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The Secrets of Movie Breath

Scientists can determine an audience's reaction to a film based on the chemicals released from their breaths.
Scientists can determine an audience's reaction to a film based on the chemicals released from their breaths. Illustration: Pete Ryan
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Talk about heavy breathing. Scientists in Germany have found that they can tell when a movie audience is watching a suspenseful (or funny) scene—based solely on the chemical profile of their breath.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Johannes Gutenberg University[2] connected a mass spectrometer (a sensitive measuring device) to the ventilation system of a pair of screening rooms at a theater complex in Mainz. They then analyzed data on the chemical compounds exhaled by viewers during 108 screenings of 16 movies. The study covered more than 9,500 individual visits to the theaters.

The films ranged from the 2013 remake of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" to "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" and included comedy, horror and romance. ("Breathless" wasn't among them.) Ten volunteers labeled every scene in each movie by genre and content.

Scientists in Germany have found that they can tell what type of movie an audience is watching merely by sampling their breath. WSJ's Monika Auger reports. Photo: Lionsgate

The scientists were able to tell, just by looking at their data, what kind of scene had been playing. For example, "the chemical signature of 'The Hunger Games' was very clear," says Jonathan Williams, a key scientist in the study, explaining that "carbon dioxide and isoprene levels in the air always increased significantly as the heroine began fighting for her life."

The researchers surmise that the audience's breath changed because seeing mortal combat on screen triggered a collective fight-or-flight response—a release of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, that pump up heart rate, blood pressure and glucose, affecting respiration.

Comedy also reliably elicited certain chemical compounds, though the spectrometer only identified them by their "mass-to-charge" ratio, so it's not possible to specify which chemicals they are. The scientists hope to get those answers with some additional research. Says Dr. Williams: "The scien ce of connecting breath emission with internal biochemistry is in its infancy."

More R & D

As a field, breath research is hot right now. Recently, European scientists reported finding a combination of 16 substances in the breath that can identify patients with irritable bowel syndrome. University of Washington scientists have developed a test of lung function that works by having the patient exhale as hard and fast as possible into a telephone. Its microphone provides information on the sound and pressure of the exhalation, and a computer on the other end can gauge lung function from it.

The findings about moviegoers' breath could have a variety of applications. Market researchers, for instance, could determine what people were feeling about a movie without asking them, thereby avoiding misreporting. Marketers also could see if product placements were working as hoped.

Ethanol emissions spiked when a character in the "Walter Mitty" movie ordered a beer. German viewers, who can buy beer in theaters, apparently chose that moment to take a swi g. The meeting of cold beer and hot tongues produced the ethanol, Dr. Williams says.

A key question for future movie research is whether the chemicals in respiration create a feedback loop and affect the audience. Could that be one of the reasons comedies are more fun in a crowd, for example?

"Cinema Audiences Reproducibly Vary the Chemical Composition of Air During Films, by Broadcasting Scene Specific Emissions on Breath," Jonathan Williams, Stefan Kramer and six other authors, Scientific Reports (May 10)

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