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Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

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Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#281

Post by epolanski »

pentaphobe wrote: post #248
snakeboy wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, but how does this explain the fact that this problem seems recent, or at least to have worsened recently ?

There's been a lot of speculation/rationalisation around this already, but one I've not seen mentioned is the possibility of it being at least a little down to a kind of "don't look back" collective arrogance (in addition to real technical challenges) (This may also apply to the "everything's too dark" issue which gets attributed to HDR vs. SDR) Up until fairly recently both of these professions were pretty small, ti…

> This may also apply to the "everything's too dark" issue which gets attributed to HDR vs. SDR

You reminded me of so many tv shows and movies that force me to lower all the roller shutters in my living room and I've got a very good tv otherwise I just don't see anything on the screen.

And this is really age-of-content dependent with recent one set in dark environments being borderline impossible to enjoy without being in a very dark room.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#282

Post by mnky9800n »

01100011 wrote: post #136
epistasis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Careful what you wish for, or we might get AI-powered "Vibrant Story" filters that reduce 62 minutes of plot-less filler to a 5 minute summary of the only relevant points. Or that try to generate some logic to make the magic in the story make narrative sense.

I just said to a friend that the season 5 writing is so bad that I think AI would have done a better job. I hope someone tries that out once we get the final episode: Give an LLM the scripts for the first 4 seasons, the outcome frome the finale, and let it have a go and drafting a better season 5. And no, I'm not talking about the gay thing. The writing is simply atrocious. Numerous plot holes, leaps of reasoning, an…

I wish there was more Holly and her character was developed more. She’s interesting in a world of nerds as a girl who likes girl things. Like it’s an interesting character moment when she sees the bandana and goes to find it because her fashion is important to her. And then they crammed in all this character development when she dumps on Max that she feels guilty for everything.

Basically I think the main problem with the show is the character of eleven. She’s boring. She isn’t even really a character as she has no thoughts or desires or personality. She is a set piece for the other characters to manipulate. That works in the first season. But by season 3 it’s very tiring. She just points her hands at things and psychic powers go. This is why it might feel weird when Will tells everyone he is gay and all the original boys are like dude we are totally cool with you being gay and give him a group hug then eleven joins too it feels weird. To use the show’s language, she isn’t really part of the party.

Season 3 is a great example of how the show pays too much attention to eleven without developing her character while giving her lots of screen time. billy is a very interesting character you could spend a lot of time understanding why billy is the way he is but instead you get one dream sequence because eleven sees his dreams and oh his dad sucks. Except you knew that already from season 2. And most of elevens screen time when not shopping at the mall is spent pointing her hands at things to make psychic powers go boom.

But this is basically the problem with the show. The writers like eleven too much. And she is incredibly boring as a character after season 1.

I think the show succeeded greatly in the first season at creating actions for the characters to do that developed both their characters and the narrative. And those happen in this 1980s nostalgic world. But I think the shows attachment to eleven has ultimately harmed the narrative.

That being said, I do think that the general narrative of the show going from the demogorgon to the mindflayer to vecna and the abyss is very dungeons and dragons. Haha. That would be a fun campaign to play.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#283

Post by machomaster »

october8140 wrote: post #259
pupppet wrote: post #66

The fact that I have to turn on closed captioning to understand anything tells me these producers have no idea what we want and shouldn’t be telling us what settings to use.

Your speakers are probably garbage.

This is a gross simplification. It can be part of the explanation, but not the whole one, not even the most important.

It mostly boils down to filmmaker choices:

1. Conscious and purposeful. Like choosing "immersion" instead of "clarity". Yeah, nothing speaks "immersion" than being forced to put subtitles on...

2. Not purposeful. Don't atttibute to malice what can be explained by incompetency... Bad downmixing (from Atmos to lesser formats like 2.0). Even if they do that, they are not using the technology ordinary consumers have. I mean, the most glaring example is the way the text/titles/credits size on screen have been shrinking to the point of having difficulties reading them. Heck, often I have difficulties with text size on by FullHD TV, just because the editing was done on some kind of fancy 4k+ display standing 1m from the editor. Imagine how garbage it looks on 720 or ordinary 480!

For the recent example check the size (and the font used) of the movie title in the Alien Isolation movie and compare it to the movies made in the 80-90s. It's ridiculous!

There are many good youtube videos that explain the problem in more details.

https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8

https://youtu.be/wHYkEfIEhO4

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#284

Post by Eisenstein »

XorNot wrote: post #227
snakeboy wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense, but how does this explain the fact that this problem seems recent, or at least to have worsened recently ?

Honestly what I don't get is how this even happened though: it's been I think 10 years with no progress on getting the volume of things to equal out, even with all the fancy software we have. Like I would've thought that 5.1 should be relatively easy to normalize, since the center speech channel is a big obvious "the audience _really_ needs to hear this" channel that should be easy to amplify up in any downmix....ins…

Map the front speaker outputs to the side speakers and the problem will be mitigated. I have been using this setup for about 2 years and it lets me actually hear dialog.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#285

Post by lazide »

pentaphobe wrote: post #265
XorNot wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly what I don't get is how this even happened though: it's been I think 10 years with no progress on getting the volume of things to equal out, even with all the fancy software we have. Like I would've thought that 5.1 should be relatively easy to normalize, since the center speech channel is a big obvious "the audience _really_ needs to hear this" channel that should be easy to amplify up in any downmix....ins…

Yeah it's wild - not only not improving but seemingly getting worse doesn't seem like anyone outside the audience thinks it's a serious problem (?)

‘Am I really that out of touch? No, it’s the kids that are a problem’ - Skinner, from a show long long ago.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#286

Post by omnicognate »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #276
omnicognate wrote: post #258

It would help if TV manufacturers would clearly document what these features do, and use consistent names that reflect that. It seems they want to make these settings usable without specialist knowledge, but the end result of their opaque naming and vague descriptions is that anybody who actually cares about what they see and thinks they might benefit from some of the features has to either systematically try every p…

The purpose of the naming is generally to overwhelm consumers and drive long term repeat buys. You can’t remember if your tv has the fitzbuzz, but you’re damn sure this fancy new tv in the store looks a hell of a lot better than you’re current tv and there really pushing this fitzbuzz thing.

That doesn't preclude clearly documenting what the feature does somewhere in the manual or online. People who either don't care or don't have the mental capacity to understand it won't read it. People who care a lot, such as specialist reviewers or your competitors, will figure it out anyway. I don't see any downside to adding the documentation for the benefit of paying customers who want to make an informed choice about when to use the feature, even in this cynical world view.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#287

Post by simonjgreen »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #242
KeplerBoy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TV shows changed completely in the streaming age it seems. These days they really are just super long movies with glacial pacing to keep users subscribed.

You know when something doesn't annoy you until someone points it out? It's so obvious in hindsight. Shows like the Big Bang theory, House and Scrubs I very rarely caught two episodes consecutively (and when I did they were on some release schedule so you'd forgotten half of the plot by next week). But they are all practically self contained with only the thread of a longer term narrative being woven between them. It…

I think this is less “Netflix vs old TV” and more episodic vs serialised, and the serialised form definitely isn’t new.

Buffy is a great example: plenty of monster of the week episodes, but also season long arcs and character progression that rewarded continuity. The X-Files deliberately ran two tracks in parallel: standalone cases plus the mythology episodes. Lost was essentially built around long arcs and cliffhangers, it just had to make that work on a weekly broadcast cadence.

What’s changed is the delivery mechanism, not the existence of serialisation. When your audience gets one episode a week, with mid-season breaks, schedule slips, and multi-year gaps between seasons, writers have to fight a constant battle to re-establish context and keep casual viewers from falling off. That’s why even heavily serialised shows from that era often kept an episodic spine. It’s a retention strategy as much as a creative choice.

Streaming and especially season drops flip that constraint. When episodes are on demand and many viewers watch them close together, the time between chapters shrinks from weeks to minutes. That makes it much easier to sustain dense long-form narrative, assume recent recall, and let the story behave more like a novel than a syndicated procedural.

So the pattern isn’t new. On demand distribution just finally makes the serialised approach work as reliably at scale as it always wanted to.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#288

Post by jz10 »

> Duffer’s advice highlights a conflict between technological advances and creators' goals. Features like the ones he mentioned are designed to appeal to casual viewers by making images appear sharper or more colorful, but they alter the original look of the content. By asking fans to turn these features off, he is stressing the importance of preserving the director's vision.

is it just me or does this article's last paragraph feel particularly AI generated..

whether the author did use AI or not isnt my main gripe -- it's just that certain wording (like this) won't be free from scrutiny in my head anymore :(

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#289

Post by nevon »

omnicognate wrote: post #258

It would help if TV manufacturers would clearly document what these features do, and use consistent names that reflect that. It seems they want to make these settings usable without specialist knowledge, but the end result of their opaque naming and vague descriptions is that anybody who actually cares about what they see and thinks they might benefit from some of the features has to either systematically try every p…

I'm sure part of it is so that marketing can say that their TV has new putz-tech smooth vibes AI 2.0, but honestly I also see this same thing happen with products aimed at technical people who would benefit from actually knowing what a particular feature or setting really is. Even in my own work on tools aimed at developers, non-technical stakeholders push really hard to dumb down and hide what things really are, believing that makes the tools easier to use, when really it just makes it more confusing for the users.

Re: Stranger Things creator says turn off “garbage” settings

#290

Post by nkrisc »

omnicognate wrote: post #286
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of the naming is generally to overwhelm consumers and drive long term repeat buys. You can’t remember if your tv has the fitzbuzz, but you’re damn sure this fancy new tv in the store looks a hell of a lot better than you’re current tv and there really pushing this fitzbuzz thing.

That doesn't preclude clearly documenting what the feature does somewhere in the manual or online. People who either don't care or don't have the mental capacity to understand it won't read it. People who care a lot, such as specialist reviewers or your competitors, will figure it out anyway. I don't see any downside to adding the documentation for the benefit of paying customers who want to make an informed choice a…

That costs money.
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