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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

haleynahman.substack.com

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#321

Post by dylan604 »

mattkrause wrote: post #84
miohtama wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing film can do that digital photography cannot do today. Any claims of film superiority must be based on subjective interpretation and existing familiarity with film like look. Digital cinema can 100% emulate film like look if they wish to add rendering artifacts.

I liked the argument in the article: film “works” because it can do a bit less : it adds enough hassle that the rest of the production (e.g., lighting) is done more carefully, and thus the whole thing comes out better.

On a similar thread to this is the aspect of how film shoots did not have a video village. The primary people to see what the camera was shooting as the DP and Director. Video Assist came along (the old b&w flickering TV near the film camera) that allowed more people to see the image. Once a video feed could be provided to anyone, every body started to provide opinions. This actually slows things down.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#323

Post by amatecha »

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.

A higher framerate increases the chance of experiencing "uncanny valley", because it starts to look too real, but clearly isn't. For example, you see more subtlety in actors' motions (the movements that prove "they are a real living human" to your lifelong-trained eye), and it also makes the animatronic or computer-generated characters/elements that much more distracting (they much more obvious when compared to the observable organic properties of living actors).

The more granularity you are provided, the more accurately you can discern the natural or unnatural properties of the things you're looking at. The movement of a lifeless prop goes from "oh wow that was creepy" to "oh that is a piece of plastic with some paint on it". Our ability to discern what things are is pretty strong.

When everything is rendered down to (or shot at) 24fps, the film gains a slightly more dreamlike or fantastical feel. This supports the ability to suspend disbelief, because your imagination fills in the rest, and the aforementioned granularity is not there to betray how much fake stuff there is on set.

Increasing the framerate is not an objective improvement, because the factors I mention are factual, and will not be considered an improvement for all types of films. The more the film experience matches reality, the more glaring any deviation from that becomes, thus breaking the suspension of disbelief.

Put more frankly, when I watch a film, I do not want to see how the sausage is made. I want to be "tricked" into believing what I'm seeing is plausible, and high frame-rate (alongside super-high resolution) is a factor that makes that less likely to succeed.

Like, high frame rate is fine if I'm watching, say, a documentary. It will look utterly stupid and uncanny-valley-triggering when I watch some sci-fi space adventure with tons of computer-generated elements. It was horrible watching The Hobbit at 48fps, and made it WAY harder to see it as a fantasy world. It looked more like "these are actors walking around on a set", and I couldn't shake that perception for the entire film. Again, this is demonstrably not an "objective improvement", it basically sabotaged the experience for me.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#324

Post by kinkrtyavimoodh »

jameshart wrote: post #204
MengerSponge wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

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

Some might disagree. The democratization of content creation that happened with the internet and social media was in general a good thing, but it can't be denied that it also resulted in a massive reduction of the Signal to Noise ratio in content quality. The reason the Google search result page is much worse today is precisely because there exits tons of content today that should never have been made.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#326

Post by KaiserPro »

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…

> P.T. Anderson still only use film

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11271038/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_c... it might be shot on film, but its graded digitally. So the argument doesn't really apply here. The colours you see here are a choice made in the DI stage.

> film produces a much better overall look than digital.

no, not anymore, that hasn't been the case since about 2010. (no ignore RED cameras, they are terrible at colour) All the (big) films you've seen since about 2007 and all the films since 2012 have been graded digitally (apart from maybe a mike lynch film) This means that the colours are not because its film, but because of a choice made by the Director of Photography, or producer or director. The thing you think is a filmic look is mostly digital. Yes, that includes films that were shot on film, like the Noland batmans.

Yes, that means even the film you saw at the cinema on a film projector was graded digitally. it was just lasered out to film and printed for distribution. Also, the other bit to remember is that new prints look much nicer than old prints. Old prints look like shite, dirty, scratched and sometimes washed out.

"real" film shot now is nothing like the grainy stuff of 25 years ago, it has a far higher dynamic range than then, and much smaller film grain. Its just that digital film cameras are now even better and more consistent. This crossover happened in about 2012.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#327

Post by SSLy »

munificent wrote: post #156
spywaregorilla wrote: post #146

I don't really care about technical specs of cameras or film or whatever, but I think the author is largely just wrong. At least on their comparison between Moonshot and When Harry Met Sally. Those are just different films. The Moonshot still is CLEARLY using color with great intention. It's not a realistic scene. It's a carefully designed shot. The characters, the coffee, and the table are yellow. The background is…

> The Moonshot still is CLEARLY using color with great intention. It's not a realistic scene. It's a carefully designed shot. The characters, the coffee, and the table are yellow. The background is green. That's interesting. I would be much more inclined to agree with that if every fucking movie in the past twenty years wasn't also using the exact same gold-cyan two-color palette: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.p…

> every fucking movie in the past twenty years wasn't also using the exact same gold-cyan two-color palette:

You really should watch more movies. Colour has found new popularity after Spiderverse

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#328

Post by WalterBright »

KaiserPro wrote: post #311
WalterBright wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Back in the 80s we had films that were in color those films were mostly grain. But as other people point out, the grade of a film has been a deliberate choice for over 20 years. None of what you've seen has ever been natural. but now its a bit more obvious.

> a bit more obvious

I.e. obviously worse. Much worse.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#329

Post by dontlaugh »

prmoustache wrote: post #288
dontlaugh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even 48 is barely enough for panning shots to not cause headaches and nausea, I want at least 60. It’s only at 120 that diminishing returns really begin.

Headaches and nausea? Panning shots typically only last a few seconds.

That’s all it takes, at least for me. Instant (minor) headache at low frame rate panning. Same in games running under 30 fps. I get migraines and nausea from longer exposure.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#330

Post by BlueTemplar »

miohtama wrote: post #35
ulizzle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you disagree that film looks better than digital?

There is nothing film can do that digital photography cannot do today. Any claims of film superiority must be based on subjective interpretation and existing familiarity with film like look. Digital cinema can 100% emulate film like look if they wish to add rendering artifacts.

Hmm, not across the whole pipeline though. For instance, 35mm film tops around the equivalent of 12k columns of resolution, while a lot of digital cinemas are still equipped with 2k projectors.
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