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[thefool]

It's a 29 minute-video but it by goes pretty quick. I've written about this many times in different places about the (non)-textured world of movies these days, how nothing is tangible in the post-process world of cinema.



It's ironic because i think AI will be able to replicate this look much better than the mess we have this day where an army of digital artists creates an indistinguishable blur.

 

[Draugoth]

It's a 29 minute-video but it goes pretty quick. I've written about this many times in different places about the (non)-textured world of movies these days, how nothing is tangible in the post-process world of cinema.



It's ironic because i think AI will be able to replicate this look much better than the mess we have this day where an army of digital artists creates an indistinguishable blur.

It's mostly filter, bad directing and studio interference, most movies are made to reach a billion in the box office and this means appealing to general audiences. You don't need Generative AI to give a realistic feeling to movies.

 

[poppabk]

Got as far as him praising Way of water for being perceptually real and checked out. I didn't hate the movie but it consistently looked 'wrong'.

 

[Insane Metal]

Are you fucking kidding me. I literally watched this video one hour ago. Was going to post it eventually.

 

[Sticks]

Thats why I skip most AAA slop

 

[StueyDuck]

The video is decent, but there is a lot, almost too much philisophical fart sniffing.

When you can't actually explain something and why it is ,then how can you possibly fix it?

It's not all that, he does give some good, real, physical examples too, but be warned there's a lot of babbling guff if you are going to try watch the whole thing.

 

[E-Cat]

Got as far as him praising Way of water for being perceptually real and checked out. I didn't hate the movie but it consistently looked 'wrong'.

I think it looked amazing a lot of the time. Strong sense of "being there"

 

[analog_future]

I mean it's not hard to see and you don't need a deep analytical video to figure it out.


CGI has regressed and largely looked better 15 years ago than it does today. Lighting/compositing is a shit show. Movies are shot on location less than ever and instead studios rely on CGI, green screen, and StageCraft. Films are more rushed than ever, and film crews and artists are overworked and underpaid while the actors, directors, and producers get all the money.

Studios are afraid to use normal looking people in normal looking clothing nowadays as well. There is no longer such thing as an "everyman" or "everywoman" character. They all look like supermodels and all have professionally styled hair, perfect artificial white teeth, perfect hairlines and haircuts, perfectly applied makeup, and insanely chiseled bodies. Not to mention perfectly tailored, expensive clothing. This all takes away from the immersion of getting lost in a film.

Acting performances are also generally worse, because we now have actors having to pretend to be emotional while staring at a golf ball on a stick or a random dude in a bright green leotard, rather than acting alongside their actual costars.


Of course I'm talking only about the big tentpole films. Still lots of solid stuff in the lower budget/indie realm. But the big blockbusters are absolute garbage nowadays.

 

[Generic]

Similar thing happened to anime (modern anime lacks texture)

 

[Draugoth]

CGI has regressed and largely looked better 15 years ago than it does today. Lighting/compositing is a shit show. Movies are shot on location less than ever and instead studios rely on CGI, green screen, and StageCraft. Films are more rushed than ever, and film crews and artists are overworked and underpaid while the actors, directors, and producers get all the money.

Gartner Hype Curve.

Studios jumped into CGI because it was 'cheaper, and better' than practical effects, the same way they are trying to jump into AI. Nowadays CGI is considerably more expensive than practical effects from the old days and costs studios millions.

If you look to King Kong (2005) it looks better than most CGI movies made today, that's because all technologies have underline limitations and we have already reached the scaling walls of what can be done with computer graphics a long time ago.

 

[thefool]

Got as far as him praising Way of water for being perceptually real and checked out. I didn't hate the movie but it consistently looked 'wrong'.

I think that was him mostly giving Avatar a pat in the back for trying. And James Cameron definitely tries to give his movies life, even if he's not fully authentic.

 

[Go_Ly_Dow]

Similar thing happened to anime (modern anime lacks texture)

Yes it looks shit now.

 

[thefool]

This is why I'm very bullish on Odyssey btw, even if Nolan is inspired by a terrible translation, if the armors are not accurate or if it has no colors, he always textures his movies in a way that feel extremely authentic, why I believe his cinema resonates so much.

Similar thing happened to anime (modern anime lacks texture)

Absolutely. Thought about it many times watching the video.

 

[ADiTAR]

Im not gonna spend 29min on an explanation. But for me, there hasn't been anything new in cinema for ages. I watch movies today and I can guess the next line, the camera angles dont surprise me, the shots are all the same.

Think of the Matrix, panic room, and such, there was newness. Now I feel like i can predict everything, and I also have to watch at at least x1.25 otherwise i get bored.

 

[thefool]

The video is decent, but there is a lot, almost too much philisophical fart sniffing.

When you can't actually explain something and why it is ,then how can you possibly fix it?

It's not all that, he does give some good, real, physical examples too, but be warned there's a lot of babbling guff if you are going to try watch the whole thing.

Yes, a lot of people that enjoy cinema always fall under the artsy-fartsy bullcrap and don't have a technical knowledge nor ability to make compelling analytical videos. I agree with you there, if you watch it at 1.25x speed and fast forward every time there's a quote on screen it's good. It's a 12 minute video stretched to 29. But it's still good, he really makes a (good) case how we're living under a digital blur mess that makes movies look a disaster.

I also liked the video because he brings up another point that I have mentioned many times with friends, actors these days don't look like normal people, they are more instagram models than people. It's not being good looking, pretty people were always cast in movies

This is what young John Wayne actually looked like. Chad as fuck, I doubt there's a younger actor that can be compared to him, but eventually his life made him look rugged and that's when he really became a gigantic movie star. And these days, actors don't age like this nor they cast this type of people that you would find in the middle of nowhere.

 

[IntentionalPun]

Yeah that is a lot of words for what mostly can be summed up as "digital backgrounds make movies look like shit."

 

[Wildebeest]

We knew decades ago with uncanny valley that it would cost more and more every year to make computer rendering look more shit and unpleasant. I'm still waiting for a hint that some day in the next 100 years the other side of the uncanny valley will be hit and things will start to look better again.

 

[kruis]

The video is decent, but there is a lot, almost too much philisophical fart sniffing.

When you can't actually explain something and why it is ,then how can you possibly fix it?

It's not all that, he does give some good, real, physical examples too, but be warned there's a lot of babbling guff if you are going to try watch the whole thing.

I gave up on when he started quoting feminist critics who are just as obsessed with the "body" as Marxist scholars are with "Das Kapital".. But I liked the stuff before that. Movies are indeed looking fake for various reasons:

- shooting with digital cameras instead of film requires less knowledge, no need to get it right the first time
- shooting in LOG
- obsession with DOF and bokeh
- overdone color grading
- using CGI not just for SFX but literally everything (props, backgrounds, extras, lighting, etc etc etc)
- bad CGI
- "let's fix it in post" mentality

Modern movies aren't immersive because they look fake. Without the sense of "being in the frame" as a viewer combined with bad CGI, even the most spectacular action scenes won't grab you because when it looks fake, there are no stakes.

 

[bitbydeath]

Studios are afraid to use normal looking people in normal looking clothing nowadays as well. There is no longer such thing as an "everyman" or "everywoman" character. They all look like supermodels and all have professional styled hair, perfect artificial white teeth, perfect hairlines and haircuts, perfectly applied makeup, and insanely chiseled bodies. Not to mention perfectly tailored, expensive clothing.

Feel like we lost this over the years and instead we have a lot of non-everyday ugly people in our movies.

Some hit the mark but for others we get this.

 

[analog_future]

Feel like we lost this over the years and instead we have a lot of non-everyday ugly people in our movies.

Some hit the mark but for others we get this.

Literally everyone in this poster looks like a normal person. Except for Chris Hemsworth, ironically.

 

[ForAcademicPurposes]

The new adaptation of Frankenstein serves as a notable example of this contemporary trend.

 

[calico]

Even very obviously not-real things can 'feel' real if the piece of media refrains from jarring us out of our state of suspended disbelief. Consistency is the key issue, more so than actual realism (though ofc if your CGI was perfectly realistic it would also naturally achieve consistency with real things, but CGI is often imperfect).

If an entire movie is 'not quite right' CGI it may well not be an issue, so long as it's consistent. As soon as you put something real in the 'not quite right' CGI scene, or even in preceding scenes, you may as well flash a message on screen that says 'in case you forgot, this is what reality looks like and all this other shit is fake'. The real element is acting like a reference card, forcing you out of your state of suspended disbelief.

 

[Audiophile]

Shoot flat, protect every shadow and highlight, say you'll fix it later in post as you have loads of lattitude, then barely fix it later and just deliver a dull image. No intent, no vision, no making clear decisions and sacrifices on set to service a vision.

Digital is not inherently bad, but it gives you so much room to move that you're not being forced to whittle the frame down to what's important. When shooting on film you need to make those clear decisions and those sacrifices as you're baking a lot in. Even if you're timing (grading) it aggressively later. Whether film or digital, you need to commit to something.

In the end we've ended up with blockbusters and big movies that look lifeless, while small to mid budget productions from the 90s completely blow them out of the water. There are in my opinion, only a handful of people out there who can make digital look good. Then once you pile poor practices in other regards, as well as the fix it later mindset and protecting for CGI alterations, studios not prioritising aesthetic and skilled older filmmakers retiring, it all just gets compounded.

 

[OmegaSupreme]

That last transformers movie. I can't remember what exactly it was called but I checked out within the first 10 minutes because the smoke coming off some burning bacon in a pan was obviously cgi. Like we can't even burn bacon in camera anymore?! GTFO

The most recent movie that I can think off that looked real was Dune. That could be my bias for the material at play but at least they were in an actual fucking desert for a lot of it.

 

[IDKFA]

That last transformers movie. I can't remember what exactly it was called but I checked out within the first 10 minutes because the smoke coming off some burning bacon in a pan was obviously cgi. Like we can't even burn bacon in camera anymore?! GTFO

The most recent movie that I can think off that looked real was Dune. That could be my bias for the material at play but at least they were in an actual fucking desert for a lot of it.

I haven't seen that film, but using CGI for burning food smoke is a total waste and lazy film making.

Compare to the era before CGI. Poltergeist (1982) is a fantastic example. They had to make a house implode.

Without CGI, they had to get very creative. So, they used a replica model, piano wires, two shot guns and a fork lift. The result was spectacular.

 

[bitbydeath]

Literally everyone in this poster looks like a normal person. Except for Chris Hemsworth, ironically.

I gather that's a locale issue?
They don't look normal where I live.
Chris is closer to average although a bit nerdy looking here, so still below.

 

[Futaleufu]

Its funny how in Assassins Creed they spent a lot of money hiring a stuntman and setting up a shot just to ruin it in post.

 

[Jinzo Prime]

It's a 29 minute-video but it by goes pretty quick. I've written about this many times in different places about the (non)-textured world of movies these days, how nothing is tangible in the post-process world of cinema.



It's ironic because i think AI will be able to replicate this look much better than the mess we have this day where an army of digital artists creates an indistinguishable blur.

The part where he talks about texture really stands out to me. I remember the parts of Gladiator where someone rubs dirt on their hands better than most of the other scenes, and I haven't watched that movie in years.

 

[analog_future]

I gather that's a locale issue?
They don't look normal where I live.
Chris is closer to average although a bit nerdy looking here, so still below.

Yes, Chris Hemsworth, People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive", is below average looking. lol stfu dude

 

[bitbydeath]

Yes, Chris Hemsworth, People Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive", is below average looking. lol stfu dude

In that movie he is.
It's hard to tell if you're serious about the women being average or if people are really that ugly where you live.

 

[analog_future]

In that movie he is.
It's hard to tell if you're serious or if people are really that ugly where you live.

He's one of the most beautiful people on the planet even when compared to the other most beautiful people on the planet. A internationally best selling magazine rated him literally the sexiest person on planet earth. So unless you call fucking Mount Olympus home, in no reality is Chris Hemsworth "below average". Yes, even if they put a fake pair of glasses on him for a movie.


That's why what you're saying is ridiculous.

 

[bitbydeath]

He's one of the most beautiful people on the planet even when compared to the other most beautiful people on the planet. A internationally best selling magazine rated him literally the sexiest person on planet earth. So unless you call fucking Mount Olympus home, in no reality is Chris Hemsworth "below average". Yes, even if they put a fake pair of glasses on him for a movie.


That's why what you're saying is ridiculous.

Wait til you find out about other actors who ugly up for tv/movie roles, it will blow your mind.

 

[analog_future]

Wait til you find out about other actors who ugly up for tv/movie roles, it will blow your mind.

The joke with Hemsworth in the film was that he was ridiculously handsome (and ridiculously stupid). They all fawned over him. He wasn't even "uglied up" for the film and I don't know what you're even talking about.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

You just need to compare classics like Alien, Matrix, Predator or even A Space Odyssey with the current bullshit template-made movies. They look like videogames, there's no authenticity.

Besides technology, the lack of talent and artistic vision play a huge role. Today, movies are mostly "products" or "content", they are artificial in looks and spirit, soulless slop. Of course they don't feel real. Their characters don't act, speak or look real either.

The western entertainment industry (movie, videogames, publishing) is completely broken and AI or any other magic technology is not the answer. Talent is. We need talent to return.

 

[Lambogenie]

Green screen and lack of practical effects bother me more and more. And sets.

Just watching Welcome to Derry and everything looks really weird.

You get some great CG works with things like Planet of the Apes, but so much just looks off now.

 

[Grildon Tundy]

I was looking for technical, analytical details, so this video lost me with the English major philosophizing that doesn't actually mean anything.

Are you fucking kidding me. I literally watched this video one hour ago. Was going to post it eventually.

The algorithm must be pushing this, because it showed up on my feed last night.

 

[SirKicksalot]

The new Jurassic World is shot on Kodak film, on location, without LED lights, has fewer VFX shots than Fury Road and Top Gun, and "We also tried not noodle too much with the pictures – no custom curves, no crushing of the blacks, no fiddling with windows or secondaries. We just let the film be what it is, with its color and grain."

The part where he talks about texture really stands out to me. I remember the parts of Gladiator where someone rubs dirt on their hands better than most of the other scenes, and I haven't watched that movie in years.

Ridley still does that. I distinctly remember Napoleon's breakfast by the fireplace or in Gladiator 2 when Lucius is waiting in the party's antechamber. There's always fog, smoke, dust, petals, snow swirling around in his movies.
I think texture is microdetail + movement + contrast, and the third point is where Frankenstein shits the bed.

Also, per James Cameron, CGI artists tend to overlight scenes, but shadows make the image more realistic.

 

[March Climber]

The algorithm must be pushing this, because it showed up on my feed last night.

It's a shame that algorithms are built that way. It should be used to push someone to new unique movies that a person would actually enjoy, rather than recommending content to validate someone's overall feelings on movies they've already disliked.

 

[Liopleurodon]

Myself, I really love modern cinematography.

 

[Trunx81]

He has a valid point. Someone started this crap and now everyone is trying to copy it. Damn, the comparison with Quantummania is harsh; I didn't realize until now why this movie looked so bad.

Modern movies suffer even more from uninspired scripts. They already feel like written by AI. So that's probably the only field that will benefit from ChatGPT and sorts.

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

It's funny how iirc that new Jurassic World movie was still shot on film, yet looks the same as every other modern slop movie, I assume it's digital color correcting, which has long been a problem, remember how evryone has orange Oompa Loompa skin in those Michael Bay Transformers movies? Though those look amazing compared to movies today.

It bothers the shit out of me how ugly modern cinematography looks, your average movie from the 90s looks a million times better.

 

[Zathalus]

The joke with Hemsworth in the film was that he was ridiculously handsome (and ridiculously stupid). They all fauned over him. He wasn't even "uglied up" for the film and I don't know what you're even talking about.

I'm not sure how you don't know this, but anytime you put glasses on a hot person, they automatically become an uggo. Not Another Teen Movie clearly demonstrates this.

 

[EviLore]

Have to consider survivorship bias when we look back at the best movies from previous decades and compare them to the hundreds of slop films we're experiencing as they release today. Almost every classic film referenced in the video is an all-time great. No one watches the tens of thousands of mediocre and derivative artless films anymore from decades past that we collectively chose to forget. Something made by Netflix to be consumed and forgotten about doesn't hold up against Days of Heaven visually? Well yes, of course not.

That being said, I can't think of another time period where I've looked back on films of the past *so* much more than the present.

I blame the streaming business model and the low barrier to entry for shooting digitally, mainly. Movies have converged with TV, and most TV isn't anything special.

 

[pachura]

Got as far as him praising Way of water for being perceptually real and checked out. I didn't hate the movie but it consistently looked 'wrong'.

I've watched the HFR version, and these permanent mid-scene jumps between 24 and 48 fps were just awful.

Also, 48 fps makes you feel "I am not watching a movie, I am watching computer game cutscene running on RTX 9090 Super Ti with all the sliders upped to the maximum".

 

[Horatius]

Have to consider survivorship bias when we look back at the best movies from previous decades and compare them to the hundreds of slop films we're experiencing as they release today. Almost every classic film referenced in the video is an all-time great. No one watches the tens of thousands of mediocre and derivative artless films anymore from decades past that we collectively chose to forget. Something made by Netflix to be consumed and forgotten about doesn't hold up against Days of Heaven visually? Well yes, of course not.

That being said, I can't think of another time period where I've looked back on films of the past *so* much more than the present.

I blame the streaming business model and the low barrier to entry for shooting digitally, mainly. Movies have converged with TV, and most TV isn't anything special.

i actually think it's the opposite, that even slop back then looked immaculate compared to the netflix-sheen-covered crap everything looks like these days. you can look at a lot of b-tier movies made mostly for the video market during the 90s and come away amazed by how good they look.

the classic example is something like Deep Blue Sea, which is available on apple movies in 4k and looks like high cinema. genuinely piece of shit movies made then look fantastic, far better than they needed to or would today with the same budget.

 

[IlGialloMondadori]

It's a 29 minute-video but it by goes pretty quick. I've written about this many times in different places about the (non)-textured world of movies these days, how nothing is tangible in the post-process world of cinema.



It's ironic because i think AI will be able to replicate this look much better than the mess we have this day where an army of digital artists creates an indistinguishable blur.

Thinking AI will make it better is insane. AI will make this way way way worse.

 

[EviLore]

i actually think it's the opposite, that even slop back then looked immaculate compared to the netflix-sheen-covered crap everything looks like these days. you can look at a lot of b-tier movies made mostly for the video market during the 90s and come away amazed by how good they look.

the classic example is something like Deep Blue Sea, which is available on apple movies in 4k and looks like high cinema. genuinely piece of shit movies made then look fantastic, far better than they needed to or would today with the same budget.

Renny Harlin was actually a talented action movie director. The Long Kiss Goodnight is a classic. Deep Blue Sea holds up as a fun and rewatchable subversive shark movie. It was just restored in 4K by Arrow this year, and well shot movies on film can really pop.

 

[Hugare]

It's all on post processing/color correction + bad CGI (sometimes)

Sinners was a recent movie that was gorgeously shot. It looks like a classical film.

About the new Jurassic World movie: colors aren't like real life. It has way too much contrast and saturation. So despite being shot in real locations, your mind knows that colors shouldnt be that way.

 

[Vyse]

Im not gonna spend 29min on an explanation. But for me, there hasn't been anything new in cinema for ages. I watch movies today and I can guess the next line, the camera angles dont surprise me, the shots are all the same.

Think of the Matrix, panic room, and such, there was newness. Now I feel like i can predict everything, and I also have to watch at at least x1.25 otherwise i get bored.

Also can't stand that almost every movie is ruined by trailers telling the entire story and nothing original coming out, just rehashed IPs.

 

[Audiophile]

For stuff shot on film I'd really like to see more filmmakers getting it photochemically processed and creating timed IPs (Interpositives) for scanning in rather than just scanning in the OCN (Original Camera Negative) and digitally grading it. Less effective resolution and less lattitude for additional post, but so much nicer to look at if your goal is a filmic look. I'd also like to see more catalogue releases from before the DI (Digital Intermediate) era getting fresh IPs rather than direct OCN scans and digital grades; too often these older movies are losing their signature photochemically-graded look and becoming homogenised. I'll take 3K of info with a fitting, faithful aesthetic over 4K+ with a blander look.

I also think VISION(1) and VISION2 film stocks were much nicer. VISION3 seems very much for the era of Digital Intermediates and it just isn't as nice to look at despite 'better' performance. Of course, the former two aren't really available now, so there's not much to be done there (it really would be nice if they brought back VISION2 as a creative option), but when combining VISION3 shot with accurate lenses, a straight scan of the OCN and poor on-set practices, it can often be nearly as boring as a mediocre a poor end to end digital job.

There's obviously the on-set cinematographic practices like lighting and blocking that have been on a major downslope, but I think even film itself and how the medium was handled started to get kinda boring in the late 2000s before digital cameras took hold.