short 10-20-minute interview that you could put me in touch with, I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks.

Joshua.H”

 

 

 

I’ve began recording small clippets of Slot Machines at the Gambling Room in Thornbury, and I’d writing out a script to read and record onto my final vide production. The tasks that I need to complete in the next few weeks include obviously conducting the interview, as well as another visit of the Casino (and trying to gather footage), and recording my script for the piece.

Gates of Heaven (1978) notes [7]

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Errol Morris has an interesting Documentary style, because he films his participants in a place that they are comfortable and often uses the rule of thirds to frame them. The story is about the creation of a Pet Cemetary, and he gets the perspectives of both the rendering companies (companies devoted to repurposing dead animals as resoruces) and the people backing and the people working to create and manage the Pet Cemetary. There’s a lot of emotion involved, and the interviewees are often filmed in a position that you can clearly see their eyes. I like the way that Errol has carefully cut the documentary to incorperate the silences before and after they speak, and also leaving in parts of the interview that left it feeling authentic and wholesome, like the sound of a car horn driving past, even though the interviewee commented on it.

I noticed that Errol communicates a lot with silence, often a scene will feature the interviewee in a natural habitated accomidated with nothing, just a still shot of the character to let you think about what you’ve seen and heard and how it makes you feel.  I noticed that he would often scenes run a little bit long, and leave a moment of silence after the interviewee has said what they want to say, most of the time, the person would fill the silence. Due to the lack of music within the piece, it was a refreshing sound to hear one of the characters gently strum on the guitar, and it put the audience at ease.

He would also often convey something about the character he was interviewing with the landscape that surrounded them. For example, he filmed a wealthy insurance businessman at a desk surrounded with awards, and he filmed a young college graduate in his small home in the country.

 

 

 

For my final project brief, I would like to include accomidate parts of Errols style, like

  • The use of silence when presenting an emotional scene
  • Filming characters in their natural habitat, (if possible)
  • Put the camera focus on the eyes
  • The use of Rule of Thirds whenever possible

 

 

 

 

Joshua Houston PB3: Gambling Room Audit

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There are Immersive similarities between Gambling Rooms both in the Melbourne CBD Crown Casino which focused on a range of gambling and a local Thornbury gambling bar, the Croxton Park Hotel, which focused primarily on slot machines. They both feature stimuli which contribute to the overall immersion of the space. This stimulus includes

  • Controlled comfortable temperature
  • Dimly lit, with flashing colourful lights that came from the electronic games, and titles used to allure people to play.
  • Sound
    • Casino: Loud crowd chatter and noises involved in the games
    • Hotel/Bar: Music, noises of other people slot machines, and television

In this essay, I’d like to analyse in depth the stimuli which targets the human senses of sight and hearing immediately and obviously in a gambling room, but most importantly I will state that Human Conditioning plays a huge role in immersion within a gambling space, to an extent in which addicts constantly return despite potential negative consequences to their mental, social, financial or physical well-being.

Addiction and Immersion share many common grounds. Cambridge University defines Immersion as “the fact of becoming completely involved in something”. Media that regarded as immersive requires something out of the ordinary, which contrasts the immersion that takes place in a gambling room. To become addicted to something, that something needs to have an alluring initial immersive ‘hook’ to attract a viewer, user, or participator. The main thing that attracts people to a gambling room in the first place is partly the potential to quickly and easily earn money, though the way that the room is designed can keep people staying for longer than initially planned. Slot machines are the simplest form of Gambling, requiring no prior research or knowledge on how to use them, simply insert money, press a button and potentially receive a lot back. Most people, however, do not receive a lot back, yet kept coming back to use the machine after huge net losses. “Instead of inserting coins into a slot as in the past, players are more likely to insert paper money, bar- coded paper tickets, or plastic cards with credit stored on chips or magnetic stripes. To activate the game, they no longer pull a lever, but instead press a button or touch a screen. Denomination of play can vary from one cent to one hundred dollars, and players can choose to bet from one to as many as one thousand-coin credits per game.” (Schüll 2012) The first animated video screen slot machine was developed in 1976 in Kearny Mesa, California by the company Fortune Coin Co. And throughout the next 20 years, slot machines had moved into key position of the Casino Floor, generating twice as much revenue as all the “live games” put together. ­ (1)

It’s hard to say what the target market or audience with gambling, because it really targets a huge range of people from a range of social class. John C. Mowen, a Professor at Oklahoma State University, and Xiang Fang, an Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin found that slot machine gamblers, unlike other gamblers, were motivated by escape, low self-esteem and excitement. Often in Casino construction design, they would avoid 90-degree angles, as it forces people to stop and reflect on where to go, instead “they want to curve you gently to where they want you to go” (Schüll 2012) which implies that many guests aren’t entirely sure of their plans for that night.

In all states of apart from Western Australia, slot machines are perfectly legal to be presented almost anywhere in Australia, including hotels, sports and RSL clubs (2) Melbourne, Victoria has over 18,700 licensed gaming machines. Upon walking in to, Crown Casino, the home to over 2600 slot machines, (3) I was overwhelmed with the overall size and supposed wealth of the building. I was told that I wasn’t allowed to take pictures for security reasons, but there were bright neon lights against sleek metallic pillars, big fancy leather couches and chairs encompassed guests while wealthy looking corporate dressed guests engaged in games of Blackjack, Poker, Roulette, and many other fun looking activities. The sound was enormous, from the busy chatter of groups, and individuals keenly watching a man read out numbers which would reveal whether or not they would turn a profit that night. It felt large and spacious, yet still very full and lively. I can imagine that even if the room was completely empty, it wouldn’t feel empty, just because of the amount of light and colour that constantly seemed to envelop the room. The only thing I could imagine would make the room more immersive, particularly in a media production sense was if it had some kind of musical soundtrack accompanying my arrival, though obviously that wouldn’t work in reality.

Adjacent the energetic crowd were stone-faced individuals with eyes locked on the slot machine video screens in front of them, sitting on padded raised chairs mindlessly inserting note after note into these bright musical boxes playing happy energetic music in the major scale. Most of these people, unlike many other guests of the casino were not here for a fun night out, they were here desperately trying to earn back what they may have lost previously. I sat down, and the screen was initially so bright looking directly at it, that it made the area around it fade away into the darkness, making my only focus this screen positioned directly in front of me. I reached into my wallet and grabbed one of my 5 dollar coins to insert into one of the machines. The computerised spinner spun for a few turns while playing the cheerful music, occasionally making strange connections between the icons I didn’t much understand. This machine was both visually and aurally stimulating, and though the activity mostly consisted of me watching these computerised reels spin, there was a feeling of physical interaction using the sense of touch as I would insert more coins into the slot. It was clear that the machine was designed to lure you into immersion, rather than confront you with it. There were many buttons along the ‘dashboard’ of the machine, but only one seemed to be necessary, the one in which would begin the spin. On my third turn, the spinner paused to reveal that I had won 15 cents, and it flashed lights and colour to reinforce my win. My focus was very occupied on the screen despite the commotion around me, and at that point in time, I was completely immersed in this screen which offered a potential fantastic monetary reward, until suddenly the spinning stopped, silently revealing with a small black box that I had run out of money. I noticed that there was no sound, colour, or light that reinforced the fact that I had just lost 5 dollars. Even for the small amount of time that I had spent playing, turning away from the screen and leaving the room feel dark and mundane in contrast.

Photo I took at the Croxton Park Hotel

What makes a slot machine so immersive is more than just bright colourful lights and positive music, a huge contributing factor is human conditioning. The studies conducted by Ivan Pavlov suggest that reliable cues associated with some kind of a reward, will trigger a dopamine response, or the ‘feel good chemical’ in the brain. (4) This means that the enormous sound that I described earlier about the Gambling Rooms contribute to the overall immersion of the space for an addict, because while on a slot machine, they are conditioned to be in a constant state of anticipation of a reward, and there are noises which an addict associates with winning that are relentlessly being played and repeated in the gambling space by various other slot machines. The immediacy of the rewards, as well as the losses disguised as wins contributed to the reason in which slot machines are so successful (5) These ‘rewards’ are making a bet of 10 dollars, and winning 9 back. The machines celebrate the 9-dollar win with lights and music, when in reality, you’ve just made a 10% loss. Studies show that these ‘rewards’ can alter neuroplasticity in regions of the brain, and affect dopamine receptors to be triggered at these particular cues. Behavioural addiction involves the need to seek a natural reward like money, sex, food etc, despite negative consequences to a person’s mental, social, financial or physical well-being.  The long-term effects of addiction, both behavioural and drug induced affect a protein known as “FBJ murine osteosarcoma viral oncogene homolog B” or “ΔFosB” (DeltaFosB), and this protein contributes heavily to the development of pathological behaviour. (6) This is partly why addiction is so difficult to overcome, because over time, the brain has been hard-wired to elicit a dopamine response to external stimuli, and an individual can’t simply ‘turn off’ that dopamine response. To make matters worse for compulsive gamblers, as they develop stress because of their financial losses, they’re more likely to take extra financial risks that they wouldn’t normally take in order to peruse the reward further, and this not only goes for gambling, stressed individuals are more likely to binge eat, engage in sexual behaviour or take drugs (Sinha, 2001) (7)

Addictions are immersive experiences that people feel the need to overindulge in to a point of negative consequences. Vibrant Colours and dynamic sounds contribute to an initial immersion, but Human Conditioning can help media practitioners keep immersion. While it’s difficult to present an audience with an immediate reward similar to a slot machine during a film or radio piece, the brain can be conditioned to associate cues with experiences, and that can create an anticipation that will keep audiences attentive to what’s being presented to them.  For example, in a Television series having a particular type sound track play for a scene featuring sexual stimuli, or when something humorous is about to take place. That way when that kind of soundtrack is heard, the audience can be in a state of anticipation for the scene to follow, which as previously stated, is a primary mode of immersion. Media can be created that’s addictive to watch, and as media practitioners, we not only need to be constantly searching for a way to initially allure audiences, but also keep their attention for as long as possible.

 

 

 

 

References:

  1. Schüll, N. (2012). Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas. Princeton University p3-5

  2. https://www.vcglr.vic.gov.au/gambling/gaming-venue-operator

  3. https://www.responsiblegambling.vic.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0019/31870/Fact-Sheet-Fact-Sheet-GIRO-Info-Pokies-in-Victoria-2015-2016.pdf

  4. Karen L. Hollis, Mount Holyoke College, Pg 960 “Drug Tolerance and Addiction” Contemporary Research on Pavlovian Conditioning (1997) p961, 962

  5. Sandy C. Chen College of Business, Oregon State University, Bend, Oregon, USA Stowe Shoemaker Conrad N. Hilton College of Hotel and Restaurant Management, University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA, and Dina Marie V. Zemke The Hospitality College, Johnson & Wales University, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA – Segmenting slot machine players: a factor-cluster analysis (2012) p25-27

  6. Olsen CM (December 2011). “Natural rewards, neuroplasticity, and non-drug addictions”. Neuropharmacology

  7. E Pool, T Brosch, S Delplanque, and D Sander, The University of Geneva “Stress Increases Cue-Triggered “Wanting” for Sweet Reward in Humans” (2015) p128

Can we trust our perception to accurately depict reality? [6]

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Could the way that I view the world be completely different to the way you do? Maybe we can view colour and light differently to others, and clearly some of us taste particular food differently to others, I personally hate even the slightest bit of spice, and yet other people are willing to try extremely hot peppers for fun.  The idea that the german biologist Jakob von Uexküll titles “umwelt” is the “biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal”. Perhaps if we were to view the world through the eyes of a lion, or an insect, the data our brains recieve could be a language or a code that we simply can’t make any sense of.

Skimming though Darrins Week 7 reading, I noticed he made an interesting point about the fact that in film, we accept that we are viewing from the perspective that we are given. For example, in film if where the camera was following after a little girl with the sound effects of someone panting, we would assume the role of a killer (or a creep). The suspension of disbelief is a concept that facinates me, because humans put aside the fact that something might not make any sense, it order to enjoy what they’re viewing.

  1. We no longer perceive our bodies; 2. We no longer perceive our environment; 3. We no longer judge probability or reality-test; 4. We respond emotionally to the fiction as though it were real.”

People can be completely immersed in a piece of media that just features subject matter that simply isn’t possible, like the chidren in Charlie in the Chocolate Factory, bloated from a lollie and floating towards the ceiling. Instead of being totally disenchated with the film at that moment, audience members were more likely to just enjoy what they were seeing.

“Neurobiologically, the suppression of the posterior superior parietal lobe occurs during the suspension of disbelief in a cinema (Holland, 2003)”

Throughout the remainder of the Mechanics of Immersion course, I would like to play with the suspension of disbelief, making media that features something impossible but instead of deterring the audience, actually intices the viewer to want to see or hear more.