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Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

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Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#281

Post by watwut »

Retric wrote: post #190
watwut wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it better this way. Theatre like playing in movie come across as fake to me - as bad acting. When the whole thing is clearly exaggerate comedy, then it don't bother me. But, if I am supposed to immerse myself in the story, it does not work.

Real people aren’t quiet around intense emotions and loud noises. This often comes off really silly, when actual people would be yelling they come off as mumbling to themselves. Instead, actors are often chatting in front of green screens without any of the appropriate ambient sounds or emotional context.

Real people are often quiet around those. That is as normal reaction as loud yelling.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#282

Post by gamblor956 »

Pasorrijer wrote: post #90
BoppreH wrote: post #24

Another enormous gripe I have with modern movies, other than the (lack of) interesting moral lessons from OP, is the sound design. Loud explosions and music, with quiet, mumbled lines[1]. I'm forced to watch every movie with subtitles on, or to miss a good chunk of the dialogue. And I'd go beyond that, and blame the mumbled lines for our lack of interesting quotes. It's a lot harder to have unexpected turns of phrase…

A response to your edit, I was on a zoom call with current musical editors / producers and that is 100% part of the problem. Many of today's actors /actresses almost mumble their lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and enunciate the crap out of everything.

Many of today's actors /actresses almost mumble their lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and enunciate the crap out of everything.

Sorry, but I work with a lot of Hollywood production companies and have been on plenty of sets, and this is a load of crap.

Today's actors and actresses speak their lines just fine. The problem is the trend toward louder audio f/x and music, which can drown out voices if not mixed correctly. See, e.g., Tenet for a horrific example of audio mixing, and the characters can barely be heard even when yelling; compare to The Batman where Pattinson rarely speaks above a whisper but is audible and understandable in every scene.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#283

Post by dragontamer »

dionidium wrote: post #264
dragontamer wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think gender has anything to do with it though. > it's so important to show that with utter, relentless completeness, that they've created characters that are magical, who don't need to overcome anything, characters who matter mostly as individuals, who have no duties or responsibilities to anyone else (most certainly not to any men). They're just total kick-ass take-no-prisoners empowered women. But what you…

I upvoted both you and Buldak because I'm certain there's something to what you're saying. Few things are monocausal or completely explained by one factor. And surely these modern filmmaking tropes feedback on themselves and reinforce prevailing styles. Mine isn't any kind of grand unifying theory. I just think it's a factor.

There's a little bit of gender role in there:

Male assholes (ex: Rick from Rick and Morty, Nolan's Batman, Downy's Iron Man) are fun and interesting to watch. Female assholes are much, much harder to write (Amanda Waller, Suicide Squad, seems to be the best written one in recent films?)

I guess there's explicitly "female" movies, like "Devil Wears Prada" where that kind of behavior is more acceptable (Miranda Priestly plays the role of asshole boss).

But maybe the "formula" for what audiences accept just hasn't really been figured out yet for female characters. You certainly can't just take male-oriented tropes and try to apply them to female-oriented characters.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#284

Post by dudul »

dionidium wrote: post #248

It's not a coincidence that all the main characters featured in this video are women. The main thing the filmmakers are trying to show is that these are girl-bosses who can do anything men can do (and more) and it's so important to show that with utter, relentless completeness, that they've created characters that are magical, who don't need to overcome anything, characters who matter mostly as individuals, who have…

You can also note a parallel with female villains. Yeah they're bad, but you know, it's not their fault. They had such a tough life. And really are they that bad?

And don't hear me wrong. I do love fleshed out bad guys/gals. I do want deep bad characters, but when the backstory can always be summarized with "she went through tough time because of bad men, so now yeah she's kind of bad" it doesn't really count.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#285

Post by dionidium »

dragontamer wrote: post #283
dionidium wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I upvoted both you and Buldak because I'm certain there's something to what you're saying. Few things are monocausal or completely explained by one factor. And surely these modern filmmaking tropes feedback on themselves and reinforce prevailing styles. Mine isn't any kind of grand unifying theory. I just think it's a factor.

There's a little bit of gender role in there: Male assholes (ex: Rick from Rick and Morty, Nolan's Batman, Downy's Iron Man) are fun and interesting to watch. Female assholes are much, much harder to write (Amanda Waller, Suicide Squad, seems to be the best written one in recent films?) I guess there's explicitly "female" movies, like "Devil Wears Prada" where that kind of behavior is more acceptable (Miranda Priestl…

Yeah, I think this is a pretty interesting response. That double standard feels to me like a plausible explanation for why some female characters are written differently.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#286

Post by fullshark »

Strawhorse wrote: post #280
fullshark wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Mulan update was a huge flop in China FWIW, so maybe Disney tried to thread the needle there and failed. New Star Wars movies also I think didn't do well there. https://variety.com/2020/film/asia/why-china-hates-disney-mu... > The most fundamental flaw, most felt, was that Disney’s new heroine starts out from childhood already equipped with superhero-like abilities, thanks to her extraordinary reserves of…

I think the new Mulan fail was due to some social media shitstorm about the lead actress or something; the spastic Chinese internet trolls had a feeding frenzy on something she said. At the same time, the movie got trashed in the West for being, well, shit.

In any case I think the macro issue is trying to placate too many audiences with their own agendas (hardcore fanboys, Chinese censors, feminist cultural agitators, etc) instead of telling a good story with interesting characters, at least for the cinema the video maker is focused on (big budget IP).

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#287

Post by dionidium »

clove wrote: post #274
dionidium wrote: post #248

It's not a coincidence that all the main characters featured in this video are women. The main thing the filmmakers are trying to show is that these are girl-bosses who can do anything men can do (and more) and it's so important to show that with utter, relentless completeness, that they've created characters that are magical, who don't need to overcome anything, characters who matter mostly as individuals, who have…

What's the point of the third paragraph? To protect yourself from criticism?

From a certain kind of boring, predictable, repetitive criticism that's unresponsive to any of the actual points I made in my comment, yes. It either worked or I was too pessimistic, because the responses so far have been substantive and interesting!

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#288

Post by hotpotamus »

KineticLensman wrote: post #257
hotpotamus wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like CGI has increased productivity a lot. Not so much in big, effects driven movies, but in everyday type shots where they can change backgrounds or remove things so they don't need to make big elaborate sets or control environments quite so much. That's my guess at least. Film was also a huge cost of production and especially distribution that's essentially gone now. I think Hollywood unions also add a lot o…

> I feel like CGI has increased productivity a lot. Yeah, but take a look at the massive number of VFX people listed in the end-credits of CGI-heavy films. Often several different companies (e.g. DNEG) each with its own array of artists, modellers, riggers, tech, pipeline engineers, asset developers, IT support, etc etc.

Yep, that's what I mean when I say not so much in big, effects driven films - I suspect those will always consume as much budget as you throw at them because there's always a cutting edge to push. But in smaller and less effect driven films/TV shows, the tech seems to be a net win for productivity.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#289

Post by seanp2k2 »

CharlesW wrote: post #205
Pasorrijer wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A response to your edit, I was on a zoom call with current musical editors / producers and that is 100% part of the problem. Many of today's actors /actresses almost mumble their lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and enunciate the crap out of everything.

> Many of today's actors /actresses almost mumble their lines and make it absolute hell for the audio people to pick them up, whereas theatre trained individuals were loud and enunciate the crap out of everything. There's zero correlation between how loud someone says their lines and how loud they are in the resulting mix when ADR is used. There is a limit to how far you can push this for lines recorded live because…

This. These are largely mixing decisions, although it would be kinda weird to have a whispering actor boosted to sound as loud as a train in a scene.

The technical term for this is “Dialogue LRA” measured in LU: https://s3.amazonaws.com/izotopedownloads/docs/insight200/en... - this link also mentions some of the standards around this and now to use their software to adhere to those standards.

LUFS is also relevant here as a measure of loudness: https://blog.landr.com/lufs-loudness-metering/

https://auphonic.com/blog/2020/10/08/dialog-loudness-normali...

and

https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/home-page/2018/11/10/is-dol...

Give some insight into how this works.

Re: Modern movies teach us awful lessons [video]

#290

Post by School-Cotton »

nanomonkey wrote: post #275
School-Cotton wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> English is a rather unusual language that the meaning is mostly carried only by consonants, while vowels are almost meaningless. Sorry but this sounds like nonsense. Vowel distinctions absolutely matter in English. Think of how many words would be indistinguishable otherwise: bout, bought, bet, bat, bit, beet, boot, boat, bite, but, and bait are all distinguished from each other only by a vowel. (And, yes, these al…

It may sound like nonsense, but in comparison to many other languages, English is super flexible with how vowels are pronounced and toned (entoned?). If you've ever tried to learn a tonal language, or one with more specific vowels like Khmer (which has 33 consonants and 22 vowels) you'd realize how relaxed English can be. Generally this is in English's favor, I pronounce button differently than my NZ friends, but the…

American English has something like 15 distinct vowels. That’s not that much less than your citation of Khmer, and way more than many languages. Any claim that American English has a uniquely poor vowel inventory is just wrong.
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