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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

haleynahman.substack.com

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#411

Post by kyleyeats »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #352
kyleyeats wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GoT had several nighttime battle scenes with great lighting. I think that was the problem. They had to go darker than the fights they already showed.

I don’t understand the reasoning here, are you saying that GoT was a tech demo? To me it made sense that as the show got further along and the situation grew more dire that it would be visibly darker as a metaphor.

Sure, it's a tech demo. If you set the brightness on the demo to 7 early on and say "This is dark," you can then turn it down to 5 later and that will seem even darker. The idea is to start at 7, not at 5, because when you have to turn it down to 3 you can't see anything.

The Craster's fight and the wall fight were both at night and looked great. But maybe they should have been a bit brighter so there was more room for the narrative dimming and actually seeing things. This all feels like betting into an empty pot, though, because the darkness of episode 3 isn't even a top-10 season 8 complaint for me.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#412

Post by roughly »

epolanski wrote: post #82
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…

The Wolf of Wall Street is a movie that would surprise most people by how much special effects it has: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pocfRVAH9yU

You know, what gets me watching that - 50 years ago being an actor meant a life of traveling to exotic locations for shoots. Today, it apparently means spending just a lot of time in a studio with a green screen. Whatever the reason or benefits or whatever, man, I feel like that’d be incredibly disappointing as an actor.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#413

Post by lmm »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #352
kyleyeats wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GoT had several nighttime battle scenes with great lighting. I think that was the problem. They had to go darker than the fights they already showed.

I don’t understand the reasoning here, are you saying that GoT was a tech demo? To me it made sense that as the show got further along and the situation grew more dire that it would be visibly darker as a metaphor.

The problem is that if you've already done a battle scene that's as dark as reasonable, you have a problem when you then want to "go darker".

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#414

Post by lmm »

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.

Barriers to entry tend to raise quality. But people tend not to consider that a good argument for keeping them.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#415

Post by lmm »

drexlspivey wrote: post #133
masurus wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? There's a ton of AI upscales coming out and they're becoming really good; plenty examples on youtube including iconic scenes from iconic movies. Perhaps another 12 months max before AI upscales go from enthusiast/amateur remaster community to commercial.

Having an AI generate 75% of the movie pixels that weren’t there in the original work doesn’t really count as a ‘remaster’ imo

It's what most of those "HD remasters" of film are doing. (Well, sometimes it's a human or a chemical/mechanical process rather than an "AI", but either way you're fabricating details out of noise and/or thin air).

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#416

Post by spywaregorilla »

ryeights wrote: post #359
spywaregorilla wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, first of all, this scene is clearly green and yellow, not orange and blue. This is not a common color palette. It's not a completely new color palette, because that's a dumb concept, but it's not common. Green and yellow are analogous whereas blue/orange are complementary. Second, the orange / blue contrast is more of a film trailer / film poster thing than the actual films themselves. Most people will agree th…

I’m gonna have to totally disagree with you and say that the scene is definitely amber and teal, not green and yellow. Look at their skin tones, and the plates/walls.

My eyes are drawn to the apron and the average of the two plate colors personally. But sure, whatever. We can at least agree that amber and teal are still not at all the same thing as the orange blue contrast as they are different colors and not complementary (both taking a step towards yellow).

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#417

Post by pbronez »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #379
drc500free wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

GoT has the same dynamic as Lord of the Rings, where the world itself is arguably the protagonist, and the characters are there to explore it for you. The GoT show runners appear to have totally misunderstood that, and threw the suspense and world building stuff under the bus for creating moments of interpersonal drama. But the drama and actions increasingly made no sense vs the buildup of the previous seasons. Who a…

Ugh the Lost thing was so infuriating.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#418

Post by WalterBright »

dylan604 wrote: post #297
atoav wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an aesthetic choice. Not one I would make, but it is one. By drenching everything in one monchrome color gradient it is also easier to hide bad set design, costume and VFX. Doing a crystal clear shot with a steady camera, full color and a believeable effect is much harder to pull off (and thus: more expensive). Technically nothing speaks against doing any other style of lighting and coloration, but then you can…

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.

> The color tone is used by the artists to impart a mood.

The mood it imparts on me is annoyance.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#419

Post by Nursie »

baryphonic wrote: post #159
Nursie wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool, so people that want that effect on their movies can use it, it hardly sounds like something everyone would want every time though. Or is impressionism the only valid art form? Also - > happens to be at that perfect balance between ... Yeah na, it's just what you're used to.

> Cool, so people that want that effect on their movies can use it, it hardly sounds like something everyone would want every time though. That's not what GP said. GP was arguing that 24fps is a genuine artistic choice, and that an argument that 48fps is intrinsically superior is absurd. GP was arguing that frame rate is a choice artists can use to tell their stories, that 24fps is Impressionism and 48fps is realism.…

> GP was arguing that 24fps is a genuine artistic choice

Yes, and I'm saying that's spurious argument because if it were an artistic choice we'd have a lot more variation of said choice.

> cross examining (e.g. "so, you're saying...")

Where did I do that? I was making the point that impressionism is not the only art form. I know the GP wasn't arguing it should be, but again, that's where their analogy breaks down.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#420

Post by jasomill »

deergomoo wrote: post #406
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.

As someone who very much likes how 24fps looks, it’s still worth noting that 24 was only chosen to balance film usage with smoothness. I’m willing to buy into the idea that lower framerates cause our brains to “fill in” details and thereby improve immersion by some impossible-to-measure metric, but let’s not pretend that’s why 24 was chosen. It was chosen because 30 or 48 or 60 would cost more to shoot. Display tech…

Considering the heat generated by lighting, the relatively low sensitivity of film stocks, and the relatively small aperture, uncoated lenses available at the time (1926) 24 fps was standardized, I suspect exposure requirements may have also played a role in preferring one of the lowest feasible frame rates.

It may or may not have been a coincidence that 24 divides 120, potentially simplifying the design of electrical devices (lighting, motors) powered by 60 Hz AC; I don't know enough about the technologies involved to say.

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