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Verisimilitude

  • Faithful to the reality within the film
    • If a film is supposed to be set in our reality, such as an historical film set in Titusville, a person cannot lift cars and throw them. THAT would not fit the film's verisimilitude.
    • If the film is set in the Marvel Universe, a Hulk can turn big and green, but he cannot turn yellow and small. THAT would not fit the MCU's verisimilitude.
  • Whatever "reality" a film sets up (be it a close parallel to our IRL world or a fictional world), the film must maintain its own rules of reality.
  • When a film breaks its own rules of reality, verisimilitude is broken.

Hyper-reality

  • Quite often, even films set in our IRL reality cannot conform to our IRL verisimilitude; films often must conform to other films.
    • EXAMPLE [Cleanliness]:
      In films, the interiors of cars and houses are ALWAYS clean (unless intentionally messy to backdrop the character's chaotic life). IRL, houses and cars have various levels of messiness.
    • EXAMPLE [Family Breakfast]:
      In film, family breakfast is a wide smorgasbord of eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, pancakes, fruit, and often a big glass jug of milk. IRL, such a breakfast would mark only a very special occasion, and mostly family breakfast is simple, such as just cereal or just bagels.
    • EXAMPLE [Wet streets]: In film, streets are almost always wet--even on a clear day (it makes for good cinematography); IRL, streets are usually dry, especially so on a clear day.
    • Here's a long Reddit post about what people have noticed.
  • These hyper-real moments are considered hyper-reality because most people will think that what happens in "reality-based" film is more true to our IRL reality than what our actual IRL reality is like.
  • Some more examples
    • IRL, school dances never look as elegant as school dances in films.
    • SCENE: A group of people are being briefed on a person or situation; multiple images and documents pop up conveniently on a screen with a click of a few keys. In real life, these documents would need to be in a slide by slide power point, or it would take many minutes of clicking to open the files, resizing of the windows, and repositioning them on screen.
    • Cell phone font size in texts are MASSIVE (readable without having to zoom the camera in too much).
    • In film, no one uses Google, or Edge, or any known search engine.
    • In film, infinite zoom can be used on almost all images--zooming in on a group photo to one's person eyeball to see the reflection of the killer who was not in the picture.

    Test your Reality

    • Test your ability to distinguish between IRL reality and a film's reality that is supposedly set IRL.
    • The Quiz: Choose your answer for each question

    • The Key: Check your answers.

    Assignment

    • 200- 250 words
    • Discuss the breaks in your film's verisimilitude
    • And/Or, discuss parts of the film that are supposed to be, according to the film, parallel to IRL reality, but the film instead conforms to all filmic hyper-reality, such as the massive breakfast spread or the perfectly clean cars or school dances, etc.