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Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

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Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#141

Post by mwigdahl »

jiggawatts wrote: post #98
egeozcan wrote: post #82

You can't do 100% "show, don't tell" unless your movie is 15 hours long. It's always about balance, and it's probably one of the hardest challenges in scriptwriting and directing. Netflix movies have always leaned more toward the "tell" side, and this feels like an open acknowledgment of it. Small digression: Turkish series have been doing an extreme version of "telling" for ages. I've been watching the cheesiest one…

I know precisely what you mean. I randomly stumbled upon the anime Solo Leveling, which also follows the 100% tell style. The main character reads out everything, narrates every scene, and explains his own thought processes and emotions at every step. It is weirdly addicting, perhaps only because I'm bored of the show-don't-tell style and it's refreshing to see something going contrary to that.

Just to note, Solo Leveling is Korean.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#143

Post by cdot2 »

SunlitCat wrote: post #2

Oof. What's next? Announcing what they see? What items are around them and how they could interact with them (or not)? Like "Protagonist: I walked north and I entered a mysterious room, full of different bottles. They don't look like I could use them, but maybe I should take one with me?"

We're converging on audiobooks

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#144

Post by mst »

slfnflctd wrote: post #107
kleiba wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but plots are only half the story. I'd be very grateful if they could give me some sample scenes (ideally automatically, so I don't have to go through the trouble of starting them every single time). I mean, how do people even decide whether a movie might be for them without having first inspected a good portion of it?

It's weird to me how the first two replies to this comment completely missed the sarcasm. Do we need to start using the "/s" tag here like became necessary on reddit? I don't like the thought, but maybe it's a different issue in this case-- more of a non-native-English or on-the-spectrum thing than an inexperienced teenager thing? I hope so.

Being English-as-in-UK I often run into situations where my dry/sarcastic humour completely fails to be clear to USians.

Then again from the UK POV the leftpondians barely count as native English speakers anyway ;)

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#145

Post by technothrasher »

foobarqux wrote: post #56

I don’t remember the program but in the years of broadcast TV there was a writer on a nightly talk show explaining why all TV episodes were so bland. He said that he wrote an intricate plot for TV which was rejected because the show had to be watchable by someone doing this dishes. So this isn’t a phenomenon new to the Netflix era.

Many years ago when I was in college, one of my professors wrote a Star Trek Next Generation script, and she talked about how the producers pretty much destroyed her story by insisting she stick to the formula such as "between X and Y minutes, the Enterprise or one of the main characters must be in danger. That danger must be resolved by minute Z." Sigh.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#146

Post by mst »

thrwthsnw wrote: post #120
SunlitCat wrote: post #2

Oof. What's next? Announcing what they see? What items are around them and how they could interact with them (or not)? Like "Protagonist: I walked north and I entered a mysterious room, full of different bottles. They don't look like I could use them, but maybe I should take one with me?"

If people aren’t watching the show why not just make it a radio play?

I think because people are 'watching' in a situation where twenty years ago they'd've put the radio on but now they default to 'fire something up on Netflix' and so Netflix wants to make things amenable to those customers.

I'm not sure how I feel about this, but it does at least make sense in terms of why Netflix are doing so.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#147

Post by sourcepluck »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #118
Argonaut998 wrote: post #43

It’s just slop par excellence. I’ve been watching a number of movies with my wife over Christmas. Everything is so bland, repetitive and ‘design by committee’. It goes further than merely announcing what the characters are doing (in that new wannabe Die Hard movie we hear that they are expecting a baby three times in 5 minutes), you just know there are certain metrics used for every genre of movie accounting for ever…

I think the best modern productions are now the series rather than the films as there's so much more time to tell the story and have room for characters to breathe etc. Just look at the artistry and story-telling skill displayed in both seasons of Arcane - there's so many brilliant examples of "showing, not telling" on display there. As a counter-example, I enjoyed watching the "Flow" film the other day - an animated…

Couldn't disagree more about Arcane, I thought it was the usual pedestrian writing and mish-mash of tired tropes we've come to expect from mainstream productions.

A friend was pushing me to give it a try, a friend who likes Marvel, and the Miles Morales spiderman film, who plays League, who was excited by Baldur's Gate, etc etc. I tried to say "no, there is no chance of me enjoying that, it'll be the usual drivel", but they insisted it was really good.

And I watched, against my better judgment, saying to myself: "come on now, give it a serious try, be open-minded". To no avail!

I recall the scene where they'd the punk or alternative or "underground" live music in the bar in the underworld place, in the 3rd or 4th episode, and that being the final straw for me. A viler and more disharmonious appropriation of dissident culture I've never had the displeasure of sitting through.

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#148

Post by sourcepluck »

seydor wrote: post #77
rich_sasha wrote: post #11

I find it very stressful when watching Netflix because I don't know what is going to happen. Maybe they could include the full story line at the start of the series, so I can read it ahead of time and remove all suspense and surprise.

You should ask an AI to watch it for you

Now you're really on to something - someone give this person some VC money, please!

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#149

Post by sourcepluck »

rzzzt wrote: post #21
SunlitCat wrote: post #2

Oof. What's next? Announcing what they see? What items are around them and how they could interact with them (or not)? Like "Protagonist: I walked north and I entered a mysterious room, full of different bottles. They don't look like I could use them, but maybe I should take one with me?"

LOOK BOTTLES

THE WIZARD WENT WEST THROUGH THE DOOR AND INTO THE GARDEN

Re: Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that

#150

Post by technothrasher »

numpy-thagoras wrote: post #9
Dalewyn wrote: post #5

>Netflix execs have been telling their screenwriters to have characters “announce what they’re doing” so that viewers who have a program on in the background can follow along without having to miss plot strands. That's the critical bit of context, this is essentially radio you have on in the background while you do whatever.

Sometimes, I like watching the narrated movies meant for the visually impaired. It feels almost like an audiobook. Changing the content to make it more radio-like -- that's not something I'm a fan of. It's the whole "abstraction layers vs. tight coupling", except this time it's content.

Wes Anderson recently did a few short films from Roald Dahl stories that feel very strangely "wrong" in their almost 100% simply reading the stories out loud to actors miming along. It is so broken that it's fascinating and entirely works.
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