Syncretistic images: iPhone fiction filmmaking and its cognitive ramifications

This article will address the question of how fiction films are individuated in terms of image quality on the grounds of the recording technology used. As new cost-effective digital recording technologies are introduced to the marketplace, this becomes a salient issue to understand for producers and production teams. In order to define cameras' image quality capacities, three almost identical short fiction film sequences were tested on a young audience in a comparative blind test. Surprisingly, the result unambiguously showed that most viewers preferred the film recorded on an iPhone. Based on Barbara Maria Stafford's theoretical framework on the cognitive work of images and theories that concern ecological moving image theory, the analysis of this article aims to explain the reception study's result by illuminating the sublime and ambiguous figure-ground constellation of the iPhone video and its cognitive ramifications.

Of the three versions, the iPhone version, was considered to have the best image quality; by inference, then, the highest in production value. When comparing the three versions, some audience members did not notice any differences in terms of image quality.