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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#201

Post by blondin »

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

could be lighting. could also be a deliberate choice to make movies darker[0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qehsk_-Bjq4

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#202

Post by treis »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #104
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"?

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…

Because third party front ends will show competitors shows next to Netflix shows and none of them want that.

That said, we are sort of there. Google can tell you where a show is streaming and I think Apple TV displays shows from different streaming services. Just not to the point anyone that wants to can build one.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#203

Post by jedberg »

vanilla_nut wrote: post #161
johnchristopher wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

This is actually backwards. First party content costs Netflix more. They license everything the same way -- paying someone else for the content. For example, they didn't make Squid Games or Wednesday. They just got an exclusive deal for a period of time. This actually costs a lot more than licensing already existing content, because they have to pay extra for the exclusive rights and they have to pay enough to cover the cost of making it.

They push you towards exclusive content because it's what differentiates them from the competition.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#204

Post by jameshart »

MengerSponge wrote: post #38
ulizzle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you disagree that film looks better than digital?

Film was a lot more expensive, so there's a selection bias. Digital is newer, so we haven't yet benefited from survivor bias. In the hands of a sufficiently talented team, film does not look better than digital, because digital can be made to look just like film: https://www.polygon.com/2020/2/6/21125680/film-vs-digital-de...

This should not be overlooked.

A film that exists is better than one that never gets made.

Digital reduces the cost required to get certain shots; makes certain shots possible that would be impossible with film; integrates more directly into cheaper digital production workflows that make it possible to pull of effects that would be impossible on film…

Much as we may nostalgically enjoy the aesthetic of the optical compositing of original Star Wars special effects, they were incredibly expensive and - compared to what can be done today for a fraction of the cost with all-digital workflows (eg in the Disney plus Star Wars shows), objectively not as good.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#205

Post by gsatic »

WalterBright wrote: post #190
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... T…

Not only that. Different cultures who have traditionally had their own sense of color have all started copying each other...cause you know to "appeal to the largest number of chimps possible". Stuff from Europe, Japan, Korea and India all starts looking similar in color.

Its similar to the unimaginative western boring shit color palette that exists in Windows, Apple and Android permeating all software guis across the world.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#206

Post by jedberg »

adrianmonk wrote: post #175
Tempest1981 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First google result: "How to turn autoplay previews on or off" https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102 On mobile: 1. From the Netflix app home screen, tap the profile icon or More 2. Tap Manage Profiles 3. ...

I have that turned off, but they still play. I contacted Netflix support, and they basically said, "Sorry. That doesn't necessarily actually stop them. We can't share anything about whether we have plans to change that." It has been like this for years. I don't know if it's a glitch with my account or if they are doing it on purpose. Neither possibility makes me a happy customer.

Call customer service, tell them you'd like to be removed from all A/B tests, because it's messing up your experience. They should still have a button to do that.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#208

Post by pier25 »

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 part.

But another important factor was that movies couldn't be too dark because tvs couldn't reproduce them properly.

We all now have devices that can display the full SDR and HDR is becoming more common.

Filmmakers were forced to shoot and deliver bright images. So now the pendulum has gone to the other side. It's probably going to stabilize at some point.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#209

Post by ip26 »

drexlspivey wrote: post #75
DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #28

One 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…

This 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.

I disagree, my experience as a photographer has been that almost everything is “perfectly exposed” in my visual experience, but committed to a photo it is suddenly a mess. This isn’t really because the camera is bad; our brain creates a visual experience with huge dynamic range without us realizing it.

A simple example is backlit subjects on a cloudy day. We aren’t even aware the subject is backlit, but a light meter will reveal multiple stops of difference.

The result is a “real” photo frequently doesn’t actually look like your experience of the scene, and the photographer needs to do the work your brain is normally doing for you. Poorly done, it does look fake. This is where photography (or cinematography) becomes art.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#210

Post by Godel_unicode »

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,…

It’s hard to argue that it’s an intentional artistic choice if the overwhelming majority of compositions use it. It would be like saying a Monet being viewed through oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere is an artistic choice.
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