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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

haleynahman.substack.com

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#181

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

ulizzle wrote: post #21
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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…

If the majority of people are just fine with watching Netflix and Disney+ how do you explain their steep drop in stocks?

Interest rates

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#182

Post by derrasterpunkt »

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"?

You can disable autoplay when logged in the browser, the app will respect that setting.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#183

Post by ClumsyPilot »

mort96 wrote: post #108
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,…

I have no problems with non-realistic art forms. I think 12 FPS hand animation can look amazing, and the 12 FPS is part of the artistic expression. You're right, realism is absolutely not always the goal, and being unrealistic is sometimes the point . But for the kind of movie that's supposed to take place in a world very much like ours? The kind where it's just a camera filming actors in a street or whatever, and th…

Its like if people loved combustion cars because you get high on petroleum fumes, and rejecting electric cars because they don't stink the same way and dont make as much noise.

Its a cult.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#184

Post by wongarsu »

colordrops wrote: post #145
tshaddox wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem with higher frame rates is the same as higher resolution. It emphasizes even more the poor quality of the content. The low fidelity masks some of this, leaving more to your imagination (which is how impressionism works). If the content were of higher quality then it wouldn't be as much of an issue.

On the other hand, low frame rates put a ceiling on some measures of quality, just as low resolution does. A fast-paced fight scene or a panning shot over a field of gras in the wind is very limited by what 24fps can show.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#185

Post by ClumsyPilot »

baryphonic wrote: post #159
Nursie wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, so people that want that effect on their movies can use it, it hardly sounds like something everyone would want every time though. Or is impressionism the only valid art form? Also - > happens to be at that perfect balance between ... Yeah na, it's just what you're used to.

> Cool, so people that want that effect on their movies can use it, it hardly sounds like something everyone would want every time though. That's not what GP said. GP was arguing that 24fps is a genuine artistic choice, and that an argument that 48fps is intrinsically superior is absurd. GP was arguing that frame rate is a choice artists can use to tell their stories, that 24fps is Impressionism and 48fps is realism.…

> GP was arguing that frame rate is a choice artists can use to tell their stories, that 24fps is Impressionism and 48fps is realism

Okay, where is 77 FPS movie for surrealism, 12 FPS movie for abstractionism, 174 FPS for cubism?

The whole argument is fictitious

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#186

Post by nvarsj »

di456 wrote: post #149
macspoofing wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Part of the reason why many companies jumped on this bandwagon is also because 'customizability' is hard(er) to build in, and certainly more expensive to maintain. It's also harder to A-B test with so many variables. If tests aren't statistics significant, the value of user analytics and UX experimentation decreases from a "% lift" perspective. It's harder to know if a feature change or a user defined config had a…

That's a good insight. A bit like unit tests, A-B tests drive the design of the website to make them testable. Not sure that is ultimately the best choice for UX, but here we are. I suppose it makes it a lot easier to justify one's perf rating.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#187

Post by pfisherman »

Counterpoint. 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.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#188

Post by ip26 »

raspyberr wrote: post #144
tridao wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

The former always seemed more like gloom than night to me. Which can be compelling, but it isn’t a replacement for night.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#189

Post by [deleted] »

mandymoorefan wrote: post #134

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? "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 Inst…

[deleted]

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#190

Post by WalterBright »

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…

Back in the 80s we had films that were in color. These days, films are all in blue and orange. The blue and orange looks as bad as the 1930s two-strip technicolor, where the palette was green and red.

Case in point: House of the Dragon. The beautiful sets and costumes are all hard to enjoy when it's all drab blue and orange. Take a look at the picture:

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/15/house-o...

This happens in movie after movie after movie.

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