IR sensors record where viewers' eyes actually move and fixate — reveals which parts of your frame hold attention or get ignored. Essential feedback for composition and pacing.
Eye Tracking
You're part of the editing team, wondering why your carefully composed shot isn't directing the audience's attention where you want it to go. This is where eye tracking comes in — a method where infrared sensors capture and visualize the eye movements of test subjects while they watch a film. The result is heatmaps and gaze paths that precisely show you which image regions attract attention and which remain "dead zones."
In a practical workflow, we primarily use eye tracking in three situations: Before shooting, you can test storyboards or animatics to see if your planned shot composition works — especially valuable for complex multi-figure scenes or information-heavy sequences. After editing, you place the finished sequence in an eye-tracking booth and measure against your intention: Does your cut land on the right face before the dialogue comes? Does the eye follow the cut line, or does it jump around chaotically? For visual effects, eye tracking shows you whether your CG element has enough presence or gets lost in the crowd — critical when VFX are intended to be subtle.
The technical side is straightforward: The viewer sits in front of a monitor, sensors track the pupil (non-verbally, painlessly), and the software logs 30–250 data points per second. Depending on the device's accuracy, you get millimeter precision. Interpretation is the art — a heatmap shows you that everyone starts looking at the same point, but not why. Is it the movement? The depth of field? The lighting direction? For that, you need context and repetitions with different stimuli.
Important: Eye tracking is not a universal judgment. The results depend on the age, cultural background, and viewing experience of the participants. A horror fan and an arthouse purist will scan the same scene differently. Furthermore, you are only measuring passive viewers — your reaction at the monitor differs from your reaction in a dark cinema with sound. Nevertheless, it remains one of the few objective tools to validate your subjective image design. Many major streaming platforms and post-production houses now work with eye-tracking labs — not because it's perfect, but because it reveals our blind spots.