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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#431

Post by whstl »

pbronez wrote: post #417
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The Lost finale was definitely disappointing, but at some point it was expected. At some point it became clear that the mystery was just a huge MacGuffin, and the writers had painted themselves into a corner.

I think that taught newer generations of Showrunners to not make the same mistake. Modern shows like Breaking Bad and Dark managed to finish right on time with perfect endings.

(GoT however...)

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#432

Post by jerpint »

pbronez wrote: post #417
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What happened to the polar bears

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#433

Post by jameshart »

kinkrtyavimoodh wrote: post #324
jameshart wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sturgeon's law applies - 90% of everything is crap. 90% of movies shot on film were terrible too. Everything in the direct-to-video bargain bin in Blockbuster in the 80s and 90s was shot on film, and trust me, they were not all Tremors II.

So when more stuff gets made, more crap gets made. But the 10% that's good gets bigger too.

You want a world that contains Everything Everywhere All At Once? You have to also accept The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies as well. Sorry.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#434

Post by amatecha »

spookthesunset wrote: post #371
amatecha wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> 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. You can really start to see this when watching older movies (say, 30 or 50 years old) in HD. These movies were never intended to be viewed on a 16:9 1080p or 4k screen. A good example is Wizard of Oz (1939) or White Christmas (1954). --…

Oh yeah, I have a family member who watches these old TV series, and the increased fidelity of TV broadcasts today makes so many fake props blatantly obvious. For example, at about 24 seconds into the intro to "Green Acres", you can see quite clearly that the background is a painted backdrop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrbPAt1_vc4 ... If you watch an actual episode of the series they use these painted backdrops with quite some frequency.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#435

Post by amatecha »

amatecha wrote: post #323
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.

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 o…

It sure would have been nice if people who disagree with what I wrote actually say something, rather than just downvoting my thought-out good-faith post and burying it out of sight. I have thought a lot about the subject of framerate in cinema and came to the above conclusions/thoughts, and if someone disagreed with that I'd be interested to hear about it (as long as it is similarly thought-out and not some kneejerk response), rather than just having my contributions to the conversation buried.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#436

Post by orbital-decay »

crotho wrote: post #369
orbital-decay wrote: post #278

That can't be the result of using LED ligthing, because modern LEDs are really good and don't require much correction in post, yet movies still look like that. In fact, I don't think you can pinpoint this to a single technical reason. It's just the industry converged onto the same recipe book - some of that is cost cutting, some is just massive amounts of A/B testing throughout the years. Demand leads to optimization…

It's a decision with the grading and it's a zeitgeist. https://www.vox.com/culture/22840526/colors-movies-tv-gray-d... There's another article I can't find on it. It's got nothing to do with netflix. Digital is not to blame either, but it's certainly a catalyst. It mostly has to do with insecurity surrounding digital and the bizarre idea that saturation is trying to 'emulate' film, (when color timing films was always…

Colors, yes - but the article discusses more than just grading, it's the entire visual language that is optimized and inevitably lacks individuality. I don't think it's just fashion, more likely it's the result of convergence in a mature industry under market pressure. The same trend is also clearly visible in everything visual in the recent two decades, not just cinematography.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#437

Post by gmueckl »

spookthesunset wrote: post #367
whynotminot wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What I find funny is looking at older TV shows that were clearly meant to be shown on old analog 4:3 CRT's but shot in film anyway. Now these shows show up in syndication and all that film got scanned as 16:8 HD. Some examples include Seinfeld, Friends, even Wizard of Oz. Many times it feels like you are watching a play instead of an immersive show. All the props look like props instead of something "real"

I had similar moments when watching the remastered Star Trek TNG. Some of the sets - the bridge set for one - had been built so that they would just barely hold up when viewed on analog video / SD TV. With the film scans, all the messy shortcuts and crimes are easily visible. The set builders must have had some deep knowledge of what shows up on camera and what doesn't to cut the corners they did.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#438

Post by KaiserPro »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #300
KaiserPro wrote: post #291

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 ol…

> most of us can observe Percieve. Sorry for nitpicking

don't worry, this is how we learn

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#439

Post by hef19898 »

shagie wrote: post #250
hef19898 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Zeiss 50mm f 0.7? Heck, I don't have a camera for that lense, nor the budget, but this combination sounds like a dream...

Some ideas - http://www.naturfotograf.com/need_speed00.html (note: its a rather old style site that hasn't been updated in two decades - I can't find it properly linked from http://www.naturfotograf.com/index2.html and the navigation is on the right hand side header and footer). Make sure you look at the http://www.naturfotograf.com/need_speed03.html - the Scentless Mayweed is really neat for its depth of field. The…

Seems like need to use my 50 f1.8 more often!

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#440

Post by wkat4242 »

spookthesunset wrote: post #371
amatecha wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

> 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. You can really start to see this when watching older movies (say, 30 or 50 years old) in HD. These movies were never intended to be viewed on a 16:9 1080p or 4k screen. A good example is Wizard of Oz (1939) or White Christmas (1954). --…

Yeah or Hitchcock's Rear Window. Even though they built actual buildings apparently, the backdrop of the sky is clearly a painting. These movies were not meant for modern resolutions.

Still, I don't think it really takes away from the movie. But with others of the same era that weren't such masterpieces it's more annoying.

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