I realize that I didn't go into in as much depth as I wanted to with Andre Bazin and his concept of aesthetic and psychological realism-and I realize that my vague coverage in the video is a little misleading (as the wording Bazin uses can be tricky to untangle). Basically, "aesthetic realism", which Bazin also (confusingly) calls "true realism", focuses more on giving expression to the world, like a medieval painting emphasizing the emotional atmosphere of Mary holding a deceased Jesus. "Psychological realism", which Bazin (confusingly) calls "pseudo-realism", is an attempt to duplicate reality in order to "fool" the eye into thinking it's real when it actually isn't-sort of like René Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" painting. I grossly oversimplified in stating that painting was basically aesthetic realism and photography was psychological realism. Renaissance paintings trended towards more psychological realism, trying to focus on reality rather than emotions, but painting could never truly escape the subjectivity of the painter. It was only until photography that a true duplication of reality could be achieved. Bazin makes an additional point about photography that ties in well with my point about records: a photograph shares in the being of the object being photographed. Because there is no middleman between the creation of the photograph and what's being photographed (like the painter in a painting), we think of it as having the "aura" of the actual scene that we can feel a physical connection with, kinda like how we might keep an old pillowcase that a deceased loved one slept on in order to retain that physical connection. I thought about re-recording parts of the video, but decided that it wasn't necessary, and that I already argued my main points fairly well. As such, I'm simply leaving these notes here as a pinned comment.
