to comical skepticism, and this is something that we observe in the reception
of SF films from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, such as Destination Moon
(Pichel, 1950), The Incredible Shrinking Man (Arnold, 1957) and Silent
Running (Trumbull, 1972).13 The conclusion is that the fast development of
visual technology means that what we believe today will likely not be
believed tomorrow.
Computers and digital imagery achieve a level of realism similar to
mimesis that has facilitated the creation of hybrid forms with the
combination of synthetic and existing images. Paradoxically, digital media
have the capability to reproduce and imitate ‘old’ visual media formats with
the intention of producing credibility in the imitation. We can observe this in
Titanic (Cameron, 1997), in which the recreation of old footage intends to
contextualize historically and give credibility to the fiction that follows.
Indeed, and as we find in JFK (Stone, 1991), realist codes can be
technologically simulated to confuse the audience and immerse spectators in
the plot of the film. In JFK the images become ‘historical’ and gain veracity
with the imitation of original old footage. The consequence for the spectator
is that there is no concrete evidence to verify the facts we are watching. In
this way, an unsteady camera, the use of sepia or black and white, the
intentional use of unframed, unfocussed and uncorrected colours and the
resultant pretence of amateurism produces a credibility in the audience; and
the feeling of not knowing if the images are real or an imitation consequently
generates a distortion in their perception. Such technological simulation of
real footage can be observed in films like Zelig, The Blair Witch Project
(Myrik and Sanchez, 1999), Open Water (Kentis, 2003) and [REC] (Balaguero,
2008), films in which the feeling of realism of the image amplify the
credibility and anxiety of the spectator. This is a hybrid cinema characterized
by ‘total (un)realism’ in which reality is digitally reproduced using the
simulation of unprofessional techniques. Consequently, as audiences, we
need to differentiate between the ‘realistic thematic’, referring to the
13 Reviews of these films often make recourse to this way of interpreting special effects in SF films. See
http://scififantasyfilms.suite101.com/article.cfm/scific movies from the early 1950s
http://classicfilm.about.com/od/earlysciencefiction/fr/ShrinkingMan.htm,;
http://www.hometheaterinfo.com/silent.htm;
- 43 -