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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#191

Post by nvarsj »

mort96 wrote: post #20
gigaparsec wrote: post #11

The 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.

I 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.

High refresh rate makes people feel sick. It's "too real", such that the brain can't synchronize what it's seeing to what it's feeling motion wise. Ultimately a 2d plane is not optimal for a realistic experience. By it's very nature, film is impressionist.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#192

Post by nerdponx »

neovive wrote: post #60

I 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…

It's going to look goofy and dated in 10 years.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#193

Post by woodruffw »

dekhn wrote: post #167
tuetuopay wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re not wrong, but Kubrick famously used some of the fastest lenses available at the time to shoot the candlelight scenes. I believe the folklore is that he had to borrow them from NASA, so it’s probably a stretch to expect that kind of technical availability in general film productions from the period.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#194

Post by Godel_unicode »

greenhorn360 wrote: post #171
toddmorey wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, Apple customization has become really good. Not in terms of tweaking the look, but the functionality tweaks like mentioned above? iPhone is super customizable.

Can I put all the app icons in the bottom right corner where I can reach them with one hand yet? Or does it still force them to float at the top?

What about “make this arbitrary wav file a ringtone”. No?

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#195

Post by QuercusMax »

wongarsu wrote: post #170
vanilla_nut wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comb…

We started watching House of the Dragon, and stopped because it was impossible to see anything on the TV in our bedroom with any ambient lights. Only way to watch is on our basement home theater setup which allows us to black out the environment. It's ridiculous. When we watched the GoT final episodes we had to wait until after dark to watch them.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#196

Post by nerdponx »

hgsgm wrote: post #58

Is 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.

The 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.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#197

Post by Godel_unicode »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #154
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there third party frontends? Why can't you just pay them, authenticate, and use whatever frontend or player you want? I suspect that the answer is ads. The Netflix app is an ad billboard on your phone and TV. Also, copyright and DRM. Edit: I wonder if draconian copyright laws are ultimately to blame here. Nobody is allowed to provide such a service. This is getting a bit off topic though since this article is spe…

I feel the same way about Spotify. I'm fine paying an honest price for a useful service, but the upsells and dark patterns have gotten so aggressive I can't stand the client any more. I wish they'd at least allow third party clients to access basic functionality... but decisionmakers don't understand the attraction of a third party client in the first place, let alone feel like unlocking that functionality when it co…

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an upsell in Spotify, to what does this refer? Are you not paying for Spotify?

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#198

Post by ip26 »

matt-attack wrote: post #71
mort96 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

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,…

So all cinema and all producers are targeting precisely the same level of impressionism? None desire any more or less realism?

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#199

Post by muglug »

royjacobs wrote: post #168
tuetuopay wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 starte…

Yeah, the difference is just that the first movie’s DP was aiming for a naturalistic shot, whereas the second DP wasn’t. Tons of 80s and 90s movies have heavily-stylised non-naturalistic lighting (e.g Tim Burton’s Batman)

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#200

Post by SSLy »

wyager wrote: post #173
mtsr wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’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…

A 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 t…

Pirate encodes long have been fixing terrible banding and other artefacts on BluRay releases, it seems now they have to start messing with gamma math. Wonderful.
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