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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#311

Post by KaiserPro »

WalterBright wrote: post #190
entropie wrote: post #99

I've said it and I say it again, most or some of the reasons why it looks weird to us (people who grow up with a TV) come down to camera quality. Most TV camera setups were about lighting and the needed amount. Since a few years cameras are so good, we have almost real blacks and real whites sometimes even in the same frame and its naturally filmed and does not look like total shit. We have crazy aperture sizes and w…

Back in the 80s we had films that were in color. These days, films are all in blue and orange. The blue and orange looks as bad as the 1930s two-strip technicolor, where the palette was green and red. Case in point: House of the Dragon. The beautiful sets and costumes are all hard to enjoy when it's all drab blue and orange. Take a look at the picture: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/15/house-o... T…

> Back in the 80s we had films that were in color

those films were mostly grain.

But as other people point out, the grade of a film has been a deliberate choice for over 20 years. None of what you've seen has ever been natural. but now its a bit more obvious.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#312

Post by simongr3dal »

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 think one of the reasons everybody keeps producing content with massive background bokeh is because of digital video formats[1], having a blurry background and a relatively still subject in focus requires relatively little video bandwidth, so the video can still look good even with a kind of crummy 2-4 Mbps encoding.

1: edit, I guess it's mostly about having to stream it over the internet

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#313

Post by KaiserPro »

mise_en_place wrote: post #207

Wasn't that the whole point of the movie? How horrifying the uncanny valley can be. Not just M3gan herself but the entire world that the movie takes place in. James Wan is a brilliant director.

yes, yes it was. The author has missed the point, its meant to make you feel unsettled and empty.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#314

Post by dylan604 »

miohtama wrote: post #35
ulizzle wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you disagree that film looks better than digital?

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.

This just isn't true. Take a 35mm camera and a digital camera side by side to shoot the same scenes, and there will be noticeable differences. Some maybe subtle, but they are there. As I just commented somewhere else here, the highlights are a key area of this difference. Digital clips where film rolls off. I've seen so so many digitally shot scenes where there's an actor against a bright sky. There is nearly zero detail left in the sky as they've pushed the exposure for the actor's face. The details in clouds are absolutely gone. It makes me cringe every time I see it.

Edit: Wanted to add another example of the differences. Digital records by separating the RGB of the light where film does not. As an example of digital oddity from this, I’ve had to work with footage shot on an Alexa (IIRC) where the white whipped cream on top of the desserts had a weird exposure thing where when in post the exposure was pushed the white went to magenta. In order to get it white, you had to keep pushing the exposure to get the third primary color up enough to catch up to white. By then, the other 2 channels were well past useable. Since it was a commercial for desserts, the white in the cream was important to keep the details of the texture. Film would not have this problem.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#315

Post by bayjorix »

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 trend started when the first video-capable full-frame DSLRs appeared on the scene about a decade ago, and they led to a mixing of the visual language of photography and filmmaking. Combined with the fact that camera lens developers are working hard to remove flaws from their products, making their picture more and more perfect, but also removing any character a lens can have.

The classic Super35 frame size is more akin to APS-C in digital photography, whereas the new top tier cameras use full frame sensors, which are 1.5x larger in diameter.

The larger the sensor, the more bokeh you get, with a shallower depth of field.

Modern tech for focus pulling allows for extra shallow depth of field even if the actors and the camera are moving. Something that would have been mostly out of focus footage 30 years ago can be easily shot with a small crew.

Large aperture photography lenses and large sensor also means much better low-light capabilities. Which means you can shoot with less studio lights, in a much lighter setup with less crew, less planning etc.

Blurry backgrounds also allow for cheaper sets.

Which means the cheaper the production budget is, the more likely they'll go with shallow depth-of-field shots.

And we the viewers will inevitably connect the cheapness of production with these visual cues.

In contrast, when an older movie had shallow depth of field scenes, those were expensive shots that had to be carefully planned, and painstakingly executed with "flawed" optics which gave them a lot of character.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#316

Post by SSLy »

WalterBright wrote: post #190
entropie wrote: post #99

I've said it and I say it again, most or some of the reasons why it looks weird to us (people who grow up with a TV) come down to camera quality. Most TV camera setups were about lighting and the needed amount. Since a few years cameras are so good, we have almost real blacks and real whites sometimes even in the same frame and its naturally filmed and does not look like total shit. We have crazy aperture sizes and w…

Back in the 80s we had films that were in color. These days, films are all in blue and orange. The blue and orange looks as bad as the 1930s two-strip technicolor, where the palette was green and red. Case in point: House of the Dragon. The beautiful sets and costumes are all hard to enjoy when it's all drab blue and orange. Take a look at the picture: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/sep/15/house-o... T…

You've never watched Midsommar, did ye?

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#317

Post by Antrikshy »

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.

I'm somewhere in the middle. I'd like to see movies use HFR like some movies use the IMAX aspect ratio.

Imagine Spider-Man: Far From Home in 24 fps, except it transitions to 48 fps in the Mysterio illusion scenes. Granted, this would spoil some moments in the movie, so it's not the perfect example.

I wish Avatar: TWoW was entirely 48 fps, OR it handled transitions better, like keeping it consistent across entire scenes.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#318

Post by lordnacho »

drc500free wrote: post #260
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…

IMO, that's part of what made Game of Thrones fall off a quality cliff. It wasn't just subpar writing on the main plot lines when the source material ran out. The world itself became hollowed out, and the main characters stopped existing within an organic world. It turned into an avengers movie, where the leads were largely alone on screen only interacting with each other (except for designated Crowd Scenes).

Is there a particular season when this happened?

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#319

Post by Brian_K_White »

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.

agree agree agree

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#320

Post by ectopod »

randcraw wrote: post #296

With all the special effects and video postprocessing in photos and films today, it's no surprise they look unnatural. I think we're seeing in film and TV the same phenom that's already big in photography and music — digitally filtered and synthesized media feels unnatural. Well duh. It is. Video and audio are being compressed to exclude noise and 'purify' the primary signal to make the product pop (something that's…

Also botox.
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