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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

haleynahman.substack.com

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#241

Post by kzrdude »

Another aspect of this is staffing. It doesn't immediately seem tech related, but it is.

There's less people in the background as extras, less people making background scenes or setting up. It can mostly filled in by production technology if necessary.

Some movies just seem so empty, and they look "cheap" if you see it in this angle. Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely more than three actors visible in the whole film. I've noticed there's a lot of these hollow/empty productions with very few actual actors visible, and they are rather lifeless.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#242

Post by spacemadness »

Tenoke wrote: post #7
sho_hn wrote: post #2

I decided not to watch their Sandman adaptation despite generally positive reviews because the unmistakable and garing Netflix aesthetic of the trailers soured me on the prospect. It's like they ruined a graphic novel with an AI style transfer to "in the style of Netlix".

It looked pretty good and it was a great adaptation. It also didn't really look that much like their other shows (many of which are indeed extremely mediocre) and it sounds like you just have some anti-netflix bias.

That’s an unfair rebuttal and a bit defensive sounding. I agree with OP that it has that Netflix look which would make sense in it turning off a fan of the comic.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#243

Post by 9dev »

kzrdude wrote: post #241

Another aspect of this is staffing. It doesn't immediately seem tech related, but it is. There's less people in the background as extras, less people making background scenes or setting up. It can mostly filled in by production technology if necessary. Some movies just seem so empty, and they look "cheap" if you see it in this angle. Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely mor…

That is a great observation, and something that has put me off a lot of movies too. It’s an uncanny valley type of thing.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#244

Post by Godel_unicode »

ulizzle wrote: post #16
kqr wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm highly skeptical of the technical claims you're making here. Quality photography paper has about 10 stops of dynamic range (which is why the zone system for composition and printing goes up to X). While the negatives themselves may have slightly more dynamic range, there's also the clarkvision page[1] indicating they, in fact, have less dynamic range. This makes sense: you have less area to work with, and need to…

Do you disagree that film looks better than digital?

Emphatically. Film looks bland. People like film for the same reason they like vinyl; it’s psychosomatic.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#245

Post by bee_rider »

mort96 wrote: post #20
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.

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.

Higher refresh rate is objectively an improvement in the sense that it is definitely the case that there are shots that would look like a stuttery messy in 24fps, which they can pull off in 48fps. I mean they can pan twice as fast, clearly!

But 24fps restricts the director to certain types of shots, and I think the statement of preference for 24fps is mostly a result of that. Scenes where the camera is mostly still are the ones that focus on the actors and their acting. This is well known enough, I think, that it is basically an implicit statement of preference toward the acting and shot-framing aspects, and away from the technology/action/sfx aspects of film-making.

The former focus is generally seen as more prestigious and artistic so it isn’t surprising that there’s a subset of the population that prefers it. It also isn’t that surprising that that population is over-represented in the movie-discussion space. However it seems that the latter group buys more tickets!

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#246

Post by ismokedoinks »

mandymoorefan wrote: post #134

The author doesn't address that blockbuster movies have always found a "trendy look" and run with it. Is what she claims Netflix is doing any different than any other popular cycle in filmmaking? "It's actually, specifically, about how movies these days look. That is, more flat, more fake, over-saturated, or else over-filtered, like an Instagram photo in 2012, but rendered in commercial-like high-def." The "2012 Inst…

> The author doesn't address that blockbuster movies have always found a "trendy look" and run with it. Is what she claims Netflix is doing any different than any other popular cycle in filmmaking?

I think this is pretty clearly the author's thesis--movies now look a certain way and they used to look characteristically different. I think the main point is that the author (and apparently hundreds of people here) find the current visual style really lacking compared to past stylistic movements. They aren't refuting the historical existence of the trend as much as the current character of it.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#247

Post by wpietri »

jcelerier wrote: post #32
jmondi wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a completely subjective opinion though. One person could prefer film, and another digital. What does this prove?

Maybe it's subjective, but if you ask X million random people and, say, 51% prefer film, then film is better than digital in the only metric that matters (which is, "people liking it"). In practice I'd guess it'd be more 70/80%...

That sort of false binarization doesn't help anything. If it's 51-49, there are lots of good questions to ask, like "who feels which way" and "what do they like about it" and "what things do they see as in each bucket"?

The notion that there's just one "film" and just one "digital" is another false binarization. There are many, many components to each, with notable changes over the years, as with most technologies. And there are cultural aspects to each as well, further confusing the picture.

The way forward isn't in zero-sum arguments over false binaries. It's finding the next step via the sort of careful examination and experimentation that got us the many previous steps.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#248

Post by Nav_Panel »

DoneWithAllThat wrote: post #28

One aspect of this I’ve talked about before is the phenomenon of the “permanent golden hour”: what used to be a narrow sliver of time when you could get the most dramatic lighting is now easily replicated in post. So as a result tons of movies have all their outdoor shots set in this incredibly unnatural-looking light that really pulls me out of the movie. Like I remember the banker in Switzerland scenes in The Wolf…

Ironically this kind of thing is something that's been done for ages, although in a different context -- old films would shoot "nighttime" scenes using underexposure (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_for_night ), so a lot of shots esp in 50s/60s films (I recall them most clearly in westerns) supposed to take place "at night" have instead a distinct "darkened sky" look, which really doesn't resemble nighttime at all.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#249

Post by DoneWithAllThat »

kzrdude wrote: post #241

Another aspect of this is staffing. It doesn't immediately seem tech related, but it is. There's less people in the background as extras, less people making background scenes or setting up. It can mostly filled in by production technology if necessary. Some movies just seem so empty, and they look "cheap" if you see it in this angle. Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely mor…

I hadn’t thought of this at all but you’re totally right. Movies and shows have way fewer people on the screen just in the background.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#250

Post by shagie »

hef19898 wrote: post #237
shagie wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so much a "borrow" but rather "they had already been designed so the hard part was done - he just bought some." https://neiloseman.com/barry-lyndon-the-full-story-of-the-fa... > Kubrick obsessively researched the problem. He eventually discovered that Nasa had commissioned Carl Zeiss to build ten Planar 50mm f/0.7 stills lenses in the sixties, which were used to take photos of the dark side of the moon. > ... > A…

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 AI Noct Nikkor 58mm F1.2 is another neat lens. https://imaging.nikon.com/history/story/0016/index.htm (make sure you look at the full size examples of the 58mm f/1.2 and the 50mm f/1.2 and look at the car lights in the corner of the frame).

(and digging - found it). You might also enjoy Philip Greenspun's review of the Canon 50/1.0L https://web.archive.org/web/20040605021643/http://www.photo.... and the Graceland paperweights https://web.archive.org/web/20040617130935/http://www.photo....

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