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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix
- why-el 4y agoAt first I thought this was about how Netflix arranges movies for you to select, where each movie repeats down a horizontal line and you are forever scrolling right in cardinally equivalent but combinatorially different sets of movies. :D Things you might like: A, B, C, D GREAT MOVIES: B, C, A, D
- steve76 4y ago[dead]
- sho_hn 4y agoI decided not to watch their Sandman adaptation despite generally positive reviews because the unmistakable and garing Netflix aesthetic of the trailers soured me on the prospect. It's like they ruined a graphic novel with an AI style transfer to "in the style of Netlix".
- visarga 4y agoAt least generative AI can set the temperature to vary between bland and crazy. Netflix is stuck on T=0
- Tenoke 4y agoIt looked pretty good and it was a great adaptation. It also didn't really look that much like their other shows (many of which are indeed extremely mediocre) and it sounds like you just have some anti-netflix bias.
- sho_hn 4y agoI'd say it sounds like I made a superficial judgement based on the trailers, which is exactly true as described! Would you say the finished product has more visual flair than the trailers indicate? It may be they intentionally picked shots or changed the trailer footage to fit in with the brand guidelines.
- dagw 4y agoFocusing on whether or not it has "visual flair" or not seems to be slightly missing the point. For what it's worth I found the visuals solid, but not mind blowing, and yes it does feel quite 'Netflix' in places. However beyond that, Sandman is probably the best example of a virtually panel by panel comic book to live action adaptation I've seen. Just getting to watch David Thewlis as John Dee stealing every scene he's in and seeing what Gaiman managed to do with his second chance at doing 24 Hour Diner is easily worth the price of admission. Add to that the pitch perfect recreation of The Sound of Her Wings, and the surprisingly well done Dream of a Thousand Cats and Calliope and you have show that more than makes up for some of its missteps (I thought the collectors convention didn't work anywhere near as well as it did in the comics for example). If you don't want to watch the whole thing, I recommend giving episodes 4-6 + 11 a go.
- shakes_mcjunkie 4y agoIMO it was a good looking show and I'm not a fan of super hero movies or really Netflix content.
- spacemadness 4y agoThat’s an unfair rebuttal and a bit defensive sounding. I agree with OP that it has that Netflix look which would make sense in it turning off a fan of the comic.
- okamiueru 4y agoThere are a lot of reasons to not like an adaptation. I've watched Sandman, and I completely disagree with you. They did a great job. Even to the extent of doing certain scenes I didn't enjoy, but still thoroughly liked and respected. It was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise sea of "greatest common denominator appeal". Avatar, God of War, they all suffer from this.
- the_af 4y agoSandman was a remarkably good adaptation and I enjoyed it thoroughly but... yes, it has that bland/cheap Netflix look. I think it's still worth watching though.
- oxfordmale 4y agoI am happy for Sandman to have this slightly surreal aesthetic, as it fits with the story line. It can be more annoying in "real life" stories.
- KaiserPro 4y agoTry turning off the colour improvement settings on your TV. It was a good series, I enjoyed it.
- indigodaddy 4y agoDon’t watch Netflix movies. Watch actual lower budget/indie movies like Red Rocket that still look and feel like movies..
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoI think this is true for the people writing articles about "The Visual Blandness of Netflix" - which makes me wonder who they're actually writing to, beside the echo chamber. A24 is great for this crowd. But, they're already aware of it... The majority of people watch TV and movies to be mindlessly entertained, not to be enlightened by some high-form of art. Netflix and Disney+ is just fine for this crowd. You're not going to write an article and convince anyone their movie watching habits are wrong.
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- flir 4y agoOnce you're aware of something, it's very hard to make yourself unaware of it. Once someone pointed out orange-and-teal grading to me, I couldn't help but see it. It's like UX - once you understand it a bit, you see things everywhere that can be improved. You can't help it.
- ulizzle 4y agoIf the majority of people are just fine with watching Netflix and Disney+ how do you explain their steep drop in stocks?
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoInterest rates
- PKop 4y agoIt's hinted at here, but film produces a much better overall look than digital. It is just that digital is way cheaper and easier to work with. There is certainly more versatility in what you can create in post production with digital but the base look of what is captured is more beautiful on film, and this is the same with photographs. Look at high quality old images captured on film, they blow most digital images out of the water. Much higher dynamic range and depth of colors and contrast. This is why Tarantino, Nolan, and P.T. Anderson still only use film. I think this is most glaring with the mid to low budget range of films that can't make up some of the ground with production techniques and post. Old 80's and 90's mid range films on film look so much better especially in night scenes.
- kqr 4y agoI'm highly skeptical of the technical claims you're making here. Quality photography paper has about 10 stops of dynamic range (which is why the zone system for composition and printing goes up to X). While the negatives themselves may have slightly more dynamic range, there's also the clarkvision page[1] indicating they, in fact, have less dynamic range. This makes sense: you have less area to work with, and need to get something done with bigger grains because of light and time constraints. You may well think it looks better, but more information it captures not. More noise, yes. Bleeding artifacts you like, sure. More information, no. [1]: https://clarkvision.com/articles/dynamicrange2/ https://clarkvision.com/articles/dynamicrange2/
- ulizzle 4y agoDo you disagree that film looks better than digital?
- gigaparsec 4y agoThe number one thing that bothers me the most in the "netflix aesthetic" is the weird looking background bokeh that every scene seems to have. It looks like a cheap gaussian blur filter applied in post production and adds to the fakeness. This is probably due to the optics in some of the latest Red digital cameras, but it's still not convincing. Kinda like 48 vs 24 FPS.
- elijahmoses 4y agoYeah, maybe since everybody has to stand out, they came up with that color grading setting. But what do I know. This article opened my mind to compare and contrast between movies. I was not one to critic video, but watched for the story.
- mort96 4y agoI will never accept the hate for 48 FPS. 24 FPS looks like garbage. Panning shots are a stuttery mess. 24 FPS looks somewhat okay when the camera is still and only the people in it are moving, but the ridiculous choppiness ruins any moment with camera movement. A higher refresh rate is simply an objective improvement. I don't care that you associate it with bad soap operas.
- vehemenz 4y agoI'm not sure what you think "objective" means, but typically it means independent of experience. When you say "objective improvement," in what sense, independent of experience, is higher frame rate better? Obviously there are 2x the visual data because there are 2x the frames, but that's borderline tautological.
- bawolff 4y agoI'm confused. You don't think having 2x the visual data is better independent of experience? > Obviously there are 2x the visual data because there are 2x the frames, but that's borderline tautological. Isn't any straight forward application of a dictionary definition borderline tautological?
- donatj 4y ago> Everyone is lit perfectly and filmed digitally on raw and tweaked to perfection. It makes everything have a fake feeling to it. It wasn’t until I started watching “Stuntmen React” videos on Corridor’s channel recently that I realized people are even still doing stunts. The footage in modern movies is so massaged and strangely well lit that it feels fake to the point that it might as well be the CG as I’d assumed it was. You’re not getting the visual benefit to justify injuring these poor stunt people when it doesn’t even feel realistic at the end. Needs some grit, some imperfections. The things that made Jackie Chan’s early work so amazing. They just don’t feel like they’re really happening, so there is no weight to it.
- faitswulff 4y ago> You’re not getting the benefit of injuring these poor stuntmen As someone who knows a lot of stunt people, I'd just like to point out that the benefit is not in injuring them, it's in the effortless action scenes. But yes, a byproduct of the action are the injuries. We really need to credit stunt people better. They're the most likely to actually lose their lives during filming. Hence why some are pushing for a stunt category in the Oscars: https://movieweb.com/best-stunt-oscars-needed-why/ https://movieweb.com/best-stunt-oscars-needed-why/
- swimfar 4y agoThat's not at all what he meant. He was saying that in both cases the stunt man is getting injured, but in the case of digital it doesn't look better than CGI, so at that point why not just do CGI and eliminate the injuries.
- donatj 4y agoI worded that somewhat poorly. I didn’t mean to insinuate that injuring them was the goal, I meant to say we are not getting benefit from the final product that justifies the means. I have reworded the post. To my point though, the “effortless action” is the problem, the final product of all this work and effort feels effortless in that it feels floaty, fake and without consequence. You don’t watch a modern fight scene and get the visceral reaction older things bring.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y agoOne aspect of this I’ve talked about before is the phenomenon of the “permanent golden hour”: what used to be a narrow sliver of time when you could get the most dramatic lighting is now easily replicated in post. So as a result tons of movies have all their outdoor shots set in this incredibly unnatural-looking light that really pulls me out of the movie. Like I remember the banker in Switzerland scenes in The Wolf of Wall Street, with the open window and it just looked so hilariously fake I thought Scorcese was doing a bit. Nope that’s just how outside scenes/shots are lit now.
- drexlspivey 4y agoThis is also proliferated by the new HDR formats (HDR/HDR+/Dolby Vision etc). Having everything perfectly exposed in a frame looks totally unnatural, real scenes don't look like that.
- hef19898 4y agoHDR just looks so weird and unnatural. Used wisely, it can peoduce great results, used everywhere it is just boring.
- mtsr 4y agoIt’s such an odd choice too. HDR shows nicely on HDR displays or when combined with a well-chosen exposure level (such that the relevant parts of the shot are visible) on an SDR display. Instead, it sometimes seems like the dynamic range is compressed to just fit mostly everything on an SDR display? Do directors not pay attention to dynamic range anymore and then just “fix” it this way in post? Surely the old timers at least would still how know to do it.
- wyager 4y agoA lot of recent (high-budget!) shows are very incompetently graded and mastered. The recent game of thrones spinoff had a lot of scenes with terrible grading, where they'd clearly done something wrong in the grading pipeline - maybe accidentally squashed the entire HLG range down into SDR before exporting to PQ. The grading on Wednesday was quite good. They had a number of technically challenging lighting scenarios that they pulled off quite well, and the output was properly mastered PQ. It's possible studios don't actually care about this because, form what I can tell, most viewers don't even notice stuff like this.
- rimzyy 4y ago[dead]
- avalys 4y agoYou know, you don’t have to watch any of this stuff.
- ducharmdev 4y agoPersonally it's poor writing & bad camera work that bugs me more than anything. Sure this digital style is apparent, but I guess it doesn't fundamentally ruin a movie for me (whereas the other two factors do).
- hef19898 4y agoThere seems to be a major difference between Netflix US and their international productions. The later European one are, IMHO, somewhere between good and great in writing, production, acting. Those are usually done by Netflix and some local partner. Every once in a while I come across a Netflix US thing, and it feels like having grabed something of a direct-to-DVD sale...
- ajmurmann 4y agoThere was an article about a year ago that explains this. There was an internal, political battle between a lady who produced most of the Netflix originals that really hurt it out of the park like House of Cards and The Queens Gambit and folks who wanted more, but cheaper production. Well, she got fired. The international stuff AFAIK is just licensed by Netflix. I rotate every few months through streaming services and none what's new like a locust swarm. Haven't subscribed to Netflix in over six months, but can't find enough to justify subscribing again.
- tantalor 4y ago> where the movie was set, and I realized I had no idea I guess she missed the opening shot of Seattle?
- n8cpdx 4y agoI was triggered by the first few paragraphs of this piece. It was obviously and unmistakably Seattle throughout, with a few shots of Portland, OR for the hospital. I find the rest of the piece as insightful and perceptive as the first paragraph. The director is the same that made Malignant, which was also set in Seattle. P.S. the real reason M3gan felt empty is because most of the gory parts were cut to achieve a PG-13 rating. https://www.polygon.com/23546390/megan-sequel-release-date-unrated-r-rated-version https://www.polygon.com/23546390/megan-sequel-release-date-u...
- betaby 4y agoWe made a circle 'black and white' -> 'color' -> 'blue and orange'. Modern movies are too dark and lacking colors badly. All those to cheapen production I suppose.
- hgsgm 4y agoIs this any different in kind from the "visual blandness" of 3-camera TV sitcoms, or of prime time dramas? Does it matter? It's a clean backdrop for a story.
- nerdponx 4y agoThe story is boring if it's not set in a compelling world. If I wanted a clean backdrop, I'd go to a stage play.
- neovive 4y agoI recall thinking about this recently when watching a Netflix series. I'm far from a TV/film production connoisseur, but there's something about the aesthetic that makes it stand out. I wouldn't say it's better or worse, just different. With most things related to design, I'm sure the trends will shift over time as a means of differentiation. Perhaps, once AI video generation becomes more standard, we'll see entirely new production styles.
- nerdponx 4y agoIt's going to look goofy and dated in 10 years.
- kylecazar 4y agoI saw The Pale Blue Eye on Netflix last night and thought it was very well done and aesthetically detailed. But one example isn't a counter argument and I agree with OP's assessment. I just figured it was a production trend in general these days, with some outliers.
- Aardwolf 4y agoJust a current trend. You can watch older shows, wait a few years for the next trend, or watch shows made in different countries (not for netflix of course), if you like something else.
- haunter 4y agoCurrent trend. It’s very similar how every PS3-era game had a brown color tone
- nixpulvis 4y agoTLDR; But is the synopsis, background actors and set designs cost money and effort, so we didn't bother?
- gardenhedge 4y agoArticle only has two examples. If they have a point there should be plenty of examples presented.
- jblakey 4y agoOn a related note, why is Netflix's interface so locked down? Why would it be bad for me to turn off autoplay for trailers? Why can't I say "never show me this show again, I'm never going to watch it"? And why, in this age of AI, and they still putting white text over a white background? That last one, especially, made me say "do people at Netflix eat their own dogfood"?
- cantSpellSober 4y ago"thumbs down" a movie to say "I'm never going to watch it", you won't see it again (great for getting rid of dumb movies in the big promotional banner on the home screen as well)
- arcanemachiner 4y agoOn my laptop, I was able to disable autoplay for the trailers. IIRC it's in your profile settings.
- johnchristopher 4y ago> Why can't I say "never show me this show again, I'm never going to watch it"? Maybe someone is paying Netflix to suggest this movie (edit:content) to you ?
- bryanrasmussen 4y agoI've never heard this is the case, and if there was a secret deal that this was the case I think it would have been leaked years ago, but also it would be difficult for this to be the case and not have it be public knowledge because accounting details of large companies are something that is often inspected by news organizations and others on the lookout for something to complain about. But maybe it can be that it is public knowledge and I'm one of the ten thousand who doesn't know? If so, do you have a link?
- johnchristopher 4y ago> But maybe it can be that it is public knowledge and I'm one of the ten thousand who doesn't know? If so, do you have a link? Nope, it was just a thought. Sorry if I came off as implying shaddy things. I agree with what you wrote and it would be surprising something like that had been going on for years without anyone noticing (or revealing it). I suppose it'd be less expensive to advertise a show outside of Netflix UI.
- based_bobby 4y ago[flagged]
- npteljes 4y agoWhat do you think is bad about it, and why?
- entropie 4y agoI've said it and I say it again, most or some of the reasons why it looks weird to us (people who grow up with a TV) come down to camera quality. Most TV camera setups were about lighting and the needed amount. Since a few years cameras are so good, we have almost real blacks and real whites sometimes even in the same frame and its naturally filmed and does not look like total shit. We have crazy aperture sizes and we use them and there is the often coitized gaussian/blur backgrounds. We have very sharp images even with very bad lightning conditions so some movies are very dark. I think like the younger ones are already very used to it and wonder about "how odd old films look".
- tridao 4y agoCouldn't have put it better (about lighting). I'm from the younger generation and have always kinda felt that movies from the 90s are too bright
- olliecornelia 4y agoThey were lit and graded with the pre-home-theater home video market in mind.
- raspyberr 4y agoI always thought it was about visual clarity. Yes we can have very dark scenes now but why would you want to when you can't tell what's happening. Prime example being Battle of Helms Deep vs Battle of Winterfell. I get the feeling of nighttime from both of them but in one I can actually tell what's happening.
- vanilla_nut 4y agoIt's an interesting question: can filmmakers actually use this newfound range in a meaningful way? I feel the same about those two scenes -- one I can follow, one I cannot. But I wonder if anyone out there is filming high range scenes at night in a good way, and the Battle for Winterfell is just a failed experiment in figuring that out? The final episode of Midnight Mass comes to mind. And much of The Vvitch. Both aren't totally ideal -- they can be difficult to follow at times -- but I think they use the range to convey chaos and fear of the unknown in a meaningful way. Curious if anyone has other examples of this pulled off well.
- mandymoorefan 4y agoThe author doesn't address that blockbuster movies have always found a "trendy look" and run with it. Is what she claims Netflix is doing any different than any other popular cycle in filmmaking? "It's actually, specifically, about how movies these days look. That is, more flat, more fake, over-saturated, or else over-filtered, like an Instagram photo in 2012, but rendered in commercial-like high-def." The "2012 Instagram filter" was pulled from the same playbook as the popular movies of the 2000-2010 era. However, the author isn't arguing that this trend has been taken too far; just stating that everything looks bland and the same. Of course, it does. Only some movies are original and try something new because audiences like familiar things. Successful visual storytelling methods are recycled just the same as scripts. When comparing "When Harry Met Sally" and "Moonshot" the author says, "... The latter is more polished and "perfect," but to what effect? It looks strange, surreal, both dim and bright at the same time. Everything is inexplicably blue or yellow, and glows like it's been FaceTuned. Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, meanwhile, are sitting in a downtown New York deli that actually exists. The image is a little grainy, the lighting falling somewhere in the normal daytime range, and they look like regular human beings. ..." One is a science fiction film the other is set in a New York deli. So they both don't want to evoke the same feeling in the setting to the audience. I had to stop reading when the author said, "At the risk of using an anonymous Redditor as an expert, lol, I found a comment under a thread called "Why do movies look so weird now?" that captures a lot of these same complaints:" Then she goes on quote the Reddit comment. LOL right? The Redditor's comment was a single paragraph and summed up the author's entire point of view. She just went on to write a longer post that failed to say anything additional. Read the Reddit comment she quoted and skip the article.
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- ismokedoinks 4y ago> The author doesn't address that blockbuster movies have always found a "trendy look" and run with it. Is what she claims Netflix is doing any different than any other popular cycle in filmmaking? I think this is pretty clearly the author's thesis--movies now look a certain way and they used to look characteristically different. I think the main point is that the author (and apparently hundreds of people here) find the current visual style really lacking compared to past stylistic movements. They aren't refuting the historical existence of the trend as much as the current character of it.
- spywaregorilla 4y agoI don't really care about technical specs of cameras or film or whatever, but I think the author is largely just wrong. At least on their comparison between Moonshot and When Harry Met Sally. Those are just different films. The Moonshot still is CLEARLY using color with great intention. It's not a realistic scene. It's a carefully designed shot. The characters, the coffee, and the table are yellow. The background is green. That's interesting. It makes the scene feel very small and intimate. The Harry diner scene is cluttered and chaotic. You have a bunch of background characters that add to the scene by looking at the main characters. You get a lot from this still. That's also interesting. I have not seen any of these films
- munificent 4y ago> The Moonshot still is CLEARLY using color with great intention. It's not a realistic scene. It's a carefully designed shot. The characters, the coffee, and the table are yellow. The background is green. That's interesting. I would be much more inclined to agree with that if every fucking movie in the past twenty years wasn't also using the exact same gold-cyan two-color palette: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContrast https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContra... It's just lazy. There's nothing interesting about it. Because every movie has a digital color pass applied now, they feel obligated to do something with the color, but they have no idea what, so they just do the same thing over and over.
- spywaregorilla 4y agoWell, first of all, this scene is clearly green and yellow, not orange and blue. This is not a common color palette. It's not a completely new color palette, because that's a dumb concept, but it's not common. Green and yellow are analogous whereas blue/orange are complementary. Second, the orange / blue contrast is more of a film trailer / film poster thing than the actual films themselves. Most people will agree that trailers and posters are more purpose fit to marketing than art Third, it's not just a lazy trope, it's also because contrast is useful, and alternatives are not as easy to work with. Pink and purple don't fit most natural contexts. Orange has fire and natural light hues. Blue has the sky, water, and is a good way to imply darkness without the content actually being dark and hard to see (when contrasted with orange). Fourth, it's really not every movie. That's a lazy exaggeration. Googling top movies right now I see fewer than 1 in 10 movies has this color scheme on their promo image if we're willing to extend it generously to bright blue and yellow. Specifically Devotion (white, blue yellow); Emily the Criminal (blue/gold); Spiderman No Way Home (Blue, Gold, Red). It is also true for 0 out the top 10 shows and 0 out of the top 10 movies in the us currently shown on the netflix homepage (although netflix will swap these around for different viewers. I think I've seen some Glass Onion thumbnails that are bright blue/yellow).
- agumonkey 4y agonot long ago there was a french short doc about the disappearance of colors not sure if it's based on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hYlF3YIIjA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hYlF3YIIjA but there's an evolution toward neutral (colors and textures imo) the post 20s are anthropologically mind boggling..
- chazeon 4y agoThis is a great discussion and a great starting point for interesting discussions. It’s quite interesting that Japan anime are adding more movie-like look and feel by adding complex scenes & backgrounds (see, e.g., a Dec 2022 anime series, Chainsaw man), whereas Netflix goes the other way around. It’s said that animes are trying to gain more mainstream recognition in overseas markets this way, although it’s adversarial to the relatively low budget in an anime as well as the way they are created. I think Netflix vs traditional movie has something do do with expectations on the screen size to watch, TV vs in cinema. It’s about information density. There are media specifically tuned to be watched on smaller screens, i.e., phones. I used to advocate simplicity in artmaking, largely influenced by East Asian art style and also tech advertising and interface design at the early 2010 era. But as I grow up, I started to appreciate complexity, texture, imperfection especially after I moved to NYC. This has become so much so that a empty-esque room makes me uncomfortable, not organic, not homecoming. Wonder if this has something to do with age and audience also. The Netflix are tuned to the younger generation vs traditional movie tuned to the older. And there is also that Netflix tuning to overseas markets that are unfamiliar to American audiences. There is much to be discussed under this topic, but here are some sporadic thoughts of mine.
- spacemadness 4y agoThat’s an interesting point about phones being the viewing space, not TVs which so many people commenting seem to be assuming. That would obviously affect the choices used on production and it wasn’t addresses in the substack post that I recall. It reminds me of David Lynch telling people to stop using their phones to watch films: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0
- smitty1e 4y ago> But every time I watch something made before 2000, it looks so beautiful to me—not otherworldly or majestic, but beautiful in the way the world around me is beautiful. For a contemporary example that underscores this point, check out "All Creatures Great and Small" https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/all-creatures-great-and-small/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/all-creatures-gre...
- pfisherman 4y agoCounterpoint. Refn’s “Copenhagen Cowboy” - which was recently released on Netflix - is a visually stunning masterpiece of Neo Noir aesthetic. However you feel might about Refn’s work - he is kind of polarizing - bland would be the last word you would use to describe it. So I think the problem is less about formats and technology mr more about artistic vision, skill, and execution. There is a lot more content being produced now, and thus a dilution of top talent.
- mise_en_place 4y agoWasn't that the whole point of the movie? How horrifying the uncanny valley can be. Not just M3gan herself but the entire world that the movie takes place in. James Wan is a brilliant director.
- KaiserPro 4y agoyes, yes it was. The author has missed the point, its meant to make you feel unsettled and empty.
- Clent 4y agoAgreed. I think a lot of this comes down to stylistic preference of the movie. Why should a movie about near future technology tie itself to scenes one recognizes today? This edges on shaking fist at cloud.
- Antrikshy 4y agoI haven't seen this movie, but I could see that. There are definitely some movies that use this quality as a part of their setting. See: Gunpowder Milkshake.
- marstall 4y agodigital can look like crap. but it can also look pretty good. its down to the artistry. easy to fuck up in ways film couldn't be fucked up. and don't discount the fact that everything is being watched on OLED which is not as good as LCD even in rendering subtle gradients such as skin tones. I'm watching Snabba Cash right now on Netflix. The settings are gritty, the lighting is raw and creative, the colors are splashy and true. It looks great.
- chucksmash 4y agoThere's a link after the main article's content to "The most interesting thing I read this week[1]," which was also pretty interesting: [1]: https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-scooby-doo-psyop https://www.garbageday.email/p/the-scooby-doo-psyop
- kzrdude 4y agoAnother aspect of this is staffing. It doesn't immediately seem tech related, but it is. There's less people in the background as extras, less people making background scenes or setting up. It can mostly filled in by production technology if necessary. Some movies just seem so empty, and they look "cheap" if you see it in this angle. Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely more than three actors visible in the whole film. I've noticed there's a lot of these hollow/empty productions with very few actual actors visible, and they are rather lifeless.
- 9dev 4y agoThat is a great observation, and something that has put me off a lot of movies too. It’s an uncanny valley type of thing.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y agoI hadn’t thought of this at all but you’re totally right. Movies and shows have way fewer people on the screen just in the background.
- weinzierl 4y agoI noticed the increasing "emptiness" as well but my initial thought was that it is a COVID thing. Less people on set less risk.
- ch4s3 4y agoIt's definitely a COVID thing, especially things like the lack of populated restaurant scenes as pointed to in the article.
- tested23 4y agoAnother movie that does this is Tenet. There is this massive action set piece at the end, people are literally fighting for the fate of the world. Then you have people running around, shooting at nothing. Are massive set pieces with hundreds of extras just not economically feasible anymore?
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- DethNinja 4y agoI think reasons are simple: Untalented staff in general. Especially art directors and set decorators of Netflix shouldn't be allowed near 5 ft of any camera. These two professions are usually underrated but they usually make or break the show. 80s had so many talented art directors/set decorators but it seems Netflix is currently incapable of attracting similar talent.
- frozenlettuce 4y agoThis week I read an article in Portuguese about how the Brazilian largest TV is having difficulties on creating new soap operas. On social media I saw one interesting argument: the current generation that is producing the shows grew up watching GoT, and lost touch with how soap operas used to look. Until recently, Brazil used to sell soap operas to other countries ("The Clone" was a bit hit). By creating content that mimicked USA's tv shows, they lost the uniqueness of its content. Maybe something like that is happening on Netflix as well? People watched GoT/CSI while in college and now we have blandless everywhere. Google translated article: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=pt-BR&u=https://natelinha.uol.com.br/novelas/2023/01/19/assustada-globo-apostara-em-remakes-para-suprir-falta-de-novas-e-boas-novelas-192828.php&client=webapp https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=pt-B...
- Larrikin 4y agoIn the US soap operas died because reality tv was cheaper to film and people found the fake drama in reality shows more interesting than the fake drama in soaps.
- anticristi 4y agoSince we're already complaining about contemporary video production, may I please ask all YouTubers to please stop using stock videos please. I had to stop watching a few YouTubers, because it was unbearable.
- noisy_boy 4y agoI'll take this thread to plug my totally subjective hare brain theory/bias. I've noticed that I like movies that are shot with the blue filter (or atleast thats what I call it) - everything has a tinge of blue (the filters are almost closer to blue-grey; something like #374358). For some reason, I have noticed that, to me, they also turn out to good movies. Example would be Margin Call[0] (though in some scenes the blue is mixed with a golden hue which actually makes it look nicer); another one is The Grey[1]. [0]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1615147/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1615147/ [1]: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1601913/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1601913/
- dylan604 4y agoIt wasn't shot with a blue filter. It was graded in post to have that look. Before RAW, it wasn't unheard of to have a "blue filter" from shooting with the wrong white balance setting, but it was a totally different blue filter look.
- newsclues 4y agoCertain camera/sensors and lens have distinctive visual aesthetics and also in the colour grading process, and much of it is a mix of art and science and the artistic vision of colour is embedded in the creative and technical aspects of film making from sets to costumes to what camera sensors and optics combination look like and how to change or enhance it in post production.
- orbital-decay 4y agoThat can't be the result of using LED ligthing, because modern LEDs are really good and don't require much correction in post, yet movies still look like that. In fact, I don't think you can pinpoint this to a single technical reason. It's just the industry converged onto the same recipe book - some of that is cost cutting, some is just massive amounts of A/B testing throughout the years. Demand leads to optimization, which in turn leads to convergence and less varied supply. Which is kind of paradoxical, considering the low barrier and creative freedom available with today's tools. And yes, it really started to happen somewhere in early 2000s, not just with movies and the looks but with everything related to visual entertainment, from games to illustrations.
- KaiserPro 4y agoits nothing to do with LEDs all shots are conformed before they are graded. That means that they shoot a macbeth chart every time they change the lighting, allowing for people to make all the shots look the same before they start to fiddle with the colours.
- jorlow 4y agoThis is only partially true. The problem with LED lights is that they deviate quite a bit from a Planck and/or daylight frequency curve. So you can end up with colors looking different even if the color chart looks right. And even the best Aari LED lights have ssi scores of only ~75. I wouldn't be surprised if this is a part of the effect the author describes.
- KaiserPro 4y agoif that was the case then teal/orange grades would be "impossible" as most lights don't kick out that much teal (~510nm) Not only that, but you can micro adjust the colour of these lights to suit your needs, which means you can have much richer colours on set and not worry about colour cast. if it was such a burden on the film maker, and limited artistic expression, then we'd see holdouts for tungsten lights (in film making). When was the last time you hear someone in film go: "yeah, these filament lamps are so much greater than LEDs, so much more real." If you're on location then you can have >5 times the amount of light for the same power/heat budget. No one is going to sniff at that. Anyway, the first thing you do when you get film/footage in through the door is conform it. you need to have everything at a base grade before you can add "artistic colour" to it. so subtle difference in colours are always obliterated.
- bitwize 4y agoI want to talk about the blandness of the acting in Netflix shows. As part of the young-adultification of everything, they tend to have this po-faced life-and-death fake gravitas. They're full of scenes like "a vampire coven takes a vote on whether to excommunicate, kill, and devour one of their own because she fell in love with a human". But the characters seem like children or young teenagers, despite being played by, and even representing, adults. It's like watching a precocious, somewhat psychotic 10-year-old making her Barbies plot to murder each other. Contrast that with, say, Beverly Hills, 90210, which aged remarkably well for a 30+ year old series. It too gets rather self-serious at times, but the acting talent was really good and well-directed and they play their parts with a sort of relaxed, open California swagger that makes them seem honest and likable. 90210 has some interesting cinematic choices as well: the colors appear saturated but both the video and audio are soft and fuzzy, for what I guess is sort of a wistful look that seems less like how things actually happened and more like how the main cast's older selves remember it happening. Some exceptions exist, of course. Stranger Things is incredibly well acted and goes for 80s verisimilitude, right down to authentic Tandy props and making the bedrooms look like they came out of E.T. with the lighting and set decoration. I Am Not Okay With This has a real honest feeling to it as well. They shot on location in Brownsville, PA, and really tried to capture the feel of the town in the background.
- KaiserPro 4y agoas someone who used to work at a digital intermediary (DI) company (think photoshop filters but for film) most of this is bollocks. > But every time I watch something made before 2000, it looks so beautiful to me No, the author is confusing nostalgia with aesthetics. Heat for example is a great movie, fun story, good suspense. It looks ok, but its colours are all over the place. you don't notice it, because its an old film and old films should feel like that. The quote: > Tungsten allows for more accurate color in camera but LEDs are cheaper, cooler, and more convenient. So the solution is to film on a nice digital camera and fix the color in post. very much nope. None of the stuff you've seen in films since about 2005 looks like it was shot. No film ever gets to screen without colour correcting. In fact every setup will have a macbeth chart film so that they can conform the colours so they are consistent. More over, film is colour corrected in 16bit log, which is way more colours than most of us can observe, and a fuckton more dynamic range than can be displayed. yes shite LED lights have worse spectral response than tungsten, but its fairly easy to correct for (hell if you are good enough you can film under sodium lamps and make it look good. ) but ARRL lights have full RGB, with loads of effects that were not possible before. I as a mere mortal can light a room like the Holywood golden age for <$1000(but not with ARRL lights, because they are $5k each). For the big players, you can do something ridiculous like this: https://ymcinema.com/2022/09/26/lighting-a-desert-magnificent-bts-footage-of-nope/ https://ymcinema.com/2022/09/26/lighting-a-desert-magnificen... > Another user mentioned that shooting on film required a level of forethought, planning, and patience that digital simply doesn’t Yes, it also means that you can't take risks, because every foot of film cost a fuckton to process, you have to rush it to get developed, then view the rushes, print the stuff you like or re-shoot. reshoots are very expensive. If you miss a shot, then you are fucked, because it'll blow a hole in your budget. digital allows instant playback, much less reset, and longer shooting in much more challenging lighting situations. For example Barry lyndon could be shot without custom lenses. Digital allows multi camera shooting, meaning that you can get much better acting from everyone, because a "two shot" takes half the time. So to the meat: "all of netflixs looks the same" No, you are looking at fashion. Colour and feel of a TV show is completely under the control of the producers/directors/DoP. They colours you are seeing are a conscious choice. When the next Coen brothers movie pops up, you'll see a rush to have warm, low contrast rich colour movies again. Marvel movies look like that, because they chose to. Marvel Tv series look like that, because it was a choice. They respond to fashion, which means that at the moment shit is dark and grundgy, because thats what's in. Black and white will come around shortly. TL;DR: the author is talking shit about stuff they are making assumptions about. none of the data there is accurate. Its just a reworked classic: "everything was better in the old days, the youth don't put any effort into the craft" which given that this is literally the tail end of the golden era of TV is utter risible bollocks.
- emadabdulrahim 4y agoStranger Things immediately came to mind when I read the headline. Aside from the amateurish writing and the storyline that quickly became complete non-sense, the look and feel of the show was very much the equivalent of a fast-food chain. Overly saturated colors, everything looks punchy and overly sharp.
- throwawayoaky 4y agoYes, hello. It seems to be a matter of emphasis and sane defaults. Narrative is all about controlling emphasis. Film vs digital changes the default choices around which you build emphasis. Noise is an unreasonably effective tool for creating depth to contain emphatic range, so removing it from the defaults is going to create affective flatness on the margin.
- randcraw 4y agoWith all the special effects and video postprocessing in photos and films today, it's no surprise they look unnatural. I think we're seeing in film and TV the same phenom that's already big in photography and music — digitally filtered and synthesized media feels unnatural. Well duh. It is. Video and audio are being compressed to exclude noise and 'purify' the primary signal to make the product pop (something that's also making TV ads feel very unnatural today). But this isn't new of course. For decades, postproduction and direction of film and TV has been simplified and its primary signals boosted to make more impact. The cost, IMHO, is that acting has taken a back seat to visuals and background audio, creating the zombified chesspiece actors of today, which are also a big part of this “uncanny valley” of all forms of video. The result is expressive subtleties present in our remaining great actors (who are now age 60+) like Judy Dench or Daniel Day-Lewis are absent in nearly all actors under age 40, unless they got their start in stage or outside American media, where the practice of overproduction has not been as rampant. I think what we're seeing is simply the viral spread of special effects, digitization, and overproduction into all of media, with video simply suffering its effects last.
- ectopod 4y agoAlso botox.
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- Kaibeezy 4y agoAnother possible contributing factor: Spoilers. Location shooting exposes production details to universal public view.
- thefringthing 4y agoSo much commentary on the landscape of TV and film today reminds me of the Dogme 95 movement. Maybe those guys were on to something after all.
- bitwize 4y agoAnother thing: both movies like M3GAN and shows like Wednesday have the prerequisite meme dance, ready for girls to replicate on TikTok.
- berniedurfee 4y agoThis same narrative is used in music all the time. Technology makes it ever easier to produce near-perfect music. Every note is perfectly in tune and on time. Every drum hit is perfectly on the grid and even acoustic drums are typically layered with samples of perfect drum hits. Fewer analog instruments are used in favor of synthesized sounds. Some of this is aesthetics, but much of it is profit driven. I don’t think it’s my, or anyone’s, place to say if it’s bad or good though. If anything, I think we’re just unfortunate to be living in a time between organic analog and digital that’s so good it’s even more organic than analog. 30 or 50 years from now, I think this will all be sorted out. Music will be super easy to make and will sound like musicians in a room like the good ol’ days. Movies will feel rich and deep and real. Video games will finally not feel like Doom with higher resolution. Of course, then people will long for the simple days of the 2020’s when movies, music and games were so much better.
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- Andi 4y agoHaley Nahman failed to talk about the ACTORS and how they act; the word "actor"/"actress" appears 0 times in this article. Just compare those boring faces with the personalities of former decades!