BANG! HOW TO DESIGN A PLANECRASH IN ACTION-ADVENTURE MOVIES.
RHETORIC, THE INTENTION OF EFFECTIVENESS AND REPRESENTATIONAL AFFECT-TECHNIQUES IN A NEW THEORETICAL MODEL OF DESIGN

What makes us believe, that we really witness a planecrash in Zemecki's "Cast Away"? What triggers the fear in "Final Destination"? How does the 'controlled flight into terrain' in "Die Hard II" lead us to helpless rage?

This paper provides a theoretical model of film as design and design as rhetoric. Rhetoric always wants to achieve an effect. One of the devices which rhetoric uses is emotion, in order to pursue its aim of intentional effectiveness: emotions which touch the rhetor during the speech, but also emotions which aim to move the audience. The PAT - Presentational Affect Techniques project stems from a distinction which can be made in rhetoric, precisely in this communication of emotions: between presentation and representation. In brief: design methods always generate their emotion on two levels, which may be more or less strongly marked and may stand in different relation to each other. In every communication, both levels are active, nevertheless they can be observed separately. On the representational level the medium communicates some third issue - a story, a message, an announcement, symbolic content - thus, something which only exists when communicated by the medium. On the presentational level, on the other hand, creative means have an actual physical effect: a white screen really does dazzle your eyes, the ultra-large atrium confuses its visitors' physical perception of size and shock photographs [like for example affect pictures] literally turn your stomach. Here the triggering effects are, you might say, physical, present and impart a direct, not a representational effect. Such presentational affect techniques - that means techniques which intentionally play on this second level - can be particularly clearly featured in films. They are, nonetheless, equally effective in product design, communication design, information design etc.

Filmmaking as a design practice offers a good framework to investigate this subject. A comprehensive analysis of more than 150 planecrashes in action-adventure films in the project led to the first classification of presentational affect techniques in films. Action-adventure films arouse, to a great extent, feelings in their spectators by such techniques such as subwoofer bass tones, lightning flashes or shaking camera movements. 86 such PAT could be defined for action-adventure sequences alone. Most presentational affect techniques are not specific to film but can appear in different media forms: so for example the effect of colours, the alteration in spatial awareness, the rhythmisation of perception patterns. They all create emotion by their mere existence. A design catalogue can be derived, in which every affect technique is linked to its effect, and where the most varied examples are represented. It is obvious that such a catalogue of measures for design practice, once again, becomes a tool.