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The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

haleynahman.substack.com

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Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#451

Post by bee_rider »

vehemenz wrote: post #448
bee_rider wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is clearly the case that twice as many frames is an objective, quantifiable, technical improvement. That’s objective. The problem isn’t that the original poster misused objective, it is that they didn’t ask the follow up question — does that objective improvement result in a better subjective experience.

See how you qualified your use of "improvement" with "technical?" The parent post did not, which is why I commented.

A technical improvement is a type of improvement.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#452

Post by vanilla_nut »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #197
vanilla_nut wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way about Spotify. I'm fine paying an honest price for a useful service, but the upsells and dark patterns have gotten so aggressive I can't stand the client any more. I wish they'd at least allow third party clients to access basic functionality... but decisionmakers don't understand the attraction of a third party client in the first place, let alone feel like unlocking that functionality when it co…

I don’t think I’ve ever seen an upsell in Spotify, to what does this refer? Are you not paying for Spotify?

Aggressive podcast placement is the big problem, but they also allow artists to "promote" their music by accepting lower royalty payments. And those artists show up much more often than other artists in radios and suggested playlists.

As someone who doesn't like the podcast walled garden Spotify is trying to build (I prefer my podcast market with competitive open standards and choice of clients, thank you very much), the podcasts really bothered me. As a paying user, I should be able to turn them off entirely, but they kept overhauling the UI to make them more and more prominent. I stopped using Spotify a year ago today, and I've been very happy managing my own music library with Jellyfin since then.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#453

Post by matt-attack »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #210
matt-attack wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

It’s hard to argue that it’s an intentional artistic choice if the overwhelming majority of compositions use it. It would be like saying a Monet being viewed through oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere is an artistic choice.

Yes, an I did indeed state that it was a "happy accident". 24 was chosen for pragmatic reasons but happened to, simultaneously, result in an amazing impressionistic effect. Both are possible.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#454

Post by matt-attack »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #299
xeromal wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily because art does happen in eras. So maybe everyone were impressionists for a batch of years it was the de jure way to paint but in a 100 years it moved on but we still appreciate them. Sure, 48FPS may be the way of the future but that doesn't mean the flavor of 24 FPS won't be appreciated in the future.

No it doesn’t. Lots of different artistic schools have existed at once all through history. Just because some style was invented doesn’t mean that everyone dropped what they were doing and became surrealists. There are people painting what would be considered impressionist painting now (literally now, I have a friend who frequently paints on sundays and texted to ask before writing this).

My understanding is that once photography was invented, painters somewhat abandoned realism in favor of impressionism and other more experimental forms. Since painting was no longer needed to fulfill the boring need for reproducing reality. Not to say, that realism doesn't continue to this day, but honestly, most painters don't aspire to it even now.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#455

Post by matt-attack »

ip26 wrote: post #198
matt-attack wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

So all cinema and all producers are targeting precisely the same level of impressionism? None desire any more or less realism?

Well a few experimented with slightly more realism. Todd AO was a film format that ran at 30fps. 20th Century Fox shot Oklahoma in that format. I've seen it projected at 30fps and it certainly has one foot in the "soap opera effect" door.

The movie Brainstorm also experimented with using the HFR as part of the story telling. But being in the film days, it was difficult to project/distribute.

Avatar 2 is the first modern equivalent to Brainstorm, where the filmmaker opted to "turn a knob" to digitally change the frame rate in a variable fashion throughout the film, depending on what the content needed. (Not the final content appeared to be 48fps, but the apparent frame-rate within that container varies from 24 smoothly to 48fps.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#456

Post by matt-attack »

threadweaver34 wrote: post #343
matt-attack wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I agree with your point on realism vs impressionism, but I still buy the explanation what we prefer 24 fps movies because we're conditioned to, not because of a preference for impressionism. I also like my wine expensive and with nice labels.

I think I reject the "conditioned" argument. If I saw this [1] painting and compared it to a hyper-realistic painting (or photograph for that matter) I suspect the photograph would be boring in comparison. Certainly not world famous.

No one would say, "well you're just conditioned to like the impressionistic form better". I think it's just objectively more interesting. An iPhone snapshot of the same scene is just boring. If anything, my point is proven by what people attempt in their photographs. They add vignetting, color treatment, bokey, etc. All these things are forms of impressionism. No one wants a perfectly realistic photo.

[1] http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-YiHuMtP-658/Usi_fBZsLSI/AAAAAAAADA...

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#457

Post by matt-attack »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185
baryphonic wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cool, so people that want that effect on their movies can use it, it hardly sounds like something everyone would want every time though. That's not what GP said. GP was arguing that 24fps is a genuine artistic choice, and that an argument that 48fps is intrinsically superior is absurd. GP was arguing that frame rate is a choice artists can use to tell their stories, that 24fps is Impressionism and 48fps is realism.…

> GP was arguing that frame rate is a choice artists can use to tell their stories, that 24fps is Impressionism and 48fps is realism Okay, where is 77 FPS movie for surrealism, 12 FPS movie for abstractionism, 174 FPS for cubism? The whole argument is fictitious

Well that's just not how the physics works. It's a single dimension that slides from hyper-impressionism (at low low Frame rates) to hyper-realism at high ones. And BTW it's been shown to top out around 75-80fps. Any higher and there's no additional perception of realism. Realism is just the single axis.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#458

Post by matt-attack »

Nursie wrote: post #90
matt-attack wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Cool, so people that want that effect on their movies can use it, it hardly sounds like something everyone would want every time though. Or is impressionism the only valid art form? Also - > happens to be at that perfect balance between ... Yeah na, it's just what you're used to.

See my other sibling reply regarding the "conditioning" argument.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#459

Post by shagie »

hef19898 wrote: post #439
shagie wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Seems like need to use my 50 f1.8 more often!

A 50mm f/1.8 (or f/1.4 if you have a bit more money) is a beautiful lens to work with. On a full 35mm frame, it provides a normal field of view which approximately matches the field you see (kind of, we've got two eyes and so more of a panoramic view, but unless you're pulling out an xpan ( https://www.hasselblad.com/about/history/xpan/ ) it isn't something that you can capture - still catches the part that you see looking forward).

And it doesn't have any weird perspective issues with flattening on long lenses or the exaggerated perspective of things closer.

It's just the right lens for so many situations. Light enough to handhold without any issue. Fast enough to get a nice shallow depth of field.

As an aside, if you are looking at primes, a 35mm f/2 is a good "I want something wider" and the 85mm f/1.8 is a very nice "I want something longer" while not being ungainly or slow.

Re: The contagious visual blandness of Netflix

#460

Post by wkat4242 »

kzrdude wrote: post #443
wkat4242 wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely more than three actors visible in the whole film. I agree with your general comment but in Passengers it was really central to the overall plot and premise. It's not a good example of this phenomenon. I don't think this was drive for budgetary reasons, that film clearly had a huge budget looking at the visuals. As for money, Hollywood…

I disagree here about the premise, the premise is part of the problem, these films are hollow.

It's about 1 guy waking up on a spaceship with 80 years to go :) It's just really part of the story.

You might not like the premise but the film would lose its impact without it.

It's not a typical "because cheap" scenario where other characters are cut, here it's an integral part of the plot.

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