[HN Gopher] Colors in movies and TV: What happened to them?
___________________________________________________________________
Colors in movies and TV: What happened to them?
Author : JaimeThompson
Score : 291 points
Date : 2022-01-11 15:50 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vox.com)
| mmcnl wrote:
| I also believe the advance of HDR is at fault here. 90% of the
| runtime of a show or movie the colors are muted to have an
| additional "pop" in the remaining 10%.
| pja wrote:
| One theory I've seen put forward on YouTube is that this is
| because modern digital cameras use a linear LUT when recording,
| which means that images displayed to everyone during the
| production process are naturally very washed out compared to how
| they would look colour-corrected to sRGB. As a result, production
| staff have become so used to the washed out colours of the linear
| colourspace that they've become accustomed to it, sub-consciously
| viewing a true colour-corrected version as being wildly over-
| saturated. The end result is that the films they're delivering
| are desaturated because that seems normal to them!
|
| It's a plausible story if nothing else, but I would also guess
| that a large part of the reason is just fashion & trends in film
| making. A more saturated look will return in time no doubt.
| hipshaker wrote:
| I am a colorist, and you would be wrong. We transcode with a
| color spacae tranform applied, but even if the footage ends up
| in log space (not common anymore as most have learned what log
| is) it doesn't inform he final grade. And big budget
| productions certainly have a color managed pipeline.
| pja wrote:
| Here's the video I was probably remembering:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpWYtXtmEFQ
| sumo89 wrote:
| Video games used to have this problem really bad as well as so
| much overuse of bloom. There was a few years where every big
| budget game looked like it had a brown filter on the screen.
| People have speculated it was used to much to try and hide bad
| graphics but I get the feeling it was more of a fashion thing.
| Luckily it seems to be going away recently.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| One show: X Files.
|
| 1990s Vancouver. Rain. Grey. Science fiction changed from the
| bright colors of LA (Star Trek) to Vancouver's rain forests (X
| Files, Stargate, Outer Limits). Why were Star Trek's colors so
| bright? Desi Loe Studios paid extra for the color film and wanted
| to use it. X files was on a tight budget and couldn't afford to
| brighten Vancouver enough to make it look like California. So the
| backgrounds become dark and grey.
|
| Similar things happened in many film. Alien had budget problems
| and difficult creature effects. Net result: hide everything in
| darkness. The color has as much to do with budget as art.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I always attritbuted this style to one music video director whose
| career started in the 90s and who had perfected the washed
| saturation and goth look. She was the originator of Marylin
| Manson's video aethetic in the 90s, and after she landed David
| Bowie's "little wonders," that's when I think the style really
| took off:
|
| https://etcanada.com/photos/171117/14-music-videos-directed-...
|
| While I don't know if she knew the Watchowskis then, the original
| Matrix movie was absolutely a stylistic homage to her videos, and
| that they would have been familiar with her work via Bowie and
| Manson videos, makes it more plausible. If you look up Floria
| Signismondi's work, it's so distinct and often emmulated or
| copied, and once you've seen it, you can't unsee it.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I remember when _Serenity_ came out. It was one of the first
| movies (that I had seen) that had bright, colorful, sunshiny
| days, with lots of visual effects.
|
| I know that it wasn't the first, but I hadn't really seen much,
| before that. _Star Wars_ had effects in color, but there wasn 't
| any actual CGI involved.
| greedo wrote:
| It actually did. During the briefing for the attack on the
| Death Star, the wireframe image of the DS was CGI.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Ah. That makes sense. That was about the extent of CGI, back
| then.
|
| I know they added a bunch of CGI, when they remastered the
| series, some years ago.
| xgkickt wrote:
| Grayscale is easier to composite than color so if the lighting is
| off in one layer it isn't as noticeable or can easily be
| compensated for. Shots can be matched up with a common tone.
|
| I had also wondered if streaming was driving some of these
| changes, by reducing noise and providing better compression
| reducing the image to simple gradients.
| zzzbra wrote:
| counterpoint: B&W was all we had for almost half a century and
| many of the greatest works of (B&W) cinema came out after that --
| notably Film Noir. Maybe B&W is good, and muting color in "color"
| movies is a recognition of that fact.
| maldusiecle wrote:
| I doubt it. A film with a muted color palette doesn't come
| across the same as a black and white film--even if works well,
| it doesn't work the same way. And the characteristics that made
| film noir work so well visually--dramatic, unnatural lighting
| and inventive composition--just aren't present in these new
| movies.
| [deleted]
| notjes wrote:
| Funny thing. For about 5 years now I manually adjust hue,
| saturation and other stuff to my liking for each product, because
| the colors felt bad very often. Now I am just waiting for an AI
| colorizer to watch "Schindlers List" how it was supposed to be.
| pvillano wrote:
| Color design would not be a great choice for AI. It is not
| objective, and there are many, many "right" answers. It also
| requires understanding the intent and greater context of a
| scene. To grade the following scene, you need to have watched
| the Batman movie it references, know they're trying to sell
| jean jackets, and infer the client's preferences from their
| personality and previous projects.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=FClp1qGPAuM
|
| "the way it was supposed to be" irks me too. You can't reify an
| artists vision better than they can.
|
| I suppose I would watch a fan-recoloring. The movie would not
| be how it was supposed to be -- it would be something new --
| but that could be something interesting to watch.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| There's a great tutorial on color grading by Joanna Kustra. It's
| mainly about photography (she's a fashion photographer) but it
| applies to movies as well and she takes a lot of inspiration from
| cinema (old and new). Of course, color grading was always a thing
| ever since color movies became a thing in the nineteen forties.
| E.g. Stanley Kubrick, Ridley Scott, or Tim Burton would have been
| very opinionated on that topic and very intentional in how they
| capture and process color.
|
| Color grading is also something that is subject to fashion. And
| that's something that we see with recent movies and TV a lot
| because it is so easy these days. People are trying to imitate
| the look and feel of other successful works.
|
| Joanna Kustra makes a few great points about how colors are
| associated with particular emotions and moods and how you can be
| scientific about using e.g. using the color wheel to color grade
| a particular scene. One key lesson from that is that color
| grading becomes a lot easier if you simply plan and orchestrate
| the light of your scene to match what you want rather than trying
| to fix it in post processing. Old school but really effective. A
| couple of colored filters for your camera's and lights is still a
| good investment.
|
| Check out her tutorial here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC8ol2-V7Ck. You may want to skip
| past the sponsored stuff about her monitor though.
|
| Modern digital sensors capture a lot of information these days,
| which makes color grading a lot easier without introducing
| undesirable artifacts. Better dynamic range of screens also means
| we can have more colors and tones. So the over saturated look of
| the nineteen eighties is less of a necessity these days.
|
| Recent cameras store color at much greater bit depths and with
| log profiles which bias towards using most of the bits for
| storing the darker tones (the human eye is more sensitive there).
| Of course this is a double edged sword. Because it is so easy, a
| lot of people do color grading poorly or lazily. Select a filter,
| click, done. Basically, Instagram is full of people doing that.
| There's a difference between that and doing it with some skill.
|
| Understanding color and tone is actually not that trivial. Some
| people develop an intuition for it but a lot of this stuff is
| actually counter intuitive. And funnily enough, a lot of
| photographers and movie makers actually lack the theoretical
| background to understand this properly. Aurelien Pierre, one of
| the lead developers of Darktable has a few nice in depth
| tutorials on these topics on his youtube channel:
| https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmsSn3fujI81EKEr4NLxrcg
|
| Recent versions of Darktable have some interesting modules that
| allow you do some really nice things with color grading, tone
| mapping, perceptual changes to saturation, etc. that he worked on
| and that definitely make my life a lot easier for post processing
| my photos.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| The color correction explanation seems kinda weird. Having the
| best color correction tools in history available causes... no
| color correction to be used? ("Look LUTs" _are_ a thing but
| mostly a thing peddled by Youtubers to amateurs)
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| I guess it's kinda like everyone in the music industry
| following the loudness war. You _could_ have the best possible
| sound using the best available audio processors... but instead
| you just optimize everything to maximum loudness.
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| You got it backwards, it causes color correction to be used
| everywhere. All movies and TV shows now a days are recorded
| with pretty realistic colors, but in post-production they use
| "the best color correction tools in history" to correct the
| colors into the grey and brown sludge that is in vogue. Modern
| tools give film makers full color liberty, and they use that
| liberty to apply the same tone to every movie/series because
| they believe that is how movies/series should look like.
|
| It is the same reason why Mexico is always sepia.
| Fraterkes wrote:
| There's a lot of random mentions of this new hbo series, station
| Eleven, in this article, kinda odd.
| azernik wrote:
| Because the same author wrote a review of that ran on the same
| day, and seems to have written this as a companion piece to the
| review. https://www.vox.com/culture/2022/1/10/22872347/station-
| eleve...
| flenserboy wrote:
| The Lord of the Rings theory appeals to me, not because I think
| it's right, but because those movies set much else in motion that
| has plagued film since. For one: fight scenes. The constant cuts
| from close-up to close-up of the faces of those fighting did an
| absolutely terrible job of getting the combat across, whether the
| scale, the difficulty, or what was even logically happening. Many
| of the fight scenes in movies since have focused on the up-close,
| refusing to use the vast expanse of the movie screen to do what
| it's built to do -- show large-scale action, give a sense of
| where this is happening in the world, and showing the characters
| as being a small part of that world instead of, well, giant faces
| grimly emoting.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Totally. My issue with the LoTR fight scenes is that they don't
| look natural. The lighting is all off because they want to show
| everyone's face all the time. It ended up feeling very ...
| flat. (Putting aside the constant banter of Legolas/Gimli
| keeping score that made it seem like a joke, and every monster
| having to scream into the camera that also made if feel corny.)
| jfengel wrote:
| I recall seeing that hyperkinetic cutting in Gladiator a few
| years before Lord of the Rings. I didn't like it then, either.
| It conveys the feeling of confusion in a battle, which is
| realistic, but I don't find it a very interesting feeling.
|
| I'd much rather see something with stakes. It doesn't even have
| to be that large-scale. Two actors hitting each other --
| showing their whole bodies, for at least a few seconds between
| cuts -- gives me a chance to sense how they feel each other
| out, what risks they're taking, how a blow actually hurts and
| has consequences.
|
| If the only emotion I'm getting is "confused", then I'm just
| marking time until somebody tells me who won and who lost.
| jonpurdy wrote:
| There's a great quote from Jackie Chan about fight scenes: "I
| never move my camera. Always steady. Wide angle."
|
| Most action scenes in movies have moving cameras with fast cuts
| and zoomed in faces. Makes it impossible to actually track
| what's happening. I didn't realize this until I saw this* YT
| video specifically about his action comedy style.
|
| * - https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM_GQ
| [deleted]
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I think he meant he doesn't cut away. He moves the camera all
| over the place because he is moving all over the place, and
| it works really well.
| parenthesis wrote:
| Similar thing with Fred Astaire dance sequences (e.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxPgplMujzQ), or kpop dance
| practice videos (e.g.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovztfpWPo5M). The actual
| dancing provides all the excitement you could ever need.
| lupire wrote:
| Jackie Chan can do that because he has the talent to
| choreograph and perform fights.
| fullshark wrote:
| Now that most stunts are performed by computer generated
| humans instead of talented actors/stuntmen, it does seem a
| lot of this is to avoid the uncanny valley. The Neo v. 10k
| Smiths fight from Matrix Reloaded used wide angles and
| avoided quick cuts if I remember correctly and looked like
| a cartoon even when it was cutting edge in 2003. I wonder
| if it was tried again in 2022 the technology would have
| advanced enough to make it look real.
| zepearl wrote:
| I remember many people saying that that was a great
| scene, but to me it immediately looked horrible -> big
| mistery... .
|
| I hate that scene - the idea is great, but the quality of
| the <textures?> is in my opinion horrible... . Weird.
| fullshark wrote:
| The technology wasn't far enough along to accomplish the
| directors' vision imo, maybe it's there now. It was a
| cutting edge technological advance (I think it took a
| year to render or something) just like Jar Jar Binks and
| the CGI backgrounds in Episode I, but because it was
| cutting edge mistakes were made in implementing it. The
| weird colors affecting films and quick cuts I think are
| just tricks used now to make it work given so much of
| modern film involves blending live action and CGI.
| zepearl wrote:
| That theory doesn't convince me too much.
|
| Jurassic Park (mentioned as well by the author), maybe as
| well Terminator 2, maybe something else had some reaaally
| well done rendered scenes, in my opinion done a lot
| better than the one of Neo vs Smiths, therefore a movie
| done a few years later should be able to at least reach
| the same level of quality... .
|
| In my opinion it's more related about the company doing
| the CGI and their technical capabilities/know-
| how/experience of employees than the overall level of
| technology being available. Mmmhh... .
| shantara wrote:
| And a willingness to retake every shot hundreds of times
| until it reaches an acceptable level of perfection.
| quartesixte wrote:
| Not to mention the will to get himself almost killed on set
| -- along with the rest of his stunt crew.
| Mindwipe wrote:
| Yes, but also he's not trying to make films that have to be
| suitable for eight year olds.
| rasz wrote:
| Armour of God II: Operation Condor - basically kung fu
| Raiders of the Lost Ark
| kevinventullo wrote:
| I always though Gladiator was what really kicked this off.
| kodisha wrote:
| Transformers movies took that to a very extreme, where every
| fight scene is just a constant motion blur (zoomed).
| jl6 wrote:
| I've always assumed it's cheaper to have an editor quick-cut
| footage into fake combat than to have a choreographer create
| realistic combat.
|
| Also, combat in general is incredibly boring in modern films.
| Punch, punch, grunt, grimace - without any consequence. Maybe
| someone has a cut lip which is gone in the next scene.
| Superhero movies are the worst for this, where characters
| routinely throw each other through walls and none of it matters
| because they are as good as invincible.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > combat in general is incredibly boring in modern films.
| Punch, punch, grunt, grimace - without any consequence
|
| I mean this kind of stuff has been around forever. The A-Team
| pioneered "punch punch grimace, get up and walk away" to the
| point where it was comical.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > to the point where it was comical
|
| So much so that I was actually shocked to see characters
| actually dying in the most recent film.
| cipher_system wrote:
| Yes, why can't all fight scenes be brutal and brilliant like
| the prison scene in the Punisher?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MHJHkA6LMk
| lupire wrote:
| That's a perfect example of the extreme orange+blue color
| grading.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I think marvel has actually gotten fairly good at fights and
| making them interesting to watch as a function of why the
| hero is unique tbh.
|
| Throwing huge punches is bad. Firing arbitrary laser blasts
| is even worse. Especially when the consequences of being hit
| seem so trivial. But it can be done well. I think Thor
| Ragnarok is a good example of this.
|
| This is the first movie in which both Thor and Hulk were
| actually shown as extremely strong with little more than just
| physical blows. What's noteworthy is that most of the fights
| they're in are very easy for them, and frankly it's much more
| fun to watch them stylishly stomp 100 goons and look strong
| rather than incomprehensibly struggle to fend off 10
| nobodies. Filmmakers tend to be afraid of having a fight
| scene without tension.
|
| Avengers infinity war fight v. Thanos also comes to mind as a
| quick little highlight reel of each of a dozen characters
| special contributions. It comes across as competent and
| unique.
|
| Off the top of my head, black panther, iron man 1,2,3,
| guardians of the galaxy 1,2, Shang chi, wandavision, earlier
| avengers, all felt particularly bad at this.
| programd wrote:
| While I respect your opinion I urge you to watch any early
| Jackie Chan movie to see how magnificent cinematic fighting
| can be. The Marvel fights are amateur hour! Please exit my
| lawn, stage right.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Jackie is a genius, no doubt.
|
| There's a big difference in movies though. Jackie is
| basically always a human fighting humans. He is always
| either fighting an extremely competent opponent and it
| will be fairly serious martial arts; or it will be him
| comedically fighting a ton of goons which you know are
| way weaker than him but he's got some sort of hilarious
| disadvantage. But it's always somewhat grounded.
|
| Superhero movies tend to have weird matchups where the
| balance is already heavily skewed.
|
| Shitty movies do this dance where the bad guy is slightly
| stronger and does irrelevant damage to the protagonist
| before being one shotted by a dumb trick, which is
| probably a call back to something earlier in the film.
|
| Better films actually have this implication that in a
| fight, if an opponent does their thing, you're going to
| die.
|
| Marvel is starting to do more of the latter. It's just
| much more rewarding when protagonists win by virtue of
| competence and their own abilities.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sFFwvr6l2mM
|
| This fight contains no particularly good martial arts,
| has a lot of cuts, and has a lot of big blasty attacks
| but they're all very juicy and you do believe the threat
| is real. It's especially good because everything both
| characters are doing are somewhat novel to them. It's on
| the fly improv and physical character development.
|
| Very different from Jackie's stuff but I think very good.
| egypturnash wrote:
| hell yeah, you will see sequences that boil down to
| "Jackie found this weird prop and spent two days figuring
| out interesting ways to use it to beat the shit out of
| people" and they will be _amazing_.
| Fricken wrote:
| This episode of "Every Frame a Painting" does an
| excellent job of explaining why Jackie Chan's way of
| doing action is awesome and why contemporary Hollywood
| (generally) sucks:
|
| https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM_GQ
| rand49an wrote:
| I couldn't disagree with that more. The 'MCU' Marvel films
| seem to be filled with massive fights between two
| effectively invincible forces with no consequences. Added
| to that all the characters in many of the scenes are
| completely CGI so they don't carry any visual weight to
| them.
|
| Compared to Sam Raimi's Spiderman films, which has a lot of
| less CGI and smaller set pieces in general but the fight
| scenes look more impactful because of it.
| dragontamer wrote:
| "Ghost in a Shell" is 100% CGI / Anime, but the fights
| absolutely had consequences and weight.
|
| I actually hate Attack on Titan as a show, but damn the
| action scenes actually have weight and logic to them, far
| superior to the Marvel stuff despite being 100% cartoon.
|
| ---------
|
| That being said: Marvel seems to be going with more of a
| "Dragonball Z" or "RWBY" approach to combat. Which is
| fine as long as the writing is good enough. Its a
| different style for sure...
|
| Except ya know. Dragonball Z / RWBY largely does it
| better.
|
| -------
|
| Its less about action shots and more about demonstrating
| superpowers. Everyone knows Goku will try to end the
| fight with a Kamehameha wave. At some point, Goku will go
| Super Saiyan or beyond, etc. etc.
|
| Similarly: Capt. America will throw his shield, Iron Man
| shoots some lasers, Hulk will grab, punch, and grapple
| something.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I think it varies tremendously by film and director. I
| guess I wouldn't say the median marvel film is good at
| this.
|
| I also happen to think that the best Spider-Man fight
| scenes were by far the Andrew Garfield ones. Those scenes
| were incredibly juicy, especially the second, for all its
| terrible writing and worldbuilding.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > Shang chi
|
| Shang Chi had some good long-shot Wuxia-style scenes.
|
| It wasn't as good as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" but
| unlike the rest of the Marvel films, Shang Chi actually had
| proper fight scenes in them.
|
| But you're right in that most Marvel scenes make no damn
| sense from an action perspective. I'm constantly annoyed by
| their cuts personally. I'm just surprised that you threw
| Shang Chi into the same boat, because Shang Chi had more
| proper action shots than I can remember.
|
| I'm not talking about the CGI-dragon fight at the end
| (which went back into the Marvel mold of CGI + jump cuts).
| I'm talking about like, the first scene between Ying Li and
| Weng Wu (Shang-Chi's mother and father). Or the Bus-fight,
| which was pretty good IMO. At least, good by Marvel
| standards (which are pretty bad).
|
| It doesn't hold a candle compared to a good Jackie Chan
| scene, but at least they kept the camera still _SOMETIMES_
| in Shang-Chi, rather than never keeping the damn camera
| still.
|
| -------
|
| That being said, I enjoy Marvel films. I just wish they
| shot the action better.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > It wasn't as good as "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"
|
| I saw it, it was all people swinging around on wires with
| the wires painted out. By the arc of their movement, I
| knew where the wires were, anyway. The whole thing just
| looked silly.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I thought Shang chi was very disappointing as a martial
| arts film. The choreography seemed weak. The bus fight
| was decent. Jackie Chan portrays himself as an incredible
| fighter but always very human. Shang chi, in my opinion,
| portrayed himself as a... pretty good fighter but weirdly
| powerful.
|
| Marvel's best raw martial arts fights were probably on
| the likes of Daredevil (Netflix), Winter Soldier, and the
| Falcon Series. But I don't feel they've gotten Kung fu or
| traditional Chinese stuff down well ever.
| usrusr wrote:
| It's a double win, because it's not only cheaper, it's also
| more "like being there". Because unless the battle happens to
| be commanded by an AI embodied as a flock of observation
| drones, nobody would have that generous wide shot view, not
| even the highest ranking commanders.
|
| I agree with the boring nature of most "superhuman" fight
| scenes (of both "declared" kind, superheeoes, and the
| "undeclared" kind, regular mortals who just happen to be over
| the top for cheap awe effects).
|
| But there have also been some recent examples (ca this
| century) that I found quite impressive, usually characterized
| by a short violent burst of crazyness and then everybody is
| dead, heavily inured or routing, and _maybe_ slowly beginning
| to consider that perhaps they haven 't actually lost.
| dmitriid wrote:
| > because it's not only cheaper, it's also more "like being
| there".
|
| "Being there" is an excuse Hollywood has used for ages for
| not training actors properly, not doing any fight
| choreography etc.
|
| Marvel now spends millions of dollars on boring CGI fights
| because they couldn't be bothered to spend the same (or
| actually less) money on filming actual fights. Just look at
| what John Wick did with a _54-57-year old_ actor and Nobody
| did with a _57-year old_ actor for the fraction of the
| price of most modern action movies.
| alickz wrote:
| >But there have also been some recent examples (ca this
| century) that I found quite impressive, usually
| characterized by a short violent burst of crazyness and
| then everybody is dead, heavily inured or routing, and
| maybe slowly beginning to consider that perhaps they
| haven't actually lost.
|
| I enjoyed the fighting scenes in the animated show
| _Invincible_ much more than any fight scenes I've seen in a
| Marvel film for this reason.
|
| Explosive and (usually) consequential.
| 5560675260 wrote:
| Wouldn't "being there" also include observers not directly
| involved in a fight? Like all the people supplying us with
| mobile phone footage of real life happenings. Usually real
| life shots are shakey and not that generous, but the kind
| would feel natural to moviegoers.
| anthk wrote:
| With Dragon Ball you saw actual brushes and injuries.
| Nowdays, with Dragon Ball Super...
|
| At least the manga it's still respecting the original
| artwork.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| > Maybe someone has a cut lip which is gone in the next scene
|
| Agree in general. Atomic Blonde is one of the rare films that
| doesn't fall into this trap. The lead character gets cuts and
| bruises that persist between scenes and even changes her hair
| style at one point to hide a black eye picked up in a fight.
| extesy wrote:
| Watch Gangs of London and The Punisher. Fighting scenes are
| much better choreographed and are more realistic and brutal.
| robohoe wrote:
| Heck, even Daredevil had some fantastic scenes too.
| Particularly the staircase scene.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| Wider shots would require so much more CGI work.
|
| Many movies these days are simply a formula that as a middle
| aged person I've seen so many times I just can't watch action
| or superhero movies, I have zero interest. I am not the
| target audience though. Even movies aimed at my demographic
| are laden with tropes, little interesting or creative
| storyline.
|
| Long form TV is generally much more creative story based and
| does not reboot old TV so much (Bell Air is more of an
| exception than a rule).
| pjc50 wrote:
| Early in the pandemic my wife and I started a small virtual
| film club with a remit of "old, bad, B, or unheard-of
| films". It's been hugely entertaining, far more so than the
| modern repetitiveness of superhero movies. And a lot of
| them make great use of colour, such as the Hammer/Amicus
| horror movies. Those tend to do fun things with red/green
| lighting, side or underlighting, or splashes of light
| across the eyes of an otherwise in darkness character.
|
| Re: Bel Air reboot, "dark reboot of light comedy series" is
| such a ridiculous cliche that I can't believe they've
| actually done it. Very 2020s.
| smnscu wrote:
| Enjoy :) https://www.redlettermedia.com/best-of-the-worst
| nottorp wrote:
| > Long form TV is generally much more creative story based
|
| Agree with the rest, but I'm afraid that i find 99.95% of
| the current TV series as boring as superhero movies. At
| least a movie finishes in (up to) 3 hours...
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Grimly emoting is cheap and easy -- convincingly animating
| large-scale action is difficult and expensive. LARPing it out
| is difficult and expensive too. I don't think it's a LoTR
| thing, I think it's an economics thing.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I think the battle scene [0] from The Lion, The Witch, and the
| Wardrobe did a pretty good job of balancing up-close chaos with
| big-picture clarity.
|
| [0]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FixGtngBdhE&ab_channel=EdenK...
| Angostura wrote:
| ? The one thing I loved about the films was the sweeping
| grandeur of many of its shots, including the battle scenes.
| acdha wrote:
| I'd also attribute some of this to the superhero glut: they're
| generally not very good plots stretched out to many hours and
| the combat is supposed to be a big draw but since they've
| removed the limits of realism (the audience usually knows who's
| going to win, and that the writers can always cancel out the
| consequences in the next episode either way) there isn't much
| left but posturing iconically and visual effects.
| gcanyon wrote:
| > the audience usually knows who's going to win
|
| I just watched The Eternals, and spoiler: they're not _all_
| eternal. It added an excellent real sense of risk to the
| film.
| udbhavs wrote:
| The Eternals is also fantastic for not using slow motion
| _at all_ for the speedster. Although she doesn 't have a
| lot of screen time, the little action that is there feels
| great.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Absolutely agreed, that was awesome.
|
| It's unlikely, but if you haven't seen it, check out
| Dash's 100-mile run from The Incredibles:
| https://youtu.be/t5v2qBBD-gE
| acdha wrote:
| Oh, yeah, that's why I said usually. It's just that when
| you remove the usual constraints on what people can do, how
| much damage they can handle ("plot armor"), and set the
| precedent that almost anything can be changed retroactively
| as desired for the next movie, the writers have a lot less
| to keep the audience's interest with.
| gcanyon wrote:
| Absolutely agreed. I read an article years back that
| criticized superhero films where the stakes are world-
| ending, or similarly large-scale, because that actually
| _lowers_ the stakes, since you _know_ the world isn't
| ending. With smaller stakes, it's actually possible for
| the protagonist to lose, at least in some ways.
| acdha wrote:
| That's much more succinctly expressed
| tomxor wrote:
| This is so true, I get really bored of combat scenes these days
| for many reasons, this is a big one.
|
| I remember the first time I really noticed this was when trying
| to watch batman (can't remember which one), at an "imax"
| cinema, ya know, those ones where you sit very close to a huge
| screen designed for films that intentionally fill that extra
| space with peripheral vision information... But for an already
| annoyingly close cut series of fight scenes it made it so much
| worse, unwatchable, I had to just close my eyes for half of the
| film because it was so physically hard to look at.
| ghaff wrote:
| I remember listening to the DVD commentary on one of the LOTR
| films many years ago. One of the things that struck me was the
| amount of "Oh, and we changed this in post production."
| Obviously there are limits but CGI, color correction, etc. must
| lead to a degree of not worrying _too_ much about getting it
| right in the camera because you can (sorta) fix things later.
| jcranberry wrote:
| I don't think all movies do up-close quick-cut camera shots
| during fights. I'm fairly certain the reasons they do that are
| not because it's trendy, but because of other constraints.
| Things like a lack of actor training, time for practice or
| reshoots, or good choreography in general. It's what they can
| use to get away with these things.
| dekhn wrote:
| LoTR for some reason has a "make the detail hard to see with
| fast camera motion" problem.
|
| I just watched the latest episode of Boba Fett and it had a
| great fight and a great chase scene. It's like everything was
| slowed down and you could see the details.
| titusjohnson wrote:
| I was just thinking that the Boba Felt chase scene was too
| slow. I could practically 'feel' the weight of the mopeds,
| and some of the movement made it obvious these were wheeled
| devices with CG trickery applied after. The general speed of
| the chase made me feel like I was watching Mitchel.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOCqlKNW9rU
| dekhn wrote:
| Are you 100% certain the mopeds were wheeled? I think these
| days it's also possible to just have a moped on a rotating
| stilt in front of a blue screen, and that's a lot easier
| for interior shooting/stunts.
| titusjohnson wrote:
| That certainly might have been it too, but if they're
| going that direction I would have expected everything to
| just feel more weightless/frictionless.
| dekhn wrote:
| I think this is a core part of the aesthetic of Star Wars
| as originally created by Lucas. In particular, those
| characters were amalgams of 50s greasers, 70s punks and
| 80s mods. If you haven't seen American Grafitti, it's
| worth watching as a reference, but basically, they're
| going for landspeeder physics and landspeeders kind of
| hover a constant distance over the ground.
| adflux wrote:
| >show large-scale action
|
| There are many large panning/sweeping shots in this series,
| such as when the ents attack Isengard, orcs besiege Helms Deep,
| when the fellowship runs through Moria...
|
| Sure there are some quick cuts happening in some swordfighting
| scenes. And I agree it could have been better if these scenes
| were shot in a different format.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I think this was a thing for a while before Lord of the Rings.
| I remember talking about it in grad school in 1999. I think it
| is a combination of things: digital editing makes it easy to
| have a million edits compared to when they used to do edits on
| actual film, and by cutting a lot they can put in the actor's
| face more.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Agreed. This has always been a weakness of mainstream western
| films. Filming fights is hard, especially if actors don't
| know how to fight. LoTR doesn't seem noteworthy in this
| respect.
| v7p1Qbt1im wrote:
| I also watched an unhealthy amount of behind-the-scenes for
| lotr.
|
| Peter Jackson mentioned that there is a thing called ,,Battle
| fatigue". Battles should focus on the the main characters and
| their journey through a battle. Otherwise battle scenes could
| get boring or repetitive really quickly.
|
| Also it's cheaper, as someone else said.
| rconti wrote:
| Funny that he knew this, and yet somehow the first LoTR was
| still 2 hours of battle scenes and 1 hour of interesting
| stuff happening.
| parenthesis wrote:
| Your comment is making me want to watch a bunch of old movies
| with the opposite. For example, Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone
| sword fight:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liZD1qScUYA
| js2 wrote:
| _They Live_ alley fight:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgyue1tT-uE
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlTPIYTd32Q
|
| _Star Wars_ epic light saber battle:
|
| https://vimeo.com/7051676
| josteink wrote:
| There seems to be a "standard palette" or standard colour-
| template in use when creating modern video-content.
|
| I mean, when my kids are seeing children's programming on Netflix
| I can very rarely tell what show they are watching, because they
| all look alike.
|
| Maybe reusing a good template is a cost-saving/production-
| optimizing strategy?
|
| I don't know, but I can tell it's being done deliberately purely
| by observing.
| sersi wrote:
| What's also very interesting is the differences in colors between
| the original theater version of certain movies and the newly
| released remastered blu ray.
|
| For example, take a look at Terminator 2 and see how the recently
| released remaster have a huge shift towards blues everywhere.
| S_A_P wrote:
| The movie traffic was one of the first I noticed that made use of
| this. However it was kind of a cool effect. Suburban home shots
| were a cool blue, and desert and outdoor were more reddish. I
| want to say they did this with characters as well.
| pimlottc wrote:
| The author makes the point that it's somewhat ironic that the
| Marvel movies, having originated in the vibrant world of comic
| books, are one of the most prominent examples of drab coloring.
| But I wonder if this isn't perhaps an intentional contrast. An
| attempt to recast what is often considered a childish genre as a
| more adult art form targeted towards a more mainstream audience,
| with a more somber color grading to match. Similar to how modern
| retelling of Batman have leaned to darker imagery, contrasting
| with the kitschy colorful 60s version.
|
| Dark colors are an easy way to present your work as more dramatic
| and serious, and not "for the kids".
| 734129837261 wrote:
| And I completely disagree with the complaint and his examples.
| Too saturated makes things look unrealistic and plastic. I prefer
| scenes that make me think "holy shit, this looks like real life"
| instead of "yawn, another movie turned into a comic book".
|
| There are ML-efforts underway to make games look more realistic.
| And they do that by reducing colors and reducing contrast.
| Because Caucasian people don't look orange in real life, we look
| a pale beige with a hint of pink.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I see what you're saying, but I don't think it's talking about
| other extreme of hyper-saturaed sitcom rainbows. While agreeing
| overly saturated is unrealistic, so is undersaturated or colour
| tinted. My 'real world' experience is frequently nice and
| bright and contrasty and colourful. My wife has a bright red
| xmas sweater on right now, I'm wearing blue, my daughter's toys
| are... every colour of every gamut. Kitchen is white with lime
| green accents. Our car is a very bright orange. Even in winter,
| the evergreens around us are reasonably green.
|
| And then we go to Maritimes and the North east where every
| house is a beautiful vibrant colour, and yet movies always try
| to make them look bleak through desaturation.
| fock wrote:
| I'm very fortunate not to live in the deserts of the US (like
| new Dexter) and to actually live somewhere, where trees will be
| green in summer and new cars and houses have color. Just for
| your point that everything is unsaturated; in fact, real-life
| colors in the greens are seldomly represented in a "realistic
| way": https://tftcentral.co.uk/articles/pointers_gamut
| astrange wrote:
| Modern TVs are much better at it than an article from 2014
| would suggest. Though computer monitors aren't; you shouldn't
| watch a movie on a computer anyway since it has to fit 24fps
| into a typically 60fps display.
| Retric wrote:
| These movies don't look even vaguely realistic though. It's
| winter in North America right now, but walk outside even
| vaguely close to noon and colors pop in a way they just don't
| in these films.
|
| The article brings up a great point, it's just lower effort to
| make dull films which minimize how much people notice digital
| effects and mistakes in general. In full sunlight you notice
| where shadows are which stands out if you want to stitch
| together shots across hours. Makeup and wardrobe mistakes
| similarly standout when things aren't simply a big blur.
| pwenzel wrote:
| On the other end of the spectrum (ha) you have over-the-top
| saturation on shows like The Great British Bake Off. I know it's
| a food show, but people's skin and eyes sometimes look so bright
| when shots are overcompensated for food.
|
| For comparison to the desaturated things on TV:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kMICkmW8r8
| lupire wrote:
| The OP really applies to "serious/drama", not "happy/comedy".
| dilap wrote:
| Just hit this with the show "Dirilis: Ertugrul". Seasons 1 and 2
| had vibrant colors. Season 3 suddenly everything is desaturated
| and desparate feeling. Super annoying! Presumably GoT influence.
| l33tbro wrote:
| This article and many of the comments here are mistaking color
| grading for being the culprit, when it is mostly production
| design. Grading is obviously the post processing of images, but
| production design is how the colors are organized to be shot.
|
| Within this current fad, production designers have taken color
| theory and color symmetry to the extreme and bled all of the
| primary colors out of what is shot on set. Of course there are
| accent primaries left in, but they have this down to a science
| right now and it is why everything looks so perfect these days.
|
| Cinematographers even will gloat about capturing "everything in
| camera, man" and only having only tweaked minor things in post.
| Roger Deakins supposedly shot the last Bladerunner like this,
| where there was little to no grading in the organic scenes.
|
| While I think it's definitely better to get stuff in camera from
| a craft perspective, this obsession with applying the extreme
| uses of color theory and winnowing everything down to
| lifelessness is just so, so boring.
|
| In the 90s things were a little more random and films had a range
| of colors that lacked symmetry. It felt real! But after the whole
| teal and orange phase of the 2000s (vomit), people took that same
| kind of reductionist thinking and broadened the palette ever so
| slightly.
| gavinmckenzie wrote:
| Deakins has also said the same thing about Skyfall -- that for
| the most part what we see on screen is what he saw from behind
| the camera. And Skyfall also has scenes of super bright
| colours, although those bright saturated scenes do have a
| limited palette.
|
| There was a recent comparison of the very different look
| between Deakins' Skyfall and Van Hoytema's Spectre.
|
| https://twitter.com/sadhilldevan/status/1458863501015851008?...
| e40 wrote:
| Speaking of color, the new Wes Anderson movie, _The French
| Dispatch_ has stunning colors.
| kranke155 wrote:
| It helps with CG integration.
|
| It's changing now with color spaces like ACES becoming the
| standard (wider color gamut).
|
| I Work in the industry.
| Koshkin wrote:
| The big part of the modern approach to art in general is to
| replace content with form. In film in particular, "Let's shake
| the camera to create an illusion of action! Let's show more
| facial expressions to create an illusion of suspense! Let's
| insert a lot of talking to create an illusion of... watching a
| movie in the first place?" (One could go on and on: fancy intro
| sequences etc.)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| This too shall pass.
|
| And we'll laugh about it some day.
|
| Like the "hand held shot" that became popular a decade or so back
| -- in every serious drama the director seemingly gave a GoPro to
| someone with tremors. A number of TV series were comically
| unwatchable (well, for me at least).
| NathanielK wrote:
| Oh man, 24FPS shakey cam was rough. Glad it's mostly gone away,
| it was a good way to get motion sick.
| airstrike wrote:
| Posted less than 24 hours ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29909329
| perardi wrote:
| 1. They credit/blame "The Matrix", but let's also note David
| Fincher's work, especially "Fight Club".
| (https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/movie-color-palette-david-...)
|
| 2. We still aren't there yet on CGI. CGI humans are still in that
| uncanny valley. And what helps cover that up? Well, muddy up the
| color palette, and decrease brightness and contrast. I've
| certainly done that in my still photography work, where I was on
| a deadline for a volunteer project, and I thought to myself "you
| know, dialing up that vignette slider is really going to cover
| that up."
| m_mueller wrote:
| Se7en is mentioned as well.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Spoiler: Its almost always an artistic choice. However, In some
| rare cases, its to make up for shit cameras: I'm looking at you
| RED/Hobbit trilogy. But nowadays its a choice to give the film a
| certain feel.
|
| There was a while when all action movies were graded to look teal
| and blue: http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-
| orange-ho... However when cheaper cameras, better grading tools
| seeped into the masses, that style was felt to have been played
| out.
|
| DI, the stage where the colour "grade" is tweaked, crafted and
| perfected is now an integral part of the edit/VFX stage. Colour
| is used to push emotion, just like sound and music design.
|
| The bit about LUTs is mostly distraction. LUTs are normally used
| as a reference, to make sure that all the footage has roughly the
| same colour (important when you have different cameras for
| different scenes) They are static colour offsets, so are great
| for techincal colouring, but not overly useful for making an
| artistic grade.
|
| TLDR: Its a fashion, just like the pricks who removed the obvious
| on/off indicators from slider buttons.
|
| EDIT: If you want to see some interesting grading, look up "day
| for night" https://noamkroll.com/color-grading-tutorial-creating-
| a-day-... where they take normal footage and make it look like it
| was shot at night
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Spoiler: Its almost always an artistic choice._
|
| If you mean, a choice by the team making the movie, and not
| something imposed upon them by technology or otherwise, then
| yes.
|
| But I'd say it's usually not very artistic as in artful, as
| it's neither well done, nor necessary for the story/mood, and
| is not even about a genuine vision from the director, but
| rather following the fad.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > If you mean, a choice by the team making the movie
|
| thats art darling! _exaggerated arm movements_
|
| I kid, but agree completely.
|
| > not even about a genuine vision from the director, but
| rather following the fad.
|
| I once heard about a monthly, where the exec producer's
| current shag was spit balling changes, expensive changes. It
| was great to see the faces of the VFX producer mentally
| totting up the cost.
|
| Also when filming the prince of persia, the production team
| realised that they had a massive plot hole linking two parts
| of the movie, so they asked the VFX company to figure
| something out. From what I recall, this is the origin of this
| scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfVu52tZxd0
|
| In clash of the titans(remake), they spent a boat load of
| cash on a real set for mount olympus, but then decided that
| they wanted to make it more "google maps-y" so scrapped it
| and redid it in VFX.
|
| Some films are Art, others less so. None of them are as
| artistic as film theory dictates.
| 323 wrote:
| > _take normal footage and make it look like it was shot at
| night_
|
| You can do that in reverse too, shoot at night with a super
| sensitive camera and make it look like day:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBPcinUz-L0
| dylan604 wrote:
| While this is possible (I have done and still do this as
| well), but it is absolutely not the norm.
|
| Shooting day-for-night is much more common. It has less to do
| with the ability of a camera shooting at night. We have these
| things called lights that helps things.
|
| The main reason for day-for-night is that it is much more
| expensive to shoot at night. Shooting off-hours is much more
| expensive. Shooting more than a certain number of hours away
| from home is also more expensive. There are a lot of things
| going into the decision of why a shoot is done the way it is,
| but you can pretty much always assume that it was done the
| way it was done because it was the cheaper option.
| 323 wrote:
| > _It has less to do with the ability of a camera shooting
| at night. We have these things called lights that helps
| things._
|
| Did you watch the video? It's shot in total darkness, with
| zero lights. As in night vision. It's not about shooting at
| night under film lights.
|
| I'm not saying it will replace day shooting, it's just
| another technique available if you want to go for a weird
| unreal look.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yes, I clicked the link. I've shot this style several
| times, only you have to do it on a full moon. Full motion
| video with no lights. Even got the laurel wreaths for one
| of the videos. I've shot WFO at T/1.5 and ISO32000 on a
| Sony a7sii. One interesting thing that we noticed was
| catching lens flares from the moon. When stepping through
| the footage frame by frame, you can see the lunar surface
| details in the lens flares. Most peole never notice, but
| it's one of those things you get to enjoy once you know
| about it.
|
| I've also taken that same camera to use as prime
| photography attached to my telescope. Cranked up the ISO,
| and it was the first time I was actually able to view the
| heavens as the scope slewed to its target. No more adjust
| position, take single long exposure test shot, adjust
| focus/position/etc. You can do it all in real time.
|
| Yes, I'm fully aware of some of these camera types
| MikusR wrote:
| Guardians of the galaxy 2 - RED cameras has color. Captain
| America: Civil War - ARRI Alexa no color.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| I should be more specific.
|
| The RED Epics used on the Hobbit (they used other REDs later
| on, but I can't remember what they were) were running at
| 48FPS. The set had to be painted in hilarious day glow
| colours for it to be picked up properly. Part of is was the
| 3d, a lot of it was the cameras. REDs were not very good for
| a long time. Sure had huge resolution, but that was literally
| it.
|
| They were/are expensive. ".r3d" was a proper cock to deal
| with (Hurrah for cheap GPUs!) and the fan base utterly toxic.
| dylan604 wrote:
| What? Shooting at 48fps would not effect the color
| rendition ability of the camera. Nor would shooting 3D.
| Shooting a higher framerate just means more light required
| than shooting at 24fps. Shooting 3D also doesn't affect
| color. Where are you getting your information?
|
| Debayering r3d was not an issue for professionals as they
| more than likely had a Red Rocket level card to deal with
| the footage.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > Shooting at 48fps would not effect the color rendition
|
| doubles the amount of light you need. got to adjust the
| shutter angle to control motion blur. need to bump the
| ISO, which means more noise, which mean less optical
| resolution....
|
| > Shooting 3D also doesn't affect color
|
| Half mirrored camera rigs completely fuck your colour,
| well half of it...
|
| > Debayering r3d was not an issue for professionals as
| they more than likely had a Red Rocket
|
| They cost PS4k, were fucking fragile, We broke two of
| them on one job. Debayering is simple, uncompressing the
| jpeg2000 at any speed was the main challenge in 2012.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| The problems of washed-out colors making movie scenes look like
| gray wastelands isn't limited to the digital era, if a
| competition were held then there are plenty from the film-
| emulsion era that could easily compete for first prize.
|
| In the 1930s a quantum leap in the quality of color film occurred
| with the introduction of an updated tricolour version of
| Technicolor. The quality of the colour in Disney films and others
| such as the _Wizard of Oz_ and _Gone with the Wind_ (both 1939)
| was truly exceptional when compared with anything that had
| preceded it and the color still holds up very well even by
| today's standards without any digital tweaking or remastering.
|
| In 1950 rival Kodak introduced its Eastmancolor color negative
| process which used a single filmstrip with a tricolour emulsion
| that captured the full color range and by mid 1950s studios had a
| choice of using Eastmancolor negative in cameras and printing
| onto either Kodak's own color theater release stock or to use
| Technicolor's dye transfer process for same.
|
| The trouble started with the introduction of Eastmancolor stock
| because it was far less stable than Technicolor. Technicolor is
| stable because it used a tri-separation process involving three
| B&W emulsions--B&W film being inherently very stable--as well as
| stable dyes in its dye-transfer process (for its theater release
| prints). As no photographic process is used in the dye transfer
| process, its dyes can be selected for both stability and
| vibrancy, whereas Eastmancolor has significant limitations in
| that its dyes have to be compatible with the photographic process
| (they use chemical couplers to bind dyes to the photographic
| process and there's not that many options available). Moreover,
| color dyes generated by the coupler process have both a smaller
| color gamut and, as mentioned, they're far less stable and fade-
| prone than Technicolor.
|
| Under ideal conditions Eastmancolor produced good results but QA
| issues as well as Eastman's theater release shock faded quickly,
| deliberately so--as theater release prints were designed only to
| last one season or to do one round of the circuit--for if film
| got lost or stolen it would be useless after a year or two
| (otherwise it was worn out anyway).
|
| Of course, things never went to plan, and all too often faded,
| badly color-graded and rerun prints long past their use-by date
| made their way back into theaters and were continued to be used.
| The net effect was that one would often see Eastmancolor theater
| release prints that were unacceptable for stated reasons, thus it
| was not unusual to see significant numbers of movies that
| suffered from fading, significant exposure and color errors and
| even cross-color+, which, in my opinion, looks damn horrible even
| in small amounts. To help minimize these problems theater release
| prints would often be printed in somewhat desaturated/subdued
| colors as they were less obvious.
|
| The Viewer's Problem:
|
| Whether we're dealing with film or digital source material that
| needs colour grading/correction then there are very effective
| solutions are but they're not necessarily accessible to the home
| consumer (or even to theater projectionists).
|
| What viewers need are TV/screen remote controls, that in addition
| to their usual functions, would also include optional features
| that enable the viewer to (a) either colour correct a movie on-
| the-fly or (b) select color corrections from a set of
| preprogrammed color terms (color correction matrices) similar to
| those used in professional photo printing machines (those which
| use color negatives as their source material).
|
| I'm not just talking about the basics such as the usual
| saturation, colour balance, contrast and brightness, but also
| vibrancy, curves, shadow and highlight correction and midtone
| contrast. In essence, all the necessary tools needed to correct
| both exposure and color errors in movies similar to, say, those
| that one finds in Photoshop's _Adjustment_ menu such as _Shadow
| /Highlight_ (one of my most favorite and most used adjustments).
|
| If studios do a good job in color grading/correcting their movies
| then we need do no adjusting. But I find that's rarely the case.
| What bothers me most, perhaps even more than color adjustments
| are the all-too-frequent excessive instances of black crushing
| and loss of detail in the shadows and highlights and I want
| sophisticated tools to correct them. _(Surely, I 'm not the only
| one who's noticed the high contrast and crushed blacks in many of
| the recent transfers of old films to DVD etc. It's clear no one
| has even bothered to make any corrections.)_
|
| _______
|
| _+ Cross-color is color distortion that occurs as the result of
| a nonlinear transfer process (cross-modulation) and essentially
| it very difficult to correct or remove because of the newly
| created intermodulation products (artifacts--new colors that
| weren 't there at the outset). Cross-color in a film emulsion
| usually occurs when one dye layer bleeds or diffuses into another
| which then mix to form the new colors. Moreover, the amount of
| dye diffusion isn't linear across the transfer curve, it may be
| at maximum or minimum in the shadows or highlights or anywhere
| along the curve. There are many causes, aged prints, bad
| processing, bad handling, one dye being more unstable than
| another and thus it fades more than other layers (color
| degradation of this type is largely exacerbated by the film
| emulsion's exposure to projector light.
|
| That said, cross-color effects can be corrected or eliminated in
| modern digital effects generators, that is if people bother to
| take the time to do so (and often they don't). Presumably in the
| near future AI will do the corrections according to some
| proscribed algorithm._
| kloch wrote:
| Counterpoint: Bridgerton. What amazing eye candy that is, not
| just because of the Victorian sets and costumes but the rich
| vibrant colors.
| pvillano wrote:
| in general, why complain about popular music these days when
| you could just listen to other music?* I play mostly older and
| indie games, and am unaffected by industry trends like
| microtransactions, style-less photorealism, always online and
| _shudder_ NFTs
|
| *because you want to watch a new superman with your friends.
| you got me there
| activitypea wrote:
| Crazy to me that someone can watch The Matrix and think "wow this
| is really dark and muddy". I suppose the on-ship scenes are a
| blueish gray, but they contrast so nicely against the
| progressively greener tint inside the matrix, it's nothing like
| Dexter or the HBO shows.
| yoyopa wrote:
| duller pixels require less light, so more profits can be made for
| shareholders. this is the main reason why marvel movies, the most
| commercial movies of all time, have gone that route. also the ceo
| happens to be colorblind.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I'm not even sure if this is true, because duller pictures also
| require blocking of light and besides, they are doing a lot of
| this after filming anyway (as per the article). I don't work in
| film, but I'm guessing most of us posting here do not. And
| considering that they likely already have the folks working on
| it and already have some lights about, the savings would be
| negligible.
|
| And seriously, I'm pretty sure that the CEO being colorblind
| doesn't matter whatsoever. They likely realize they are
| colorblind by now and it isn't like they are the ones filming
| nor making final calls on color nor other artistic stuff. In
| fact, I'm going to guess the CEO is more concerned with money
| and the pandemic and that sort of thing. I'm honestly not sure
| why you would bring that up. It also wouldn't explain the
| reasoning for, say, DC movies to be similar nor the myriad of
| films that _aren 't_ superhero movies to be the same.
| wruza wrote:
| See also "Why Is Every Movie Poster Orange and Blue?"
|
| Another overused (imo) coloring technique is different color
| sources, often used in youtube videos and game interiors, like
| cyberpunk.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| And sound tracks. Many soundtracks are made by the directors
| saying "make something that sounds like {scene from other
| movie}" and you get similar outcomes. Especially for trailers.
| scoutt wrote:
| > One truism of computer effects is that it's easier to hide
| their seams if you are placing them in a dark or rainy
| environment.
|
| I don't own the best TVs in the world, but for the last 5 years
| (maybe), I have to turn all the lights off when watching movies
| and series, otherwise I can't see a thing. And if the movie has
| CG they always happen to be in dark scenes, ergo some movies
| fully loaded of CG are dark, flat and I have to make an effort to
| see them (also happens to series/movies for TV only, like those
| on Netflix).
|
| This, or my forties are hitting hard.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| In contrast, for Station Eleven they made the colors of the post
| apocalyptic scenes more vibrant and muted them in the pre
| apocalyptic scenes to give the idea that the post-apocalyptic
| world isn't actually so bad.
|
| https://www.vox.com/culture/2022/1/10/22872347/station-eleve...
| vmception wrote:
| Euphoria does the opposite, most of the time! Enjoy the hues!
| habibur wrote:
| I thought it was more because of green screen or blue screen
| dominating production now a days. They had to turn one color off.
| The side effect.
|
| I was wondering why no one was noticing the lack of color and
| details in post 2010 films. Watch any 80 or 90s film and see how
| sharp and details those looked.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Color correction choices being discussed are not related to
| chroma keying. They are all "artistic" choices being decided
| between the Direction, DP, Colorists, and maybe Producer. The
| only color choices are in wardrobe so that nobody wears the
| same color as the color of the backdrop.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| It's funny they mention Ozark, but Ozark color grades very much
| towards the blue.
| xixixao wrote:
| Once you realize that the Hobbit movies are either "orange" or
| "blue" all.the.time. they become unwatchable. I hope some future
| rerelease fixes them.
| vkou wrote:
| I don't think there's a power in the 'verse that can fix the
| Hobbit. The colour balance is the least offensive thing about
| it.
| timonoko wrote:
| No worries. I have solved the problem:
|
| https://github.com/timonoko/Context-Aware-Auto-Brightness
| goldenkey wrote:
| As an optometrist, I'd be careful with backlight fiddling. High
| intensity backlight can cause eyesight strain. Backlight
| shouldn't be turned up to unreasonable levels to compensate for
| lack of saturation or poor black/white points.
|
| Backlight should only be used to adjust the contrast between
| the screen and your environment, and not in an extreme fashion
| either. That is, don't sit in the dark or in a very sunny
| place, and use backlight to try to fight unreasonable
| environmental lighting.
| marcan_42 wrote:
| Backlight level is just an overall brightness adjustment
| (i.e. it is a factor of the light output*). It is entirely
| reasonable to crank the backlight up to make up for an overly
| dark picture; the effect is the same as increasing the
| brightness of the image at the pixel level. This is already
| done automatically, in the opposite direction, by many modern
| screens and projectors, to save power.
|
| * modulo black levels, but you aren't going to get eye strain
| from backlight bleed.
| goldenkey wrote:
| PWM is done by modern phone displays (iPhone and Android)
| but is terrible for eyes and the nervous system at large.
| Its only advantage is cheapness. In layman's terms, PWM is
| when instead of lowering the brightness of the display, it
| is instead flickered to lower perceptible brightness.
| Please don't try to purport popular with healthy. That ship
| has long sailed.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/@moe.zainal/screens-monitors-
| headaches-mi...
| timonoko wrote:
| Duly Noted. "noko-auto-brit-with-bounds" is designed just to
| avoid sudden flashes of bright screens. Depends on the
| machine, some adjust brightness quite slowly already.
|
| Some better machines and displays have also light sensor
| built in, it is quite possible to include that input with the
| "ddcutil"-program.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Weird that they call it "color timing" because "color correction"
| isn't all that accurate. But "timing"? That applies to film, like
| real, chemical film.
|
| Surely there is a better word? "Optimizing"?
|
| (of course "grading" is also used, but "timing" really needs to
| be dispensed with)
| SirHound wrote:
| Games went through this during the PS3-360 generation. I'm sure
| it'll pull back over time.
| ginko wrote:
| Haven't you heard? Real is brown.
|
| https://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=222
| nathanyz wrote:
| Is this why Mafia 3 is so dark? I mean game is unplayable on
| Stadia because you can't see anything.
|
| /endrant
| acomjean wrote:
| My partner plays . Some games are so bright and colorful in
| contrast to others it is almost a defining characteristic.
| Horizon zero dawn and assasins creed odyssey come to mind.
| ecolonsmak wrote:
| Is there any possibility this trend is an attempt by filmmakers
| to mitigate the impact streaming service compression schemes will
| have on the appearance of their art? Less colors - plays better
| with something outside their control. I scanned the whole thread
| here and didn't see anyone suggesting this. I know I've watched
| titles that really seem to suffer from the effects of compression
| and others where it's not as horrible. the banding - chunky
| swathes of mono color that's distracting and needless, imo. Is
| there a TIDAL style service for video that doesn't use
| compression, or uses some sort of lossless compression?
| 323 wrote:
| Just another fad.
|
| Visual artists are very fashion driven. As technology creates new
| possibilities, they get abused.
|
| In the 80/90s music videos had fade/dissolve effects. Then in
| early 2000s a lot of them played with the aspect ratio "black
| bands" (like when you play 4:3 on 16:10), making them white,
| pink, or textured, with border lines and other effects.
|
| In 2010s slow-motion (high FPS played back at regular speed) was
| the thing. So every other video had the slow motion
| "water/colored dust hitting something" scene.
|
| Since 2015, color grading is the new fad. Also unnatural weird
| (LED) lighting, like the left half of the frame in strong red
| light and the right half in strong blue light.
|
| Color grading is also infecting instagram. For example in city
| photography, there is quite a trend of grading them orange/teal.
|
| There is also a lot of social pressure to color grade. If you
| don't, fellow artists will say something like "look at that
| peasant, he didn't grade his stuff, what a noob, putting out real
| colors, he probably doesn't even know what a LUT is".
|
| And then you have the honest noob who tries to improve his skill,
| and he sees all the pros doing it, so he concludes that he should
| too, since all the pros can't be wrong, even if to his eyes the
| strongly color graded video kind of looks like shit, but he's
| just probably wrong and just needs to educate his aesthetics.
|
| There will come a point when color grading will fell out of
| fashion, just like you rarely see a fade/dissolve or slow-motion
| effect today, and when they are used it's because they make
| sense, not because you must do it no matter what.
| woolion wrote:
| It's also way easier to have "good colors" (in a color
| theoretical sense) this way, and achieve a coherent and
| consistent look throughout the movie. It's thus one of the best
| ways to keep budget down, as it will hide a lot of issues you'd
| have while filming, while generally requiring less work. I
| believe it to be an important factor since full 3D movies have
| excellent color comps --see for instance Nathan Fowkes' works.
| (as an side, in the opposite direction, I remember Kung-fu
| Panda having pretty good colours, yet I found it a bit tiring
| to watch.)
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Reminds me of the lens flares of the mid 90s and ring
| explosions of the late 90s. Think Babylon 5 and the Star Wars
| reissue.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > In 2010s slow-motion (high FPS played back at regular speed)
| was the thing. So every other video had the slow motion
| "water/colored dust hitting something" scene.
|
| Probably more late-00s than 2010s, but IIRC, the optical-flow
| slowdown effect was created (and cheaply) distributed.
|
| Older slow-mo effects required high FPS cameras. But with 00s
| technology, you could optical-flow time warp to any slowdown
| you desired, with mostly good looking results. 300 (released in
| 2006) was the first popular film that did this, but IIRC the
| effect was being used in a lot of action films all over the
| place.
|
| Slow-motion was definitely the "Oh wow, that looks cool, and it
| costs so cheap. Lets do it" effect of the 00s.
| basch wrote:
| >300 (released in 2006) was the first popular film that did
| this
|
| Does Spider-Man count in 2002?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jM7Eou4bV-Q&t=56s
| dragontamer wrote:
| That's definitely not the optical-flow slowdown trick I'm
| talking about. That spiderman slow-motion was some
| combination of 3d effects and maybe real-life cameras
| ("Matrix" style:
| https://beforesandafters.com/2021/07/15/vfx-artifacts-the-
| bu...)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCfdyroV7kc
|
| This scene from 300 is very clearly just a wide-angle shot
| (initially), with someone playing with the Optical Flow
| timewarp effect (sliding it up and down). Its incredibly
| cheap.
|
| See this demo in Premier Pro:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErOc_LkZaIk
|
| ----------
|
| That's the thing. 300's main innovation was using _cheap_
| effects. Optical flow time-warp didn't appear on Premier
| for another few years, but the algorithm was popular and
| was just a custom filter / program that was getting passed
| around at that time.
| basch wrote:
| Upon rewatch, im not even convinced its bullet time and
| not just a bunch of people standing very still. Which
| worked for the most part in Anna Karenina and that one
| video of kids playing basketball.
|
| Your point makes sense though, the commonization of frame
| interpolation is a landmark moment.
| lkxijlewlf wrote:
| Sounds very much like what happens in other industries (such as
| software development). "Look at that peasant, he didn't use
| Rust, ..."
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Rounded corners! Radius on buttons ("Pills") started its
| journey in 2018 and it spread like a plague.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| Pill-shaped buttons were part of the Aqua theme in the
| original release of OS X. For a long time after that, UIs
| aped Aqua with pinstripes and jelly-shaded pills and while
| the pinstripes and jelly have gone, I think the pills are
| here to stay for some styles.
| Angostura wrote:
| Aqua - the "lickable" theme. I miss it, I prefer it to
| the current washed out MacOS where I cant tell what is
| what.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Yeah but there was a huge push just last year, basically
| every single SaaS app to Firefox, everyone folded. During
| the Aqua days, every company had their own unique take on
| design. Today, it is a design monoculture driven by the
| types of Stripe and Apple.
|
| Design used to be a _differentiating_ feature. Everything
| looks the same today. Kind of a Big Tech dystopia, even
| in design.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| My point was, a lot of UI followed or was heavily
| inspired by whatever Apple was doing even then. These
| days, there's more Google in the mix.
|
| Before pill buttons, they were gray beveled rounded
| rectangles, be it native or web, on every platform.
|
| I don't view now as being especially dominated by
| sameness versus the past.
| dvtrn wrote:
| As the owner of an ultrawide... _so_ much whitespace.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| It was already there 10 years earlier in OpenLook.
| akersten wrote:
| I just updated to Android 12 and the new border-radius on
| nearly every UI element is beyond absurd. It actually looks
| like someone just discovered that CSS property, and instead
| of being told by a designer "that looks goofy and
| childlike, tone it down," they doubled the value and put it
| on even more elements.
|
| My notifications pull-down fits about 3 useful
| notifications. The rest is whitespace and rounded corners 4
| layers deep. It's horrible.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Not every change is based on stylistic fads alone. Rounded
| corners on elements can increase the ability of users to
| recognize them and separate them from other elements,
| because visually the borders are less likely to be confused
| with other UI elements (lower cognitive load).
|
| This article quotes a researcher on this topic:
|
| > A rectangle with sharp edges takes indeed a little bit
| more cognitive visible effort than for example an ellipse
| of the same size. Our 'fovea-eye' is even faster in
| recording a circle. Edges involve additional neuronal image
| tools. The process is therefore slowed down.1
|
| 1: https://designmodo.com/rounded-corners/
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Mark my words - there is going to be a reverse trend, say
| 5-10 years from now. Same with color gradients, it will
| become uncool. It's all fashion.
|
| > sharp edges takes indeed a little bit more cognitive
| visible effort
|
| I have my doubts about this. It is 100% fad IMO.
| 323 wrote:
| Like how Windows slowly removed colors from it's icons,
| until they almost became black and white, only to
| reintroduce color back in Windows 11.
|
| And how Windows 11 lists rounded windows and corners as a
| "signature feature"!
|
| https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/windows/apps/design/signatu...
| 4cao wrote:
| And they still managed to get the round corners wrong,
| apparently. According to that page, the radius values are
| hardcoded in pixels, so they don't scale with the
| display's DPI setting.
|
| That's at least a decade after the W3C had a well-
| developed concept of relative units for use with the CSS:
|
| https://www.w3.org/Style/Examples/007/units.html#future
| (2010)
|
| Thus, with a sufficiently high DPI display, you're going
| to miss out on one of Windows 11's "signature
| experiences" and end up with "legacy" squarish corners
| instead.
| 323 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure those pixels are some form of "ideal
| pixels", just like CSS pixels are not actual pixels.
|
| Also, Windows scales the pixel size when you use a legacy
| application (non DPI aware) on high DPI displays.
| dmitriid wrote:
| Corporate Memphis!
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Don't forget gradients for everything.
|
| Going even further back, the tacky wild fractal wallpaper
| backgrounds on websites with animated gif "under
| construction" banners on top.
|
| Give it 5 years and iOS and android will get some visual
| refresh that makes the current stuff look very dated.
|
| Fashion is constantly changing and being revisited. It's
| just the way it is. Something about it is what makes humans
| what they are. We love it...
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| And all this time we've had star wipe. To paraphrase Homer
| Simpson, why are we eating hamburger when we can have steak?
| Cloudef wrote:
| Happens to games too, i often spend good time modifying the
| game to get rid of the screen filter effects that ruin the
| whole render.
| lloeki wrote:
| > there is quite a trend of grading them orange/teal
|
| I could swear I read in essence the same article about movies
| being all orange/teal a couple or three years ago.
|
| EDIT: oh, that was 2013 actually. Ironically O'Brother gets the
| blame for that too.
|
| https://shootandcut.wordpress.com/2013/01/01/teal-and-orange...
| lupire wrote:
| tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContrast
| h2odragon wrote:
| How very kind of you to format that un-clicky (not sarcasm)
| monkeybutton wrote:
| Making you think twice before opening tv tropes is
| probably for the better. Do you _really_ want to go down
| that path right now?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Oh man is that site a rabbit hole.
| benrow wrote:
| Reminds me of Every Frame a Painting on YouTube - another
| fascinating place where hours can fly by.
| d0mine wrote:
| The understated comment ^
|
| Consider it a warning before you visit the site.
| b1c837696ba28b wrote:
| Gated reverb on snare drum. Looking at you, Hugh Padgham.
| cmckn wrote:
| > Since 2015, color grading is the new fad. Also unnatural
| weird (LED) lighting, like the left half of the frame in strong
| red light and the right half in strong blue light.
|
| I recently learned this specific combo is called "bisexual
| lighting":
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisexual_lighting
| cjohnson318 wrote:
| I don't think this is a fad. Artists have been purposefully
| using limited palettes or limited gamuts for a long time.
| Often, painting the color that you actually see ends up looking
| garish, amateurish, or at best, out of place. The film industry
| is just doing what traditional representative Western Art has
| been doing for hundreds of years; even after artists had access
| to cheap, vibrant colors.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _In the 80 /90s music videos had fade/dissolve effects._
|
| See "Be in my Video" song by Frank Zappa, _Them or Us_ album
| [1984].
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| "Requiem for a Dream" is a peak fad, notorious for using "MTV
| Editing": it has over 1500 cuts. Completely unheard of.
| hungryhobo wrote:
| probably not another fad, it jus stems from color theory, which
| have been incorporated in film one way or another for a really
| long time. Even before these digital color grading took place,
| scenes in movies are carefully planned out, from set to
| costumes to lighting, so they fit within a certain range in the
| color space such it's pleasant for viewers.
|
| The orange and teal look is just a very widely used combination
| that utilizes complementary colors. Even though it's been used
| a lot i personally still find it quite appealing.
| aranchelk wrote:
| Reminds me of an unusual and short-lived sci-fi series called
| Space Above and Beyond; it predates the current trend
| significantly.
|
| "The series featured a very dark and desaturated color grading,
| apparently inherited from the cinematography of series such as
| The X-Files and Millennium, co-produced by the same team, but
| taken to a greater extreme. The strength of desaturation employed
| in many scenes reaches the level that makes them almost black and
| white (quantitatively, the saturation in CIE xy color subspace of
| a typical scene in Space: Above and Beyond is in the range
| 0.03-0.15, approximately 1/4 of a typical contemporary film or
| television program)."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_Above_and_Beyond
| Kye wrote:
| It must be because I watch sci-fi more than anything else, but
| things have gotten more colorful for me. Compare Babylon 5's CRT-
| targeting colors with the vibrant lights and colors of Foundation
| or The Expanse. Though even Babylon 5 is brighter than the
| examples in the article.
| throwanem wrote:
| Babylon 5 looks a lot better in the recent HD remaster, which
| (IIRC) worked from different masters than those used for the
| DVD set. The remaster's colors look like I remember from my
| initial viewing of the show on VHS taped from broadcast -
| lively, saturated, not at all the muddy muted mess you get on
| the DVDs.
| acomjean wrote:
| There are some interesting visualizations of color in movies.
| It's not up to date (last movie 2019) but shows color over time
|
| https://thecolorsofmotion.com/
|
| And this one. (Done in processing)
|
| http://dillonbaker.com/#/spectrum/
|
| Of course it makes more sense to look at each scene by itself,
| but it's less fun
|
| https://www.boredpanda.com/famous-movie-color-palettes-cinem...
| dsego wrote:
| Not sure if this yt video was referenced, but it offers a good
| overview:
|
| Why are modern films underexposed? https://youtu.be/ctXc6YHIyac
| sslayer wrote:
| Conspiracy theorist here; TPTB/Hollywood is selling us on how
| bleak the future is, as if they wish to manipulate peoples
| emotions.
| nwatson wrote:
| It's very effective too ... every "modern Evangelical prophet"
| (there theologically should be no such thing) that already
| believes the end is near more conjure and relate fantastical
| divinely inspired dreams whose plot twists are lifted from or
| hugely inspired by fantasy, comic book, and apocalyptic films
| and TV series. They're hugely entertaining delusions but would
| be C-grade at best.
| pjc50 wrote:
| A film which does not cause you to feel anything - to
| manipulate your emotions - has failed. Without that it's just
| moving wallpaper.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| You don't need to be a conspiracy theorist here: producers and
| filmmakers are humans too, they are impacted about constant
| bashing from media, social media and others than sell/promote
| fear such as terrorism, global warming, refugees, disasters of
| all kind. Also social media in our pockets tends to exacerbate
| the alarmism with every bad event reaching us instantly, and
| the good ones never really do. Filmmakers, being artists, they
| tend to express themselves, so they might be some of the first
| to show this new trend.
|
| Media and especially social media are not a conspiracy either:
| they want to sell and they are also humans.
| zozin wrote:
| I noticed this trend previously and I assumed it was a cost
| decision. A dark scene has less details, so it would conceivably
| cost much less to incorporate CGI/post-fx.
| munificent wrote:
| God, I fucking _hate_ the current color grading trend of killing
| every color except for two opposing ones (usually amber and blue)
| and then pushing almost everything else into a chiarscuro of inky
| shadows.
|
| Watch a 90s movie sometime and it will make you weep for how
| beautiful today's movies could be.
|
| For superhero movies in particular, I think a big part of this is
| a deliberate attempt to distance themselves from the stigma that
| comics are for kids. They want to sell to an adult audience but
| adults feel foolish if they consume something too clearly
| sanitized and kid friendly.
|
| The last thing any Hollywood director wants to do is make their
| superhero movie look like 1990's "Dick Tracy", or something in
| the Spy Kids franchise because it will drive adult audiences
| away. So they slather the whole fucking thing in grimdark so it
| looks like serious grown-up stuff who are too insecure in their
| maturity to watch a silly movie about dudes in spandex doing
| magical acrobatics and punching each other.
|
| (This is also why so much YA fiction which is heavily read by
| adults is dystopian. And it's why modern superhero movies so
| rarely have characters use their actual superhero titles, which
| sounds corny.)
| tomtheelder wrote:
| I think a lot of really beautiful films will have many if not
| most scenes lean heavily on two colors, maybe 3. I don't think
| there's anything fundamentally wrong with that, and it's
| actually really great for creating moods and drawing attention
| to certain things. But here's the thing: it's not the same two
| for every scene!
|
| Films that are in teal and orange the whole time drive me
| absolutely nuts. That combination has a place, but there are
| others! Two similar hues to create a sense of stuffiness and
| formality. A neutral tone plus a vibrant one (yellow or
| something) to create an intensity and focus on the vibrant
| elements. Green and red to really force the feeling of lushness
| in a natural scene. Monochromatic scenes have a place as well.
|
| Like I understand that a two toned scene can create a very
| striking atmosphere, but lets use a _little_ bit of creativity
| in how we apply that.
|
| Agree about superhero movies though. The color grading does
| always seem like an intentional choice to create feelings of
| maturity and grittiness.
| [deleted]
| zoomablemind wrote:
| To echo one of the possible reasons for desaturatuon trend is a
| curiuos widespread of badly configured screens out there. Same
| problem as was back in time in a random hotel an image on a room
| TV set would be way overly saturated and often the
| contrast/brightness balance would be off too.
|
| These days the default profiles on TVs are better, but perhaps
| people's expectations may be off from the past experiences. Just
| the other day, by chance witnessed a neighbor's gigantic TV wall
| with a pronounced orange cast and almost toxic spill of overly
| saturated colors showing something as mundane as news
| broadcast... No need for any dramatic enhancement here. Well,
| perhaps the warmed tones are deliberately set for some other
| primary content ...I don't need to know.
|
| So, aesthetic may be at play, but simple lack of a technical
| ability to configure the screens may still be the factor, so
| directors may be compensating for the target medium, which in
| this day is prevalently a TV/device screen.
| psim1 wrote:
| Star Trek demonstrates the changing times pretty well.
|
| For the Original Series, the producers were just starting to
| explore color television and they used the whole pallette.
|
| 1990s Star Trek feels more "natural" to me: warm where you expect
| warmth (ship's crew quarters, hot planets), cool where you expect
| cool (Borg ship), fairly neutral otherwise, though some of the
| sets did have an office-park vibe to them.
|
| Current Star Trek, specifically Discovery and Picard, are about
| as gray-blue and washed-out as ever.
|
| The pictures in this tweet show it perfectly:
| https://twitter.com/ShelfNerds/status/1481452739754405889
| jerf wrote:
| It is sort of funny to read over that and think that the best
| (filmed) shot in the whole set is the first McCoy from the
| 1960s. Though the 90s Trek fares well too, certainly. One might
| call the 90s Trek "dull" or "perfunctory", but it _works_.
|
| It occurs to me I'm watching Stargate SG-1 right now, which
| also has a color grading similar to 90s Trek, and now that I
| think about it, it's almost a relief. Here I've got this HDR 4K
| OLED display and it seems like everybody's all like "Hey let's
| use half-ish of the color gamut of NTSC". I've rejected
| monitors and laptops for having only the capability of
| displaying that color gamut and here professionals are using it
| _voluntarily_. As a valid choice every so often, sure, like
| someone else mentions Young Frankenstein in out-and-out black
| and white, but all the time, everywhere, as the solution to
| every problem? Come on!
| giantrobot wrote:
| > For the Original Series, the producers were just starting to
| explore color television and they used the whole pallette.
|
| More that the producers had to deal with that fact a
| significant chunk of the audience only had black and white TVs.
| Even on color TVs the broadcast would crush colors. So they had
| to use bright colors that would differentiate characters
| despite being the same "uniform".
|
| Look at The Cage, all the characters had the same color uniform
| so everyone sort of blended together except Number One. Shatner
| and crew were much easier to differentiate in black and white,
| especially when red shirts beamed down with the principal cast.
| rob74 wrote:
| This trend is not really new, and it actually goes both ways:
| when you want a darker tone, you desaturate the colors and go for
| a "colder" color palette, when you want to get all warm and fuzzy
| (think romance movies, soap operas etc.) you use a "warmer"
| palette and crank up the saturation a bit. But this already
| annoyed me back in the early 2000s: CSI New York had a "cold"
| color palette, CSI Miami a warmer one, although (or more likely
| because) they were both mostly filmed in and around L.A.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| Also, everything in Mexico has yellowish tint.
| nwatson wrote:
| The great film "Traffic" (explores drug use and trafficking
| and implications from many angles) used a similar strategy
| ... US scenes brightly colored and clear, Latin America
| scenes washed out and grainy.
| rconti wrote:
| The US scenes were more than just brightly colored and
| clear, they also had a very blueish tint to them. It all
| felt very clean, clinical, sanitized, to the yellows of
| Mexico and further south.
| mabub24 wrote:
| I like to see a return to technicolor vibrancy in some media
| IP. Some directors, like PTA, still use it to great effect, but
| when you watch some old Powell and Pressburger films, or _Bad
| Day at Blackrock_ , or even _Purple Noon_ , you see these
| beautiful colours that don't assault your eyes in neon
| brightness; instead, you get these beautiful rich tones that
| seem solid and deep. It seems like now a lot of colourists just
| go for overwrought colourgrading, insanely crushed blacks, or
| slamming a movie into blue-orange land.
| pavlov wrote:
| HBO's brand new "Station Eleven" makes excellent use of color
| IMO. Lots of beautiful nature shots, no conspicuously digital
| color correction. Color is an important narrative element
| through cinematography and production design rather than
| "let's slather blue here in post to make it dramatic".
| (Excellent acting too. Really love this show.)
| pjc50 wrote:
| _Bad Day at Blackrock_ is just a tremendous film. A social
| justice Western from 1955 starring Spencer Tracey?
|
| For more technicolour scenery (albeit mostly painted!) I
| enjoyed Black Narcissus https://www.imdb.com/video/vi32104781
| 05?playlistId=tt0039192...
| jl6 wrote:
| Disney animation is now the home of color, where every frame
| has every color and a good chance of featuring a literal
| rainbow.
| varelse wrote:
| Decades before that I used to be able to tell whether a show
| was on NBC, ABC, or CBS by the brightness and color balance.
| Now everything is murky because the networks don't really have
| their signature looks anymore and there are so many of them.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Yawn. Prior rant from 2010 which circulated at the time:
|
| [1] https://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-
| orange-h...
| hbn wrote:
| I had just watched a video the other day that claimed the
| Matrix's famous green color grading wasn't actually a thing until
| 10 years later in the Bluray remaster.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| But most of the sets had green wallpapers and green tinted
| everything (in the Matrix). It was all grey in reality.
|
| It didn't need to fake it with color grading.
| adam0c wrote:
| I think this can be pretty much summed up along the lines of: way
| back when colour was introduced into film people wanted to show
| it off more, it was something magical whereas now everyone wants
| to be all edgy and gritty.
|
| Or.... it's the lizard people controlling the world and making
| everyone miserable by using only dark grim colours?!
| mwattsun wrote:
| The video embedded in the Vox article is worth watching. I didn't
| realize the sepia tones in O' Brother, Where Art Thou were a
| digital effect using techniques that were very new at the time.
| The film was digitized, color altered and then printed back to
| film for distribution.
|
| I've uploaded a before and after shot of the baptism scene here:
| https://imgur.com/a/yAugAV0
|
| Painting With Pixels (O' Brother, Where Art Thou)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pla_pd1uatg
|
| Description: This short video about the Coen brother's film 'O
| Brother, Where Art Thou', the first feature film to employ a full
| digital colour grade.
| rasz wrote:
| Good old Piss Filter, also popular with games. From 'Ross's Game
| Dungeon: Deus Ex - Human Revolution'
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYLEuQrvND0&t=350s conclusion -
| art directors are Lizard People.
|
| >The first movie to use digital color manipulation in the way
| we'd think of it today -- i.e., shifting the colors within a film
| image to meet a digitally achieved palette -- is generally
| considered to be the 2000 Coen brothers' Great Depression
| picaresque O Brother, Where Art Thou?
|
| and not 1999 green tint Matrix?
| FreeFull wrote:
| The first Matrix originally only used practical effects for the
| green tint (including physically green-washing all clothes).
| jdofaz wrote:
| Kevin Can F*k Himself makes this really noticeable. The show
| alternates between cheesy sitcom with happy music and bright
| colors to dark drama with muted colors.
|
| It's been interesting to see the same room go from one style to
| the other, really highlights how much influence these things
| have.
| singlow wrote:
| Haven't seen that, but another example is Dancer in the Dark,
| which contrasts not just with color. It has primary narrative
| sequences that are cinema-verite style with dull colors, spoken
| dialog, handheld cameras and no background music. Then it has
| musical sequences that gradually transition from that style
| into choreographed, boom-camera, saturated color. The
| transformations are very well done and the contrast is really
| effective.
| etempleton wrote:
| Darker scenes can save on CG budget and time as well as set
| design. It can also be a stylistic choice.
|
| Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. The last season of GoT
| was particularly agregious as was The Justice League movie.
| twic wrote:
| There's a strange but wonderful little film called Avalon [0],
| directed by Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, for which i
| will now give spoilers.
|
| The film concerns a virtual-reality game, with scenes shot in
| both the real world and the game. The game world is absolutely
| drenched in what that article calls "intangible sludge" -
| everything is a murky brown, and settings are usually fairly
| spartan, containing little other than the player characters and
| enemies. The real world, on the other hand, looks naturalistic,
| albeit shabby, given that this is set in crapsack cyberpunk
| Eastern European city.
|
| Or at least, you think it is. Until the final act of the film,
| when the protagonist gains access to a "Class Special A" level in
| the game - which is simply modern-day Warsaw, shot straight, like
| a documentary, and as such is crammed with life and colour. After
| an hour and a half of the various shades of beige in the earlier
| levels and the real world, your brain has recalibrated itself to
| that, and so this perfectly normal scene assaults you with its
| hyperreality. It's a trick, and a simple trick, but it's
| amazingly effective!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon_(2001_film)
| maxhq wrote:
| I've been fascinated by this film for years now and highly
| recommend it for anyone who likes artistic and a bit surreal
| sci-fi films. It's one of the few films that somehow deeply
| touches me, where I can fully immerse.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| The relentless post-GoT grimdark is at least part of why new
| media shows more or less don't appeal to me.
|
| I have enough of that in my daily life, lately; i don't need
| more.
| [deleted]
| egeozcan wrote:
| I find it ironic that Game of Thrones was one of the shows with
| the biggest budgets, and still, especially in the last season,
| they mostly showed black screens.
|
| Add to that, how your typical flat display fails to create any
| contrast in dark scenes and the bad streaming quality... Ouch.
| andrepd wrote:
| It's really amazing that GoT didn't go from "okay" to
| "terrible", or from "outstanding" to "meh", which is the most
| common thing. No, it really went from "outstanding" to
| "terrible".
| baud147258 wrote:
| Personally I feel like the decline was more progressive,
| starting with season 5 rather than just the last seasons
| falling off a cliff
| bzzzt wrote:
| Isn't that about where the showrunners began te write the
| story instead of GRRM?
|
| Seemed to me they ran out of characters to kill, made
| some filler to get to the last season and then rushed a
| bunch of stuff badly.
| jl6 wrote:
| I find it beyond hilarious that there is an active
| subreddit dedicated to complaining about this decline which
| still gets dozens of posts a day.
| afavour wrote:
| IMO just an example of what happens when a crutch is taken
| away. I've never read the books but you could tell the
| early seasons told a deeply thought out and plotted story.
| The show creators were great at adopting that work. But
| once they were left to do their own thing... turns out they
| couldn't do that well at all.
|
| Of course the books _still_ aren't done so if they waited
| we'd still not have anything to watch. IMO from what I've
| read _about_ the books it sounds like they could have cut
| out less and made the early seasons last longer without it
| dragging too much.
| delecti wrote:
| In addition to losing the crutch, they allegedly were
| also in a rush to wrap things up so they could get to the
| Star Wars property they were set to work on. But
| seemingly in the process they did so badly at their
| rushed ending that they lost that too.
| afavour wrote:
| Also their ill-fated Confederate show. From a purely
| outsider perspective it felt like they got bored of
| GoT... I don't really blame them for that, they'd been
| working on it for many years. But much better to hand off
| to some new showrunners if you're feeling that way.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I think they mostly cut the right stuff, lady stoneheart
| excepted. The books aren't among my favorites, but the
| show took all the good and left the filler. But
| recognizing the good bits is a different skillset than
| being able to create more.
| Loughla wrote:
| GoT is my case study in why I just simply cannot stand 99%
| of action movies. They're all so very formulaic.
|
| In the first seasons, working off of GRRM's writing, the
| seasons literally subverted expectations, just as the
| books. Then Hollywood had to get involved, because source
| material didn't exist, yet. At that point, 'subverting
| expectations' became the meme it is today.
|
| (Nearly) Every action movie seems just so formulaic. Action
| movie - hero doesn't want to be the hero for (insert
| dark/dramatic reason 1). Hero soon finds that being the
| hero is better for the world than not, regardless of
| personal consequence. World warps around hero to make sure
| s/he doesn't die. Bonus points for cool car chase, gun
| fight, or explosion. Nudity that doesn't move the story
| forward except to show that Hero likes to have sex isn't
| required, but will add to the box office, because people
| like boobies and butts.
| Renaud wrote:
| "the hero's journey, is the common template of stories
| that involve a hero who goes on an adventure, is
| victorious in a decisive crisis, and comes home changed
| or transformed."
|
| Hero stories have been following the same template since
| the dawn of mankind.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey
| simiones wrote:
| The Hero's journey is a quite infamous concept between
| more serious literary scholars, particularly folklorists,
| as the Wikipedia article mentions. Its grand claims of
| psychological universality are built out of cherry
| picking. Its huge applicability is also built out of very
| vague concepts and quite manual fitting.
|
| For an example, try to fit the Epic of Gilgamesh (as an
| extremely old conserved folklore tale) or Don Quixote (as
| one of the oldest and most famous literary works) to this
| framework - you will either fail or need to contort them
| quite a bit, or ignore large chunks.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Everyone reacts badly to this when they first hear of the
| concept. Then at some point you realize, that you
| actually _don 't_ like the scripts that won't fit too
| well to this. It's like a fashion sense, hard to describe
| the thing.
|
| A friend of mine, when he heard about this in the class,
| argued "but I want to create something unique that
| doesn't fit to this or anything else, like... the
| Matrix!". The professor was speechless for a moment but
| could keep his calm :)
| palebluedot wrote:
| I think a good example of a subversion of the classic
| "hero's journey" is Blade Runner 2049. (I won't go into
| exactly why to avoid spoilers)
| jimmydorry wrote:
| 2020/21 has had quite a few movies that ended with the
| hero dying or negatively impacted. They follow the
| "hero's journey trope" and then subvert. I guess they
| match the pandemic mood. I'm not sure if I was just made
| more aware of this due to COVID, or there really just has
| been a glut of them.
|
| The two most recent off the top of my head:
|
| * Don't look up
|
| * James Bond No Time to Die
| egeozcan wrote:
| Thanks for the insight, I really appreciate it but it'd
| be nice for others if you don't give unexpected spoilers
| :)
| dorchadas wrote:
| It's truly interesting. Think of how much it dominated
| cultural talk for a decade, then just dropped off the face
| of the earth after Season 8. Man D&D really screwed it up.
| awhow wrote:
| Like Lost
| LegitShady wrote:
| I dropped Netflix because everything on there it suggests seems
| to be 'dystopian dark sci fi/fantasy' to the point where I
| wonder if they even understand that not everyone wants to see
| this as 'entertainment'.
|
| I didn't watch a bunch of dystopian stuff so why is it pushing
| on me? Because that's the movies they made/bought.
|
| There doesn't seem to be any interesting non grim dark stuff
| left I haven't seen already.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Mel Brooks made Young Frankenstein in black and white because he
| wanted to pay tribute to the original picture. It was a complete
| success, and he had to fight to get his way. Modern directors are
| pulling the same stunt, however their movies don't have a special
| reason to do it. The end result is experience detraction instead
| of additional charm.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2RpZBP_vyg&t=2860s
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQUqK_RJz9c&t=105s
| Sunspark wrote:
| Interesting article, and all this time I've been blaming the
| streaming services for their incompetence with transcoding making
| everything dull, muddy, washed out with the wrong gamma, etc.
|
| And it turns out it was actually the incompetent movie/tv
| producers themselves the whole time? WOW.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-13 23:01 UTC)