At first glance, it looks like any high-end cinema: booming surround sound, a razor-sharp 4K projector and rows of reclining seats. But instead of clutching popcorn, a headset records my brain activity and a heart rate monitor wraps around my arm while infra-red cameras capture every blink and fidget.

I’m sitting in a one-of-a-kind cinema at the University of Bristol where researchers are studying how people respond to what they see on screen. By combining viewers’ physical reactions with verbal feedback on the parts of the film they found most compelling, the team hopes to understand which moments truly grip attention – and whether that insight could help film-makers create better movies and take greater creative risks.

“It’s a cinema, but for me it’s also a research lab where the technology is turned on the audience to understand at what points are they completely immersed,” said Prof Iain Gilchrist, a neuropsychologist at the University of Bristol, who is leading the project.

Audience members are wired up to sensors measuring brain activity and heart rate, while infrared cameras track where they are looking and whether they are fidgeting. The researchers are less interested in individual biometric responses than in pinpointing the moments when those signals become most synchronised – a sign that audiences are highly engaged with what is unfolding on screen.

“The data we are collecting here will allow us to understand how the audience’s understanding of the story is shaped by particular scenes and inform decisions about the most impactful edit,” Gilchrist said.

This week, audiences were invited into the cinema for the first time to have their reactions measured while watching Reno, a short science-fiction film that explores humanity’s relationship with artificial intelligence. Different groups were shown alternative cuts of the same movie, and the findings will be used to help its director, Rob Hifle, refine the final edit.

Hifle said the experiment would be invaluable in helping him understand how viewers were responding to the film, particularly as one version significantly reduced the screen time of a central character. “It’s going to be really interesting to see how the audience engages with the characters, and whether I’ve got the story beats in the right place,” he said.

He said he was not anticipating major changes, but that “some of what emerges may be things I hadn’t even conceived of, which is exciting, because it could determine how I change the cut.

“We’re not treating this as a paint-by-numbers thing. It’s about using the data to help the film resonate better with the audience. Normally, when you’re editing a film it’s just you and the editor. But it’s essential to get more data to see if it sinks or swims.”

In this case, he chose to use audience testing towards the end of the process, but said it could also prove valuable at the conceptual stage. “I can only see this technology proliferating throughout the industry, because everything relies on audience data now, whether it’s a product or a film.”

However, Prof Amanda Lotz at Queensland University of Technology in Australia, who specialises in the television and streaming industries, questioned whether such tools could solve the industry’s real challenge. In today’s highly fragmented media landscape, she said, success often depended less on trying to engineer something with universal appeal and more on identifying and reaching the right audience.

“Separate from whether a cross-section of individuals react the same way, media users come to it for different reasons. What you select to relax is likely different from when you want something intense or challenging, or when you are watching with family.”

There was also a tension between using audience reaction data to optimise content and creating genuinely original storytelling, she said. “Original storytelling prioritises craft and story, not a formula of ‘50% of tested audience members want X’.”

But Prof Tim Smith at the University of the Arts London and president of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image said the project marked an important step forward.

“For the whole history of cinema, film-makers have sought to understand how the decisions they make during a film’s creation impact audience responses, but the methods at their disposal have been too coarse and imprecise,” he said. “This represents a radical scientific advancement that can provide precise, moment-by-moment insights and give film-makers the insights needed to craft the future of cinema.”

Eventually, Gilchrist said, the technology could be applied beyond cinema to other forms of creative media. He has already used heart rate monitoring to study how audiences respond to live music, finding that compared with those watching via a live stream, people who were there in person reported feeling more immersed and their heart rates synchronised more closely with one another – a sign of engagement.

Gilchrist acknowledged the approach could also appeal to advertisers, although he said it was better suited to longer-form content. The John Lewis Christmas advert might be a notable exception, he said, as it typically had a narrative arc and multiple scenes.

He said it could also be useful in education, including university lecture halls. “Typically, I stand in front of 300 students, some of whom are half asleep or not as engaged as they could be. There’s a real opportunity to get a sense, moment by moment, of how engaged they are with what I’m telling them. There may also be a future where that feedback is live.”

Most of all, he hopes the technology could motivate creatives to be more adventurous with the content they create. “Mainstream television, whether it’s a streaming service or terrestrial, tends to be relatively conservative because making it is quite high risk. We want to de-risk that process and give directors the creativity to try something different. If we test it and the audience loves it, we can push that out and everyone can see it,” Gilchrist said.

“It’s not about telling a director: this is what you should do. Rather, it’s: here’s another tool in your kit to determine what might and might not work,” Gilchrist said.