Looking At Eyes In Films

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I find that I do not, for the most part, have trouble looking at eyes when they are on the television screen, and often, do not have trouble understanding emotions involved in the looks on the actors'/actresses' faces. I noticed this tonight when watching 'Bleak House' and although the emotions depicted were quite strong, and obviously, you have the spoken lines and the story to help with knowing what might be felt, I found it strange given I struggle to understand in real life, face to face interractions and find eye contact in real life quite hard with most.

Is anyone else here able to look at and understand better, when seeing eyes on the screen ?

Yes, it's much easier. But I still can't read emotions that well. When people talk about "bad acting," it goes way over my head.

Yep.

Same for me. Unless it's really obvious (and usually deliberately so) I don't usually notice bad acting.

Yeah, I'm the same way. My idea of bad acting is usually bad writing.

Meh. I pay attention to the situation.

I have found I don't actually tend to look at people's faces much on tv - I am usually watching something in the background, or contemplating the tie they are wearing or something like that!

I think in real life I know people expect me to look at their faces so I have trained myself to do so, and I will also be trying to pick up cues about what they are feeling from that, whereas on TV you can usually just rely on the music to indicate emotions and what is happening, you rarely need to look at the people to do that. The main time I look primarily at the people is when the dialogue is hard to understand, and then I am usually staring at just their mouths.

I always find myself looking at eyes in films, but it's very difficult (nearly impossible) to make sufficient amounts of eye contact with unfamiliar people in real life.

In a couple of books I read that pertained to psychology, I read about a study performed and it concerned tracking the eyes of autistic and non-autistic people while they both watched the same film (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, I think it was.) The result was that the autistic subjects actually looked at the eyes a lot less than the non-autistic subjects.

I'm wondering if it may have something to do with our tendency to get bored and wander with our eyes, and/or our curiosity and urge to analyze everything else in the shot. I know that I'm often noticing things in the background of a film that others don't.

I think that as well. I always remember being fascinated with background details, starting in young childhood. (As a two- or three-year-old, when I watched the television show Barney, I fondly recall being mesmerized by the scenic background... which I didn't know was just a screen then.) I've learned to focus more on what's happening in the foreground, but I definitely find myself regressing momentarily sometimes and finding myself distracted by background details.

I look at the eyes of movie characters about as much as I look into the eyes of real people - that is, as rarely as possible.

I am a bad judge of acting, too. I tend to focus too much on tone of voice in any conversation (be it on film or in real life) so if the movie is dubbed by an actor or actress with a good speaking voice, I won't even notice that the acting isn't that good.

I'm very good at reading the emotions on screen. Books and TV were my window to the world of other people, and I've learnt almost all the usual scenarios and how someone would react to them, and I've become very good at predicting them. Because you're not participating in the situation and you can take your time analyzing what each expression and tone of voice means.
I have made abstract models of these in my mind. Often in real life I wish I had a camera and I could record what's happening and watch it through that, so I would understand better what is going on. It doesn't have the overwhelming affect of real life, and it's in a smaller scale, so it's much easier to get the gestalt of the situation rather than getting lost in all the input. At least, I think that's what it is, does that make any sense?

I still don't look directly into the eyes on TVs. I don't feel as vunerable or confused, so I CAN look more toward their face, but my eyes just naturally look at their mouths instead of the eyes.

Same. I found that I'm good at telling facial expressions and stuff if I'm watching someone do them from the side, but I lose the ability once I interact with them. Maybe partially because I don't like having their attention on me, so my eyes wander away and can't keep eye contact.

It's a lot less uncomfortable but still really unnatural. Some pictures of eyes are really creepy.

Too true. The latest mug they have put on the yahoo mail login page is disturbing, to say it mildly.