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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#261

Post by karmakaze »

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.

Higher frame rates and resolution is great for real things like sports and news. For fiction I much prefer lower, it allows for a greater suspension of disbelief. When I watch less than perfectly shot movies (almost all of them) in high res/fps I'm aware that they are actors and of their less than perfect acting.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#262

Post by DethNinja »

I think reasons are simple: Untalented staff in general. Especially art directors and set decorators of Netflix shouldn't be allowed near 5 ft of any camera.

These two professions are usually underrated but they usually make or break the show.

80s had so many talented art directors/set decorators but it seems Netflix is currently incapable of attracting similar talent.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#263

Post by frozenlettuce »

This week I read an article in Portuguese about how the Brazilian largest TV is having difficulties on creating new soap operas.

On social media I saw one interesting argument: the current generation that is producing the shows grew up watching GoT, and lost touch with how soap operas used to look. Until recently, Brazil used to sell soap operas to other countries ("The Clone" was a bit hit). By creating content that mimicked USA's tv shows, they lost the uniqueness of its content. Maybe something like that is happening on Netflix as well? People watched GoT/CSI while in college and now we have blandless everywhere.

Google translated article: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=pt-B...

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#264

Post by themitigating »

ismokedoinks wrote: post #246
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…

> 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? I think this is pretty clearly the author's thesis--movies now look a certain way and they used to look characteristically different. I think the main point is that the author (and apparently hundreds of people here) find…

Let me summarize the author's viewpoint.

"I've changed/am unhappy now, I don't know why, a deep introspective look into my life is difficult, therefore older movies are better and I'll find a way to justify that"

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#266

Post by philjohn »

royjacobs wrote: post #45
PKop wrote: post #4

It's hinted at here, but film produces a much better overall look than digital. It is just that digital is way cheaper and easier to work with. There is certainly more versatility in what you can create in post production with digital but the base look of what is captured is more beautiful on film, and this is the same with photographs. Look at high quality old images captured on film, they blow most digital images o…

Tarantino uses film because he likes the artifacts film gives, not because it's objectively better. Same for PT Anderson. Indeed, both directors favor grungy 1970s aesthetics, which should give you an indication where they're coming from, stylistically. Nolan typically uses large film gauges like 65mm which are not comparable to 'regular' 35mm film. Additionally, film does not have more dynamic range than digital. Ta…

I'm wondering how much of the critique in the article is down to the Arri Alexa look - it's pretty distinctive, so much so that I can usually pick out if a show or film was shot in it (latest example was watching "Dark" and I double checked, and indeed, it's an Arri Alexa prod).

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#267

Post by zuminator »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #177
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,…

> What you're saying is equivalent to: "Impressionism is objectively worse than realism Type 'art' into google, how many pictures are impressionism, 1 in 10? Pick a movie at random, what are the chances it's made in 24 fps? 99.9%? Why do you thin TVs have motion smoothing? Because, we, normal people, are sick of you impressionist-obsessed people controlling everything.

TV as a medium is different from the big screen. People watch sporting, talk shows and live events on TV, rarely at the movies. And the convention is for those types of things to be viewed at higher frame rates. Films can be viewed at higher frame rates but then they tend to have a TV-ified look. Which is ok, if you personally dislike the film look and prefer movies to look like daytime television. But for many people, film shot in high frame-rate, particularly in slower, less action-oriented scenes, looks too much like a broadcast experience and too little like a cinematic experience.

On a recent episode of The Filmcast, David Chen speculates that there's something of a generational divide to the preference [0]. He thinks that younger people, brought up on big screen TVs, 120 fps oled smartphones, and 240 fps gaming action, may just come to prefer high frame rate for everything, whereas older folk might be more nostalgically drawn to the traditional slow frame rate for movies.

[0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-700-avatar-the-way-...

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#268

Post by anonymouskimmer »

kzrdude wrote: post #241

Another aspect of this is staffing. It doesn't immediately seem tech related, but it is. There's less people in the background as extras, less people making background scenes or setting up. It can mostly filled in by production technology if necessary. Some movies just seem so empty, and they look "cheap" if you see it in this angle. Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely mor…

Reading this, and looking at the example photos in the article, it's the Nighthawks aesthetic (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/111628/nighthawks ). It has a place in cinema and art, and always has. But when any aesthetic becomes dominant people would notice the lack of the other aesthetics that they are used to experiencing.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#269

Post by ClassyJacket »

kzrdude wrote: post #241

Another aspect of this is staffing. It doesn't immediately seem tech related, but it is. There's less people in the background as extras, less people making background scenes or setting up. It can mostly filled in by production technology if necessary. Some movies just seem so empty, and they look "cheap" if you see it in this angle. Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely mor…

The Matrix 4 felt so empty because of this. It felt like a small group of actors together on a cramped stage.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#270

Post by Rebelgecko »

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.

IIRC the Netflix blur on the top/bottom of the frame is actually from using 1970s anamorphic lenses. It's super distracting to me because sometimes it blurs the foreground too
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