why while we watch a film our perspective adapts to that represented in the story and we are not surprised by things that are unrealistic in reality but are normal in the footage?
In:
Because what you think of as “reality” is really just congruency. You don’t have access to reality, you only have access to your senses. As long as your senses are giving you *consistent* information, it will be real to you. You can see this in current politics where people literally live in different realities due to being exposed to different narratives that are internally consistent, but inconsistent with each other.
When enjoying a movie, you focus your senses to filter out everything but the movie. If the movie is doing it’s job well, it will provide consistent input to your senses and your brain will believe it to be true. Until you look away and the “real” world comes crashing back into your consciousness.
It’s called “suspension of disbelief” and is fundamental for most fictions. You’re able to intentionally (intentional doesn’t mean you have to concentrate to do it) lock out of your thought process anything that would be surreal in real life but fits in the movie you’re watching.
Let’s say, in Harry Potter it’s ok to kill a person with a couple words, once you willingly acknowledge this your brain can empathize with characters’ fear and suffering. If suddenly Harry shakes the wand and summons a looney toons – style anvil or an alien, your immersion breaks, for example.
Edit: it’s more like accepting a set of rules for the duration of that movie to understand and enjoy it better.
In a nutshell: suspension of disbelief in storytelling only works if the set of unrealistic rules is clear, well-expressed early on to the audience, and nothing later in the story comes too strongly against it.
For all that John Lasseter turned out to not be a very good person, he had that fine line down to a science, it’s fascinating to read interviews about his approach to it. In particular, Toy Story was a hard exercise in it, because there are many things that make its mythology somewhat contradictory. But people actively want to believe, so when it works and the line is well-balanced, the payoff is huge.
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