The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

as someone who used to work at a digital intermediary (DI) company (think photoshop filters but for film) most of this is bollocks.

> But every time I watch something made before 2000, it looks so beautiful to me

No, the author is confusing nostalgia with aesthetics.

Heat for example is a great movie, fun story, good suspense. It looks ok, but its colours are all over the place. you don't notice it, because its an old film and old films should feel like that.

The quote:

> Tungsten allows for more accurate color in camera but LEDs are cheaper, cooler, and more convenient. So the solution is to film on a nice digital camera and fix the color in post.

very much nope. None of the stuff you've seen in films since about 2005 looks like it was shot. No film ever gets to screen without colour correcting. In fact every setup will have a macbeth chart film so that they can conform the colours so they are consistent.

More over, film is colour corrected in 16bit log, which is way more colours than most of us can observe, and a fuckton more dynamic range than can be displayed.

yes shite LED lights have worse spectral response than tungsten, but its fairly easy to correct for (hell if you are good enough you can film under sodium lamps and make it look good. )

but ARRL lights have full RGB, with loads of effects that were not possible before. I as a mere mortal can light a room like the Holywood golden age for https://ymcinema.com/2022/09/26/lighting-a-desert-magnificen...

> Another user mentioned that shooting on film required a level of forethought, planning, and patience that digital simply doesn’t

Yes, it also means that you can't take risks, because every foot of film cost a fuckton to process, you have to rush it to get developed, then view the rushes, print the stuff you like or re-shoot. reshoots are very expensive. If you miss a shot, then you are fucked, because it'll blow a hole in your budget.

digital allows instant playback, much less reset, and longer shooting in much more challenging lighting situations. For example Barry lyndon could be shot without custom lenses.

Digital allows multi camera shooting, meaning that you can get much better acting from everyone, because a "two shot" takes half the time.

So to the meat: "all of netflixs looks the same"

No, you are looking at fashion. Colour and feel of a TV show is completely under the control of the producers/directors/DoP. They colours you are seeing are a conscious choice. When the next Coen brothers movie pops up, you'll see a rush to have warm, low contrast rich colour movies again.

Marvel movies look like that, because they chose to.

Marvel Tv series look like that, because it was a choice.

They respond to fashion, which means that at the moment shit is dark and grundgy, because thats what's in.

Black and white will come around shortly.

TL;DR: the author is talking shit about stuff they are making assumptions about. none of the data there is accurate. Its just a reworked classic: "everything was better in the old days, the youth don't put any effort into the craft" which given that this is literally the tail end of the golden era of TV is utter risible bollocks.

Stranger Things immediately came to mind when I read the headline. Aside from the amateurish writing and the storyline that quickly became complete non-sense, the look and feel of the show was very much the equivalent of a fast-food chain. Overly saturated colors, everything looks punchy and overly sharp.

Those reports were about the imax version though, and I have personally seen that happen in imax theaters showing 24fps content. That’s field of view, not framerate.

The color tone is used by the artists to impart a mood. Sticking with the GoT theme, looking at the drab colors of Winterfell, Castle Black, etc are meant to convey the dreary nature of the cold. The drab colors of Kings Landing vs the vibrant colors of Dorn or High Garden. When done right, they can serve a purpose that helps the story. No story serving purpose comes from the trend following styles.

No it doesn’t. Lots of different artistic schools have existed at once all through history. Just because some style was invented doesn’t mean that everyone dropped what they were doing and became surrealists.

There are people painting what would be considered impressionist painting now (literally now, I have a friend who frequently paints on sundays and texted to ask before writing this).