Reality and its relationship to
media
Presence, identification, realism
What is reality?
• Though the nature of reality seems obvious, it
is actually a matter of great debate
– Is it physical, solid, external, unaffected by human
consciousness?
– Or is it dependent upon human consciousness,
malleable, partial, changeable?
Two major meanings of realism
• An accurate depiction of the natural/historical
world
• A form of representation that depicts what is
seen as an unmediated view of the natural
world
Are ‘natural’ and ‘real’ the same?
• The ‘real’ in realistic presentation has as much to do
with culturally learned expectations as with capture
of ‘true’ or ‘natural’ action, objects, etc.
– Color, sound effects, etc. may need to be enhanced in order
to generate a ‘realistic’ representation
– Time is often distorted (compressed) to make it more
compatible with audience expectations as well as to work
with the story
• ‘Natural’ presentation (start the camera and walk
away) may be experienced as ‘less real’ than doctored
– It is often hard to hear dialogue, etc. because of ambient
sound
Practically speaking
• From a cognitive information processing
standpoint, we have two things interacting that
produce reality:
– Sensory input, which is actually digital
information flowing from our receptors to our
brains, and
– Theories about what the data represent, stored in
memory, based on prior experiences and thoughts
Dependence upon our senses
• Because our senses are our connection to some
supposed physical world, and their reaction to
stimuli from that world define our
understanding of ‘reality’ manipulation of
stimuli can influence our experience of reality
Realism in art
Roderick Munday
Why worry about it?
• A realistic portrayal is thought to:
– Increase audience enjoyment of the
narrative
– Enhance audience involvement
• Emotional connection with characters
– Increase learning
Three facets of realism
• Perceptual realism
• Historical realism
• Presentational realism
Physical features that enhance realism
• Visual fidelity
• Quality of image (density, color)
• Depth
• Motion
• Fidelity of sound
• Noise
• Depth of sound
• 3D effects
• Limitation of distraction
• Dominance of field of vision
• Limitation of non-narrative perceptual input
• Additional perceptual input
• Haptics
• Smells
• Taste
Increasing visual realism
• Visual fidelity
– Increasing quality of film stock
• Speed, granularity, contrast
• Color
– Gradual improvement in quality of color
• Widescreen
– Wider screens—more like visual field
• CGI
IMAX
• 3D
– Color-based
– polarization-based
– 3D without glasses
• Increasingly realistic animation
Sound
– Increasing quality, decreasing ‘noise’
– Mono to stereo to surround sound (5.1 to 7.1)
• THX
Surround sound
Sensory richness
• Haptics
– Touch, vibration, etc.
Physical features
• Interactivity
– Does the medium/content adjust to the audience
member’s physical action?
• Transportation
– The feeling of entering into the narrative
world/world presented in the text
• Thought to be tied to emotional attachment with
characters and interactivity
Virtual reality
Virtual reality
The Ascension spacepad shown in
action. My VR system will make this
primitive in comparison.
VirtualReality.net.au
The Future of Things
Simulations
Source: Io9 We come from the future
CAVE
Second Life
World of Warcraft
Io9 We come from the future
Historical realism
• Authors/creators vary in their attempts to
produce historically accurate renditions—even
with fictional material
– Concerns over audience reactions to apparently
inaccurate portrayals are tied to goals of the
authors/directors/artists, etc.
The reelization of reality
• “The drive behind the need to create a strong
perceptual reality, particularly in referentially unreal
productions, is difficult to pin down. Charles and
Mirella Affron discuss what they term the ‘Reality
Effect’—a notion of perceptual reality which asserts
that sets must look real enough that people who have
been to the actual location they replicate might think
the films were shot on location.”
– Frank, 2004
• Plausibility/depiction of audience fantasies
regarding historical worlds, etc. may substitute
for historical accuracy
• Lord of the Rings
Jurassic Park
– New or unusual presentational styles will gradually
come to seem normal to the mind
• Especially in a pitch black theater
–e.g. Sin City
Presentational realism
• Representation is supposed to ‘stand in’ for the actual
events and objects
• The work of representation is hidden from view.
• That is, you should not be aware of all the
technology, decision-making, etc. that went into
telling the story—it should seem as though you are a
fly on the wall actually watching real events unfold.
– “Classic Hollywood style”
“Film language”
• Film scholars have argued that experience with
film teaches us a new set of rules for
interpreting stimuli that makes film depictions
appear ‘real’
– Genre rules
• Each text dips into the rules for ‘natural
reality’ as well as ‘electronic text language’
Features of realist presentation
• Third-person omniscient narration/focalization
– Sometimes First-person focalization can be
realistic
• Camera work edited to be unobtrusive
• Limited use of supers, etc.
• Actors, etc. never directly address audience
• “Fourth wall”
• Treatment of actions as displaying certainty—
no discussion of likelihood, probability, etc.
Hyperreality
• Hyperreality refers to a situation where a
depiction is perceived as more real than
‘reality’ itself
• This has been found where, for example, the dialogue
between two characters is artificially enhanced so the
audience can hear it—and come away perceiving the
scene as more realistic than those exposed to the
original recording
Perceived realism is often enhanced
by narrative quality
• Audience members will forgive shortcomings
of narrative, see it as more realistic when the
story is compelling and well-told
Narrative fidelity
• Are actions, events, and characters presented in
ways that the audience member accepts as logical
or at least plausible?
– This will vary with a range of expectations brought to
the experience by the audience member.
• This can be a feature of even fantastic narratives
– For example, the behavior of characters in apocalyptic
sci-fi stories may be judged as ‘realistic’ if it conforms
to the physical rules and behavioral expectations of
that world.
Plausibility v. probability
• As kids grow up, the tendency to judge the
realism of programs shifts from their
plausibility—whether or not they could
happen—to their probability—how likely that
the things portrayed would happen or would be
encountered in real life by the audience
member. Probability and social realism
(whether the depiction is like real life) are the
most common sources of reality judgments
among college students.
Identification or involvement
• If audience members are emotionally taken
with a presentation they experience it as more
real.
– This can happen even though they realize that the
context/narrative is fantastic
• Involvement with at least one character has the
impact of increasing the feeling of realism
Hall
Busselle
Plausibility
Plausibility
Typicality
Probability
Factuality
Magic Window
Social Realism
Involvement
Identity
Narrative consistency
Perceptual persuasiveness
Utility
Realism is not always prized
• On occasion, the attempt is made to present a
story as fantasy
– You may want a sort of magical feeling
• Harry Potter
– You may want the audience to experience the
narrative as pure escape
– You might want the natural and mundane world to
be seen as fantastic
• Frank, Scott (2004). Perceptual reality and the
disappearing Hollywood studio libraries,
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
Television, 24(2): 269 - 283
3D