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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#111

Post by tshaddox »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #79
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.

The benefit for 48fps is mainly for smoother special effects. People are so used to 24fps now that the stuttering you're talking about is part of the collection of characteristics that people call "cinematic". It's not a video game, you're not in control, so the standards are different. In a high CGI film, like Avatar 2 for instance, where the entire film is mainly CGI, then shooting in 48fps has an advantage and loo…

On the contrary, I think HFR can make improvements (or unlock new possibilities) for very routine shots, like panning and zooming.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#112

Post by mort96 »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #79
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.

The benefit for 48fps is mainly for smoother special effects. People are so used to 24fps now that the stuttering you're talking about is part of the collection of characteristics that people call "cinematic". It's not a video game, you're not in control, so the standards are different. In a high CGI film, like Avatar 2 for instance, where the entire film is mainly CGI, then shooting in 48fps has an advantage and loo…

I'm currently watching through House of Cards. Not exactly a high CGI series full of special effects which need high FPS to look smooth. Yet the incredibly low FPS is jarring at times. Turns out people like to put big sweeping camera movements even in non-CGI movies.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#113

Post by aconbere »

atdrummond wrote: post #43
PKop wrote: post #4

It's hinted at here, but film produces a much better overall look than digital. It is just that digital is way cheaper and easier to work with. There is certainly more versatility in what you can create in post production with digital but the base look of what is captured is more beautiful on film, and this is the same with photographs. Look at high quality old images captured on film, they blow most digital images o…

Soderbergh has shot his last few films on iPhone and they look fantastic. Lighting and framing while shooting and good editing and grading afterwards are far more important factors.

This surprised me because I’d watched No Sudden Move by Soderbergh relatively recently and thought it looked pretty good. Reading more it seems like only Unsane and High Flying Bird were shot on phones (the latest of which was 2019).

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#114

Post by antiquark »

gigaparsec wrote: post #11

The number one thing that bothers me the most in the "netflix aesthetic" is the weird looking background bokeh that every scene seems to have. It looks like a cheap gaussian blur filter applied in post production and adds to the fakeness. This is probably due to the optics in some of the latest Red digital cameras, but it's still not convincing. Kinda like 48 vs 24 FPS.

This background blur becomes a necessity if the filmmakers are using the "LED wall virtual set" technology. Otherwise, you could see the individual LEDs if the background was in sharp focus.

E.G.: "Why 'The Mandalorian' Uses Virtual Sets"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufp8weYYDE8

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#115

Post by throwbadubadu »

matt-attack wrote: post #71
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.

What you're saying is equivalent to: "Impressionism is objectively worse than realism. Look at a Van Gogh painting, there's hardly any detail. It looks coarse, and grainy and the brush strokes are so wide I can hard tell what's what. Starry Starry Night would be objectively such a better painting if he had just reach for a finer brush and included more detail. Adding more detail would have made it far more realistic,…

That's also an opinion and you are stretching the art comparison quite much, 24fps is a standard and limitation and photo/film most often is to capture some reality and not so much an interpretation of someone else's view in Monet sense? Most often the cinematic art part comes in on other dimensions, even if for some few it is those 24fps and other limitations.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#116

Post by johnchristopher »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #106
johnchristopher wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't I say "never show me this show again, I'm never going to watch it"? Maybe someone is paying Netflix to suggest this movie (edit:content) to you ?

I've never heard this is the case, and if there was a secret deal that this was the case I think it would have been leaked years ago, but also it would be difficult for this to be the case and not have it be public knowledge because accounting details of large companies are something that is often inspected by news organizations and others on the lookout for something to complain about. But maybe it can be that it is…

> But maybe it can be that it is public knowledge and I'm one of the ten thousand who doesn't know? If so, do you have a link?

Nope, it was just a thought. Sorry if I came off as implying shaddy things. I agree with what you wrote and it would be surprising something like that had been going on for years without anyone noticing (or revealing it).

I suppose it'd be less expensive to advertise a show outside of Netflix UI.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#117

Post by masurus »

drexlspivey wrote: post #85
masurus wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Film has become vastly inferior to digital both in stills and cinema if we're talking about technical aspects like dynamic range and colour accuracy. The problem is, just like with CGI which has gotten pretty good at modelling light transport, it feels off because it's too clean and clear. Digital it's too good at capturing reality. Film introduces a bunch of artefacts and limitations that 'look' nicer than accuratel…

Can you do an 8K remaster of a movie shot in 4K digital? With film you can just rescan the negative with a higher resolution.

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.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#118

Post by macspoofing »

jblakey wrote: post #78

On a related note, why is Netflix's interface so locked down? Why would it be bad for me to turn off autoplay for trailers? Why can't I say "never show me this show again, I'm never going to watch it"? And why, in this age of AI, and they still putting white text over a white background? That last one, especially, made me say "do people at Netflix eat their own dogfood"?

>On a related note, why is Netflix's interface so locked down?

Partly this the fault of Apple. They championed the idea that UI is an artistic expression and therefore 'configurability' and 'customizability' is akin to heresy. This view has now infected many existing products.

Part of the reason why many companies jumped on this bandwagon is also because 'customizability' is hard(er) to build in, and certainly more expensive to maintain.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#119

Post by iconosynclast »

ulizzle wrote: post #64
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.

Why is digital trying to look more like film instead of the other way around?

Because film has a color grade built in to some extent ewhile digital does not. The "look" people built into the film back in the day because they couldn't just do it in post can still be a great look today and is pretty orthogonal to objective quality of the information captured.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#120

Post by Tempest1981 »

jblakey wrote: post #78

On a related note, why is Netflix's interface so locked down? Why would it be bad for me to turn off autoplay for trailers? Why can't I say "never show me this show again, I'm never going to watch it"? And why, in this age of AI, and they still putting white text over a white background? That last one, especially, made me say "do people at Netflix eat their own dogfood"?

First google result:

"How to turn autoplay previews on or off"

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102

On mobile:

1. From the Netflix app home screen, tap the profile icon or More

2. Tap Manage Profiles

3. ...

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