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New digital recording technologies pose new creative dilemmas for documentary videographers. The new type high-resolution video camera with 35 mm sized sensors and mounts for real film lenses generate a type of imagery that does not look typically ’observational’. By testing this imagery’s capacity as the guarantor of documentary authenticity and interrelating this with visualisation theories, this paper aims to explain the ontology of the new digital documentary image, its lure for the documentary filmmaker and its ramifications on reception in order to leverage technological production awareness of the documentary videographer and production members. The empirical data presented in this article is based on an explorative reception study in which five different types of moving image sequences were tested on an audience in order to be able to define the level of indexical appeal in shallow depth of field, high resolution, High Production Value, documentary moving images. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

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.

This study investigates the influence of different forms of media instructions on the process and outcomes of completing a specific procedural task. The experiment was conducted with four student groups having an education in the area of Information Design. In the experiment four media instructions - text only, text plus drawings, a series of pictures and video with narration - were considered. The findings show that the type of media has an influence on the ability to solve a procedural task and on group interaction and the way groups solve a task. Compared with the other instructions, video instruction triggered a different interaction and behavioural pattern during assembly. Participants considered both video and picture instructions as more usable in terms of facilitating the ability to understand, select and apply possible solutions to a given task. However, the video medium showed little influence on dialogue in the group during assembly. The instructions, such as text plus drawings, pictures and video had a similar influence on task performance times, whereas text instructions took three times longer to implement than other instructions.

This pilot study aims at illuminating human visual behavior in the interaction with pictorial instructions. The study is a multi disciplinary effort and is informed by the connection between gaze and attention as well as certain aspects of the Visual Literacy field and reveals a few basic visual behavior tendencies related to certain specific pictorial instruction types. By doing so, it is also an evaluation of the usefulness of a methodological framework consisting of six measures.The analysis of this paper is primarily based on eye-tracking data. In addition, an observed assembly that generated video and sound recordings is also part of the method. In the study 12 Film/TV- production students (out of which there is complete data from 9 informants) interacted with three types of types of visual instructions of the same assembled object, a solar powered toy.

This article explores whether GTS (gaze time on screen) can be useful as an engagement measure in the screen mediated learning context. Research that exemplifies ways of measuring engagement in the on-line education context usually does not address engagement metrics and engagement evaluation methods that are unique to the diverse contemporary instructional media landscape. Nevertheless, unambiguous construct definitions of engagement and standardized engagement evaluation methods are needed to leverage instructional media's efficacy. By analyzing the results from a mixed methods eye-tracking study of fifty-seven participants evaluating their visual and assembly performance levels in relation to three visual, procedural instructions that are versions of the same procedural instruction, we found that the mean GTS-values in each group were rather similar. However, the original GTS-values outputted from the ET-computer were not entirely correct and needed to be manually checked and cross validated. Thus, GTS appears not to be a reliable, universally applicable automatic engagement measure in screen-based instructional efforts. Still, we could establish that the overall performance of learners was somewhat negatively impacted by lower than mean GTS-scores, when checking the performance levels of the entire group (N = 57). When checking the stimuli groups individually (N = 17, 20, 20), the structural diagram group's assembly time durations were positively influenced by higher than mean GTS-scores.

A film editor’s refining of film edits at a frame-by-frame matching is an effort of perceptual precision. This paper investigates whether a failure of a few frames would jeopardize the perceived continuity of the film. 33 Swedish students, 17 female, average age 26, were eye tracked while watching two versions of the same documentary film sequence, where one version was completed to satisfaction by a film editor, and the other version had its edits altered 4-6 frames against the film editor’s intentions.

The analysis scrutinized gaze hits in Areas-of-Interest (AoI:s) appointed by the film editor, as well as saccade frequency and pupil dilation after edit points. No significant difference was found for gaze hits in AoI:s, whereas saccade frequency increased 120-400 ms after edit points by  29.4%, and pupil sizes increased by 28% relative size, 200-500 ms after edits, both in the altered version of the film sequence.

These results indicates that the altered film sequence constrained viewers, with possible cognitive effects, which implies that the frame-by-frame matching of film edits achieved by film editors is crucial to film continuity.