• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.24
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• pp.173-197
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• 2011

Through a story, the audience moves between fiction and reality. A story is an emotional experience that appeals to human feeling. The rational function of a story is to convey knowledge and information, and its emotional function is to touch the audience. Moreover, these aspects of a story are linked to its language, text, and imagery. This paper focuses on the emotional function of a story. In a experiential story, the audience's emotional response is a result of maximum dramatic communication between them and the characters. Through psychological and mental communion with the characters, the audience becomes immersed in the story when they emotionally identify with the characters, and dramatic communication is achieved. However, dramatic communication is mostly achieved instantaneously. The elements of a film need to be realized to sustain dramatic communication such that the audience continues to be immersed in the story. The audience can identify with the characters who are placed in real-life situations by considering the characters' external and internal aspects. External search pertains to the tangible aspects of the character such as its background, life, and conversation. Through the audience's external search, the characters communicate with the audience. Internal search deals with aspects of the characters' personality such as their self-concept, desires, and internal conflicts. Through internal search, the audience understands the inner side of the characters. In this process, a film director should ensure that the acting depicts the inner side of the characters. In other words, the director should perfectly depict the internal and external elements of a human on screen. Appropriate visualization can lead to dramatic communication with the characters and thereby create the audience's emotional response. Considering these techniques, this paper focuses on the scenes of the film "Poetry" in which dramatic communication with the characters creates the audience's emotional response. Accordingly, the audience plays a role in sustaining dramatic communication for the physical screen time of a film.