My point is, until the advent of HDTV, I never noticed any of these issues and Lou's Hulk did seem more real. But now that I've seen the bear and the actress covered in green paint, and seeing all the holes in the makeup on Lou, it kind takes me out of the "suspension of disbelief" mode. It makes it less real than it used to feel.
Bill Bixby's HULK wins!
- Thread starter RobertScorpio
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My point is, until the advent of HDTV, I never noticed any of these issues and Lou's Hulk did seem more real. But now that I've seen the bear and the actress covered in green paint, and seeing all the holes in the makeup on Lou, it kind takes me out of the "suspension of disbelief" mode. It makes it less real than it used to feel.
I once went to see a live performance of a Dracula play that a college friend of mine was starring in. At the climactic moment, when Jonathan Harker stabbed Dracula with a stake, the tip of the stake broke off and fell to the stage floor. The players just ignored it and went on with the show. And I allowed myself to ignore it too. Because the point is that a story is being told, and everything else is peripheral to that. The physical reality was that the point of the stake broke off, but so what? The physical reality was that the players were five feet in front of me rather than in Transylvania in the 19th century, and that they were on a wooden stage with minimalist scenery rather than a mountain pass in the Carpathians. The physical reality was that the redhead in the fetching dress was a college friend I had a crush on rather than Mina Murray, ex-fiancee of Jonathan Harker (it was a somewhat revisionist version of the story). If I could get into the story despite those things, then the broken stake didn't matter.
And the detail of HDTV? It's nothing compared to being in the front row of a live performance. Yet people have managed to enjoy works of theater, unrealism and all, for thousands of years.
And the detail of HDTV? It's nothing compared to being in the front row of a live performance. Yet people have managed to enjoy works of theater, unrealism and all, for thousands of years.
I think one of the issues about the unreality of it all, is when a movie or show DOES look absolutely real, and then suddenly doesn't.
Stage plays are tailored to NOT rely on the scenery. It is a stylized unreality from beginning to end. It's consistent, and therefor it becomes a style and does not affect the overall story. The problem is, with TV/Movies they may look absolutely convincing.
...Then the brick wall in the alley vibrates when a mugger bumps into it. Suddenly it has "switched realities" and is now clearly unreal. It's that transition that I think throws an audience.
Take one of Tim Burton's movies. Say, Batman or Beetlejuice. Those things are filled with wacky unreal stuff beginning to end, so there is no problem.
Take a cartoon. It starts and ends as a cartoon. Or "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", which mixes cartoons & real action beginning to end. I think it's when a film/show is going for total realism and fails that there is a problem.
The audience has to take a second to 'switch gears' s it were.
Stage plays are tailored to NOT rely on the scenery. It is a stylized unreality from beginning to end. It's consistent, and therefor it becomes a style and does not affect the overall story. The problem is, with TV/Movies they may look absolutely convincing.
...Then the brick wall in the alley vibrates when a mugger bumps into it. Suddenly it has "switched realities" and is now clearly unreal. It's that transition that I think throws an audience.
Take one of Tim Burton's movies. Say, Batman or Beetlejuice. Those things are filled with wacky unreal stuff beginning to end, so there is no problem.
Take a cartoon. It starts and ends as a cartoon. Or "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", which mixes cartoons & real action beginning to end. I think it's when a film/show is going for total realism and fails that there is a problem.
The audience has to take a second to 'switch gears' s it were.
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I don't think there's that much realism in normal TV and movies. The way people are made up, the perfection of their hair and wardrobe, the lighting, the exaggerated sound effects, it's all heightened or artificial in some way. Not to mention commonplace, intentional unrealities like thunder sounding simultaneous with lightning, rain always pouring down very densely after a single initial thunderclap, bullets sparking when they hit metal, blood or debris blowing out backward from a bullet hit, etc. You can lull yourself into accepting these things, but compare them to reality and they fall short.
Not to mention the characters who deliver dialogue far more smoothly and free of clumsiness than most of us talk, and the events that progress more coherently or dramatically than our own lives do. Or the characters who look and sound exactly like actors you recognize, or like characters you know from other shows. (Gee, David Banner's a dead ringer for Eddie's Father!) Or the fact that there's music playing over the scene but nobody in the scene seems to hear it. It's all unreal. If something seems acceptably close to reality to you, that's because you've chosen to set your threshold of disbelief above its level. It's just a question of where you decide to place that threshold.
Not to mention the characters who deliver dialogue far more smoothly and free of clumsiness than most of us talk, and the events that progress more coherently or dramatically than our own lives do. Or the characters who look and sound exactly like actors you recognize, or like characters you know from other shows. (Gee, David Banner's a dead ringer for Eddie's Father!) Or the fact that there's music playing over the scene but nobody in the scene seems to hear it. It's all unreal. If something seems acceptably close to reality to you, that's because you've chosen to set your threshold of disbelief above its level. It's just a question of where you decide to place that threshold.
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