But let s consider the argument for film. Television technology paints each image onto photo-sensitive pixels line by line. The pixels are coated on the inside of your television screen, and the highest quality video image shown on high-definition television, a technology not even widely available in the United States, creates an image made up of 1,125 horizontal lines of pixels. The current televised standard is 525 lines. Any finer detail than that resolution is lost, at least by current standards of reception which is to say the box in my living room or yours.
Video also tends to harden colors, and shadows aren t black so much as washed black.
So if the goal of reality television is to capture reality, the argument ought to run that film is capable of putting a lot more of it into a viewer s consciousness than video. The subtlety of shading and color available in film is leagues above any televised image. Film and video have distinctly different looks. Consider the difference between Abraham Zapruder s 8mm film of the Kennedy assassination and the videotape of Rodney King being beaten by Los Angeles police officers. Both were shot on hand-held cameras by amateur filmmakers who had not expected to record the scene unfolding before them.