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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#301

Post by dylan604 »

woodruffw wrote: post #193
dekhn wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>some of the fastest lenses available at the time

?? more like ever. are you suggesting that we have lenses widely available that are faster today?

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#302

Post by Antrikshy »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #270
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

It's called falloff, I think.

And yeah, it's the effect of some anamorphic lenses.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#303

Post by colordrops »

whynotminot wrote: post #253
colordrops wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We need to go back to 480i to increase immersion.

The lofi tv scene is waiting to explode.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#304

Post by dylan604 »

kqr wrote: post #9
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…

I'm highly skeptical of the technical claims you're making here. Quality photography paper has about 10 stops of dynamic range (which is why the zone system for composition and printing goes up to X). While the negatives themselves may have slightly more dynamic range, there's also the clarkvision page[1] indicating they, in fact, have less dynamic range. This makes sense: you have less area to work with, and need to…

The main difference to me between film and digital isn't the dynamic range, but how the edges of whatever the range is looks. In digital, it's clipped. In film, it rolls off. That is one of the key differences to me. An area that is overexposed in film looks much less harsh than the look of the digital overexposed.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#305

Post by fredoralive »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #194
greenhorn360 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It has to be an AAC file with the magic extension .m4r, but yep, custom ringtones are possible, have been for years.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#306

Post by Antrikshy »

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…

It may just be confirmation bias, but I've been noticing this with some scenes set in the outdoors shot in front of LED walls. They have almost too beautifully perfect, almost colorful lighting conditions.

Examples that come to mind right now:

1. Scene in The Batman where Bruce and Selina have a moment in the under construction tower at golden hour. Maybe some other scenes in that movie too. 2. The entire opening sequence in Thor: Love and Thunder.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#307

Post by KaiserPro »

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.

> real scenes don't look like that.

Movies never looked like real life, They had a butt tonne of artificial lighting. even up to the 80s outdoor scenes routinely had artificial lighting to get better exposure.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#308

Post by bawolff »

ryandrake wrote: post #212
bawolff wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused. You don't think having 2x the visual data is better independent of experience? > Obviously there are 2x the visual data because there are 2x the frames, but that's borderline tautological. Isn't any straight forward application of a dictionary definition borderline tautological?

That's like saying white images are better than black ones, because white is encoded as 0xff, 0xff, 0xff, which is numerically greater than 0x00, 0x00, 0x00. Quantifiably better! We're taking a totally subjective preference and saying one is objectively better, based entirely on some arbitrary measure of the "amount of visual data". I personally think "greater visual data" looks worse than "less visual data." This is…

I'd say its like saying white images are whiter than black ones. Whether or not you want a white image is subjective. How white a white image is objective.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#309

Post by Antrikshy »

mise_en_place wrote: post #207

Wasn't that the whole point of the movie? How horrifying the uncanny valley can be. Not just M3gan herself but the entire world that the movie takes place in. James Wan is a brilliant director.

I haven't seen this movie, but I could see that. There are definitely some movies that use this quality as a part of their setting. See: Gunpowder Milkshake.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#310

Post by duxup »

drc500free wrote: post #260
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…

IMO, that's part of what made Game of Thrones fall off a quality cliff. It wasn't just subpar writing on the main plot lines when the source material ran out. The world itself became hollowed out, and the main characters stopped existing within an organic world. It turned into an avengers movie, where the leads were largely alone on screen only interacting with each other (except for designated Crowd Scenes).

> where the leads were largely alone on screen only

I feel like that is many movies now. The worlds are small and the consequences / events are just there for the primary actors to respond to and seem entirely disconnected from any kind of universe.

Massive events happen just for the sake of having a hero mug for the camera. But no consideration otherwise.

At this point in the Star Wars universe I expect the regular people of the universe would realize that ALL force sensitive people are more trouble than they are worth… but no the people of the universe show up, say dumb things, die (or don’t show up… literally nobody at times) at the appointed time for really no reason that to give the heroes or villains something to do.

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