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?

• Stephen Heath remarks: “The realism of cinema, as that of the novel, is to be understood not in terms of some immediate mirroring of some reality . . . But in relation to the representation of ‘reality’ a particular society proposes and assumes.”

Realism

• Realism in electronic media is the portrayal of a narrative in a way that encourages the audience to experience it as though they were observing ‘real-world’ events.– Even if the world portrayed is ‘fantastic’

Realist presentations

• 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.

Realism

• A number of techniques have been developed that contribute to creation of the illusion of reality being played out before the eyes of the audience– The techniques include cinematography, plot and

characterization, continuity editing, ‘film language’ and a number of other factors

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

Peggy Vaughan

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 or reality– The more like stimuli we have learned to recognize

as ‘reality’ our portrayals are, the more naturally inclined we are to interpret them as ‘real’

Realism in art

• The experience of mediation—that is, the perception that the content is not the same as it would be if we were ‘really there’ is a variable—and it varies widely– An internalized set of rules for interpreting new

stimuli develops over the life span• Rules for determining ‘reality’ reflect tremendous

amounts of experience for adults, much less so for children

• . . . studies of immersion in computer games argue that children use existing schemas of reality to understand and read meaning into the hypertexts of computer games

“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 new narrative dips into the rules for ‘natural reality’ as well as ‘electronic text language’ when the audience member interprets it

• In addition, each text provides exposition, action, visual cues, etc. that relate to the interpretation of the narrative presented– New or unusual presentational styles will

gradually come to seem normal to the mind

• Especially in a pitch black theater

–e.g. Sin City

• Shapiro and Chock (1998) concluded that audience members compared the content they observed to a prototype for that class of observation.

–Genre

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

Features of realist presentation

• Third-person narration• Narrator/audience omniscience• Camera work edited to be unobtrusive• Actors, etc. never directly address audience

• “Fourth wall”

• Treatment of actions as displaying certainty—no discussion of likelihood, probability, etc.

Schema of mediation

• Mediation schema can be said to be based on two somewhat independent features of the experience of exposure to mediated content—– Physical features of the exposure• Sensory content

• Exposure situation

– Content features• Narrative fidelity

• Fantastic themes, features

Physical features

• Image complexity/fidelity with experience– The more an image seems like visual stimuli

experienced in real life, the greater the realism of the experience• 3D v. 2D

• Perspective

• Complexity– Shading/light

– Color

– Character movement

Roderick Munday

Sensory richness

• Haptics– Touch, vibration, etc.

Physical features that enhance realism

• Field of vision– The less the peripheral vision, ambient sound

intrudes, the more ‘real’ the experience seems to be• IMAX• VR helmet

• Sound– Quiet in physical surroundings during exposure– Inclusion or exclusion of music– Background noise within the video, etc.

Point of view

• Single v. multiple

• Spectator– Omniscient

– Observer

• Actor– First person shooter

Physical features

• Interactivity– Does the medium/content adjust to the audience

member’s physical action?

– Propriocentrism

Content features

• What indicators do audience members use to determine whether the content is ‘real’?

Busselle’s dimensions of realism

• Magic window: The extent to which television allows one to observe ongoing life in another place or inside the set itself

• Social realism: The extent to which television content, whether real or fictional, is similar to life in the real world

• Plausibility: The extent to which something observed on TV could exist in the real world

• Probability: The likelihood of something observed on TV existing in the real world or the frequency with which it occurs

• Identity: The extent to which viewers incorporate content into their real lives or involve themselves with content elements

• Utility: How much information or events observed on television are useful to the viewer in real life

Hall Busselle

Plausibility Plausibiliy

Typicality Probability

Factuality

Magic Window

Social Realism

Involvement Identity

Narrative consistency

Perceptual persuasiveness

Utility

Magic Window

• Very young children treat TV as a ‘magic window’ that allows them to see real people/animals/creatures in other places. That is, they think the characters are real rather than actors playing roles, that life goes on on Sesame Street while we are not watching, etc.

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

• Audience members interact with characters and people onscreen in a number of ways. Audience members may treat on-screen people or characters as real when they are only fictional characters, may fantasize that they are the characters, or may perceive a real-world relationship with either the character or the actor. These varied responses tend to enhance the realism of the experience of media consumption.

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

Emotional involvement

• Recent scientific discoveries about human brain mechanics indicate that we automatically share experiences with people we observe– Emotional experience is one of the most

compelling–Media content is created specifically to bring out

such reactions among audience members• Reaction to facial representations of emotion• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204/01.ht

ml

IdentificationParasocial interaction

Liking, similarity,

affinityImitation

Nature of process

Emotional and cognitive, alters

state of awareness

Interactional Attitude Behavior

BasisUnderstanding and empathy

AttractionPerception of character and

selfModeling

Positioning of viewer

As character As self As selfAs learner (self

as other)

Associated phenomena

Absorption in text, emotional

release

Attachment to character and text, keeping

company

Fandom, realism

Learning, reinforcement

Positioning of viewer

As character As self As selfAs learner (self

as other)

Cohen, 2006

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.

Though obviously far from the only contributing factor (plot, dialogue, acting, and other factors come instantly to mind) the importance of visually realized perceptual reality and the truth that lies in details should be obviously apparent. Imagine if a dramatic moment was supposedly taking place on a luxury ocean liner, but the ship shown onscreen was clearly just a tugboat; context influences the action, and that moment would be read significantly differently by the audience. Or more importantly for this argument, what if the ship shown was an ocean liner, but was missing the details that the audience has come to expect that mark it as such—deck chairs, shuffleboard, a largely white color scheme, or Cruise Director Julie McCoy—and instead looked like a military destroyer.

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

Content features

• The ‘realism’ of a particular character, or story, is part of the craft of storytelling, production, etc. Sometimes the director, author, etc. do not want to generate a high level of realism– Fantasy narratives

– Disturbing narratives

The textbook example of this is Jurassic Park, which drew upon both visual references and plot elements the audience would be familiar with. The dinosaurs weren’t just the same size and color as the viewers might have expected from their childhood trips to museums, but had their computer-generated skin (designed after everyday lizards’) carefully mapped to interact with their computer-generated muscles and bones. To breed further familiarity with the audience’s experience with actual animals, the dinosaurs ran and moved in patterns carefully copied from real-life quadrupeds. The visuals were not the only element to benefit from perceived reality cues: Spielberg said, ‘The credibility of the premise—that dinosaurs could come back to life through cloning of the DNA of fossil mosquitos trapped in amber—is what allowed the movie to be made’ [4].

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.

• Most films seek to produce a strong reality effect

Jim Cameron

• In T2 and Jurassic Park, computer animation was being used to solve a real-world photographic problem, and so the audience didn’t question the reality of the images. Film is inherently kind of not real, and the films that succeed best are the ones that start by creating a world or characters or whatever that say: this is real, this is real, this is real--and they keep coming at you every moment the actors are working, and every bit of production design is trying to underline in red that it’s real. The moment you start playing with virtual reality, the audience knows that what they’re seeing is not real, so you’ve sort of violated one of the most powerful things about film--the ability to create an alternate reality.

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

Audience members vary in their willing suspension of disbelief

• An example: Jurassic Park