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The 'Toy Story' You Remember

animationobsessive.substack.com

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Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#171

Post by phantasmish »

eviks wrote: post #170
phantasmish wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just feed AI the IMDB summary and let it re-create the movie for me. Just as “pure” as high-bitrate h.265, after all.

You've chosen your argumentative perch very well, it's indeed right down there with the AI slop where you can't see any difference in reality

Well film grain doesn't matter because compression exists, apparently, and may as well be simulated because it's already failed the "purity test" and may as well be algo-noise. That holds for everything else! May as well maximize the compression and simulate all of it then.

[EDIT] My point is "film grain's not more-real than algo noise" is simply not true, at all. An attempt to represent something with fidelity is not the same thing as giving up and faking it entirely based on a guess with zero connection to the real thing—its being a representation and not the actual-real-thing doesn't render it equally as "impure" as a noise-adding filter.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#172

Post by eviks »

phantasmish wrote: post #171
eviks wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've chosen your argumentative perch very well, it's indeed right down there with the AI slop where you can't see any difference in reality

Well film grain doesn't matter because compression exists, apparently, and may as well be simulated because it's already failed the "purity test" and may as well be algo-noise. That holds for everything else! May as well maximize the compression and simulate all of it then. [EDIT] My point is "film grain's not more-real than algo noise" is simply not true, at all. An attempt to represent something with fidelity is no…

You're still dancing there in the slop, hallucinating the arguments thinking it's a pretty dress!

It may as well be stimulated because you won't see the difference! So now you've imagined some purity test which was never true, so you have nothing and start hallucinating some hyperbolic AI thing

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#173

Post by quuxplusone »

vodou wrote: post #157
janeway wrote: post #136

This topic is fascinating to me. The Toy Story film workflow is a perfect illustration of intentional compensation: artists pushed greens in the digital master because 35 mm film would darken and desaturate them. The aim was never neon greens on screen, it was colour calibration for a later step. Only later, when digital masters were reused without the film stage, did those compensating choices start to look like cre…

Do you have some concrete or specific examples of intentional compensation or purposeful scaffolding in mind (outside the topic of the article)?

Not scaffolding in the same way, but, two examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations" are

- the fashion for unpainted marble statues and architecture

- the aesthetic of running film slightly too fast in the projector (or slightly too slow in the camera) for an old-timey effect

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#174

Post by chrisweekly »

davidalayachew wrote: post #164
janeway wrote: post #136

This topic is fascinating to me. The Toy Story film workflow is a perfect illustration of intentional compensation: artists pushed greens in the digital master because 35 mm film would darken and desaturate them. The aim was never neon greens on screen, it was colour calibration for a later step. Only later, when digital masters were reused without the film stage, did those compensating choices start to look like cre…

Isn't the entire point of "reinventing the wheel" to address this exact problem? This is one of the tradeoffs of maintaining backwards compatibility and stewardship -- you are required to keep track of each "cause" of that backwards compatibility. And since the number of "causes" can quickly become enumerable, that's usually what prompts people to reinvent the wheel. And when I say reinvent the wheel, I am NOT descri…

enumerable -> innumerable

(opposite meaning)

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#175

Post by phantasmish »

eviks wrote: post #172
phantasmish wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well film grain doesn't matter because compression exists, apparently, and may as well be simulated because it's already failed the "purity test" and may as well be algo-noise. That holds for everything else! May as well maximize the compression and simulate all of it then. [EDIT] My point is "film grain's not more-real than algo noise" is simply not true, at all. An attempt to represent something with fidelity is no…

You're still dancing there in the slop, hallucinating the arguments thinking it's a pretty dress! It may as well be stimulated because you won't see the difference! So now you've imagined some purity test which was never true, so you have nothing and start hallucinating some hyperbolic AI thing

> But also a simulation called compression of a real thing is different from that real thing, so that purity test had already been failed

Quoted: the introduction of “purity test” to the conversation, from not one of my posts.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#176

Post by pinebox »

KaiserPro wrote: post #114

Aha! I used to work in film and was very close to the film scanning system. When you scan in a film you need to dust bust it, and generally clean it up (because there are physical scars on the film from going through the projector. Theres also a shit tone of dust, that needs to be physically or digitally removed, ie "busted") Ideally you'd use a non-real time scanner like this: https://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/n…

> However! that doesnt affect the colour.

That has been something I've wondered about since seeing frame comparisons of (probably) telecine'ed prints of The Matrix vs. the myriad home video releases.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#177

Post by chrisweekly »

quuxplusone wrote: post #173
vodou wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some concrete or specific examples of intentional compensation or purposeful scaffolding in mind (outside the topic of the article)?

Not scaffolding in the same way, but, two examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations" are - the fashion for unpainted marble statues and architecture - the aesthetic of running film slightly too fast in the projector (or slightly too slow in the camera) for an old-timey effect

Great examples. My mind jumps straight to audio:

- the pops and hiss of analog vinyl records, deliberately added by digital hip-hop artists

- electric guitar distortion pedals designed to mimic the sound of overheated tube amps or speaker cones torn from being blown out

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#178

Post by cbolton »

CodeArtisan wrote: post #152
cbolton wrote: post #135

There's a similar issue with retro video games and emulators: the screens on the original devices often had low color saturation, so the RGB data in those games were very saturated to compensate. Then people took the ROMs to use in emulators with modern screens, and the colors are over-saturated or just off. That's why you often see screenshots of retro games with ridiculously bright colors. Thankfully now many emula…

Final Fantasy Tactics on Game Boy Advance had a color mode for television. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/F29nlIz_tWo

Nice, and two LCD modes to adapt to different GBA screens! (presumably the GBA and GBA SP first model, vs the GBA SP second model with backlight)

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#179

Post by thaumasiotes »

ilamont wrote: post #168
janeway wrote: post #136

This topic is fascinating to me. The Toy Story film workflow is a perfect illustration of intentional compensation: artists pushed greens in the digital master because 35 mm film would darken and desaturate them. The aim was never neon greens on screen, it was colour calibration for a later step. Only later, when digital masters were reused without the film stage, did those compensating choices start to look like cre…

There’s an analog analogue: mixing and mastering audio recordings for the devices of the era. I first heard about this when reading an article or book about Jimi Hendrix making choices based on what the output sounded like on AM radio. Contrast that with the contemporary recordings of The Beatles, in which George Martin was oriented toward what sounded best in the studio and home hi-fi (which was pretty amazing if yo…

> There’s an analog analogue: mixing and mastering audio recordings for the devices of the era.

In the modern day, this has one extremely noticeable effect: audio releases used to assume that you were going to play your music on a big, expensive stereo system, and they tried to create the illusion of the different members of the band standing in different places.

But today you listen to music on headphones, and it's very weird to have, for example, the bassline playing in one ear while the rest of the music plays in your other ear.

Re: The 'Toy Story' You Remember

#180

Post by thaumasiotes »

chrisweekly wrote: post #174
davidalayachew wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the entire point of "reinventing the wheel" to address this exact problem? This is one of the tradeoffs of maintaining backwards compatibility and stewardship -- you are required to keep track of each "cause" of that backwards compatibility. And since the number of "causes" can quickly become enumerable, that's usually what prompts people to reinvent the wheel. And when I say reinvent the wheel, I am NOT descri…

enumerable -> innumerable (opposite meaning)

> (opposite meaning)

Funnily enough, e- means "out" (more fundamentally "from") and in- means "in(to)", so that's not an unexpected way to form opposite words.

But in this case, innumerable begins with a different in- meaning "not". (Compare inhabit or immiserate, though.)

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