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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

haleynahman.substack.com

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#161

Post by vanilla_nut »

johnchristopher wrote: post #92
jblakey wrote: post #78

On 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"?

> 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 ?

Sort of? Netflix paid an upfront cost for its own content, but a recurring fee for third party content. So they try to push users to consume their content, which they'll own forever, as a bargaining chip and savings potential when the time comes to renegotiate those recurring fees.

So nobody's paying them, but Netflix effectively pays more (in the long run) to show you third party content and would prefer you watch content they produce for a one-time upfront cost.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#162

Post by esprehn »

macspoofing wrote: post #118
jblakey wrote: post #78

On 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"?

>On a related note, why is Netflix's interface so locked down? Partly this the fault of Apple. They championed the idea that UI is an artistic expression and therefore 'configurability' and 'customizability' is akin to heresy. This view has now infected many existing products. Part of the reason why many companies jumped on this bandwagon is also because 'customizability' is hard(er) to build in, and certainly more e…

Neither of those is likely the reason. This is about A/B testing your way to success, growth and engagement. Allowing too much disabling of engagement driving features or too much customizations hurts metrics. It's the same reason FB forces you from the date sorted timeline back to "magic" sorting every few days.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#163

Post by chazeon »

This 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.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#164

Post by indigodaddy »

recursive wrote: post #141
indigodaddy wrote: post #3

Don’t watch Netflix movies. Watch actual lower budget/indie movies like Red Rocket that still look and feel like movies..

This is probably addressed to me. There are a few problems. I don't know which "actual" movies to watch. Netflix has a list for me. It's news to me, but I don't know what movies look or feel like. I guess I'm not very discerning, but the Netflix look doesn't bother me, if I can even notice it, which I wouldn't bet on.

I’d recommend browsing new releases on Vudu. Sure you’ll get some Netflix-aesthetic movies mixed in, but you’ll also get plenty of indie and movies that don’t..

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#165

Post by royjacobs »

dotancohen wrote: post #147
royjacobs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely incorrect. Later shows like Voyager and DS9 were also shot on film. However, all post-production happened in standard definition, so all special effects, editing and colour correction would have to be redone, which is incredibly expensive. They did that with TNG, but since those blurays didn't sell enough, they didn't bother doing the same for DS9/VOY.

Thank you, I did not realize that the difference was in post. There's no better way to get correct information on the internet, than to post an incorrect statement on the internet!

No worries! There's a good chance that anything I post that sounds remotely authoritative turns out to be super inaccurate as well :)

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#166

Post by seattle_spring »

tshaddox wrote: post #102
matt-attack wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is equivalent to: "Impressionism is objectively worse than realism. Look at a Van Gogh painting, there's hardly any detail. It looks coarse, and grainy and the brush strokes are so wide I can hard tell what's what. Starry Starry Night would be objectively such a better painting if he had just reach for a finer brush and included more detail. Adding more detail would have made it far more realistic,…

It’s more like complaining about higher resolution reproductions of a Van Gogh, because you grew up with dial-up internet and could only view highly compressed JPEG reproductions of Van Gogh so “that’s just how Van Gogh is supposed to look, these high fidelity digital reproductions look like desktop wallpaper.” No one is saying that filmmakers couldn’t use lower frame rates as a deliberate stylistic device, similar t…

[flagged]

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#167

Post by dekhn »

tuetuopay wrote: post #140
entropie wrote: post #99

I'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 w…

In other words: dynamic range. That late 80's film is set up at daylight in a brightly lit joint. So that cameras could actually record it. The other scene is in a dimly lit dining room with directly visible light sourcee (that don't saturate). You can bet that 80's film could not have captured this kind of low-light high-contrast scene.

Except Barry Lyndon did exactly that.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#168

Post by royjacobs »

tuetuopay wrote: post #140
entropie wrote: post #99

I'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 w…

In other words: dynamic range. That late 80's film is set up at daylight in a brightly lit joint. So that cameras could actually record it. The other scene is in a dimly lit dining room with directly visible light sourcee (that don't saturate). You can bet that 80's film could not have captured this kind of low-light high-contrast scene.

A famous counterpoint to your statement that eighties film stocks would not be able to capture that kind of low-light high-contrast scene: Barry Lyndon (released in 1975).

However, it's pretty much guaranteed that both the old and new scenes mentioned in TFA have a _ton_ of extra lights and flags just out of camera. If anything, the article is pretty naive in assuming that they just walked up to some diner and started filming using available daylight.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#169

Post by olliecornelia »

tridao wrote: post #122
entropie wrote: post #99

I'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 w…

Couldn'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

They were lit and graded with the pre-home-theater home video market in mind.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#170

Post by wongarsu »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #148
raspyberr wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

It'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 ar…

One big hurdle is that just because the camera can deal with the dynamic range, that doesn't mean the viewing setup can. I can watch the Battle of Winterfell just fine on my laptop screen, or with an expensive beamer in a dark room. But on a TV that reflects the bright window in the dark parts of the screen?

The lack of dynamic range in movies meant we got away with glossy TV screens in brightly lit rooms, often combined with compression algorithms that do worse in dark scenes. And with more and more content shot for television or streaming instead of cinema, this will limit what filmmakers can do without causing problems.

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