Truthfulness and Affect via Digital Mediation in Audiovisual Storytelling

Abstract

This chapter investigates different ways in which the film techniques of digitally mediated images—such as found footage, diegetic camera, and computer screen—achieve story truthfulness and affective engagement in the viewer’s narrative interpretation process. The pursuit of truthful storytelling is to demonstrate objective facts, while mediated images in film are predominantly subjective. The chapter starts by reviewing the perennial paradox of two seemingly mutually exclusive narrative functions and then tackles the paradox by proposing a multi-leveled framework, synthesizing semiotic conceptualization and cognitive research findings. It also analyzes the various forms of digital mediated images in films over the last two decades and sheds light on how the functions of truthfulness and affective engagement can be closely intertwined rather than in conflict.