15 ms·
Why does everything on Netflix look like that?
- Thaxll 4y agoWhat I noticed on Netflix is a lot of show have that blur in some shot, the focus part is clean but all the rest is blury / distorted.
- dthul 4y agoHaha, not to take anything away from the article but I found it funny that it starts with saying that the colors are "extremely saturated", but the image they chose for the article looks actually somewhat de-saturated to me (or if not de-saturated, at least not unnaturally saturated).
- Turing_Machine 4y agoYeah, that image is definitely not "extremely saturated", as can be verified by saving it, opening it up in GIMP or Photoshop, and turning up the saturation. Edit: later she complains about "muddy colors", which in my interpretation of "muddy", would mean the opposite of "extremely saturated".
- jandrese 4y agoI also thought it was interesting that the article complained about the actors being slathered in makeup, when that's all TV. You can only tell because Netflix shoots in 4k and you can actually see it for a change. But the same thing is true when you see network TV shows in 4k. It's the makeup department using their standard HD techniques because that's what most people have, but it doesn't look so good in 4k.
- LanceH 4y agoAll of tv has makeup, sure. Sandman it looks like stage makeup -- like the makeup is meant to be seen, not merely enhancement.
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoExactly akin to how actors in early movies had such dramatic makeup because that was the standard for stage actors (in order to allow the makeup to be visible from the audience).
- ACV001 4y agothis is ad.
- nathanaldensr 4y agoI wish there were more, you know, images of what they claim.
- Turing_Machine 4y agoAnd the one image demostrates the opposite of what they claim. I think this is just clickbait... find something popular, trash it, and use the backlash to drive ad revenue. Then again, it is vice.com, so yeah, that's probably a given.
- edgyquant 4y agoHow is this trashing anything?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Apocryphon 4y agoI dunno, that screenshot does look rather conventional and cheap. It looks like a still from Doctor Who or something.
- malfist 4y agoBut is it what the post claims? Dark, overly saturated, lit with neon colors, caked on makeup and puckered seams in the costumes? I don't see any of that in their sole "example" It doesn't help that their example has, like, 10 pixels. Guess the pixel factory ran out when they got their screenshot.
- the_af 4y ago> I think this is just clickbait... find something popular, trash it, They don't trash it. This is what they actually say about the overall quality of The Sandman: > Against all odds, Netflix’s adaptation of The Sandman is a very good show. "A very good show". They then go on to claim there's a general "look" of cheapness to Netflix shows which means one can usually tell something was produced by Netflix. They describe some general characteristics, and they don't do the best job at actually displaying examples of said characteristics. Though I do know what they mean, having watched a few episodes of the show (which I like).
- 29athrowaway 4y agoNetflix has too much low quality content. Occasionally, there's something good. When that happens, I subscribe, watch the content, then unsubscribe again. There might be a lot of hidden jewels in there but they're hard to find because they're buried under a mountain of unwatchable stuff.
- oriolid 4y agoI think it's better to think the subscription as renting a show or two, rather than something that's supposed to keep running.
- rozenmd 4y agoI think they've done well to make audiences oblivious to the dozens of independent teams shooting for them, making things "Look Netflix". There's an incredibly detailed set of guidelines that helps them achieve this: https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/categories/360005967653-Imaging https://partnerhelp.netflixstudios.com/hc/en-us/categories/3...
- ryantgtg 4y agoRelated, perhaps https://www.vox.com/culture/22840526/colors-movies-tv-gray-digital-color-sludge https://www.vox.com/culture/22840526/colors-movies-tv-gray-d... Normalized colors across multiple filming seshes.
- tengbretson 4y agoIs there an article hiding somewhere in that rat's nest of advertisements?
- ramesh31 4y agoIt's the final death of cinema as an art form outside the avant garde. The visual equivalent of clickbait blogspam.
- edgyquant 4y agoWe’ll then cinema wasn’t much of a sustainable art form then since it didn’t even make it a century. The lessons learned and art created during that time will remain and enrich the “video” or whatever you want to call the replacement for cinema.
- ramesh31 4y ago> The lessons learned and art created during that time will remain and enrich the “video” or whatever you want to call the replacement for cinema. It wont, though. That’s the thing. It’s the same thing that happened to classical animation. A hundred years of technique and mastery passed down from generation to generation, now completely lost.
- edgyquant 4y agoDoes it not live on in all ways that matter in anime? I’m not attached to a production format or a label. The future will not be short of cartoons nor will it be short of films that move people. Sure they may be now alongside a massive scale of what you don’t like but that’s the beauty of the information web.
- astrange 4y agoThe good anime production methods were invented in ~the 80s - 60-70s anime were based on looking at Disney once and then figuring out how to do it for much less than a reasonable budget. 70s anime is painful to look at, kind of like if you made a show out of stop motion cardboard cutouts. So I wouldn't really call them generational. They are suffering though, as they took on too much business without getting paid enough for it, and the studios can't keep up.
- pessimizer 4y agoEverything on CBS looks the same, too.
- Tao3300 4y agoat least it isn't all blue-orange with gimmicky made-for-3D shots
- dontknowwhyihn 4y agoIMO, where Netflix productions really fall short of their Hollywood counterparts is sound design.
- motoboi 4y agoDont know why people talk about Netflix vs "Hollywood counterparts" because those are the same fricking people. Except that hollywood have only hollywood people and netflix have hollywood people AND the rest of the world producing for it.
- dralley 4y agoNetflix and HBO live in different universes when it comes to production quality. HBO / Warner can get a far better result from far less money. Just compare S1 of Game of Thrones against S1 of The Witcher produced 10 years later.
- notatoad 4y agoThe show under discussion here (Sandman) is a Warner production.
- waynecochran 4y agoBack in the day, you could always tell ABC, CBS, and NBC shows apart by their lighting and coloring. Watch Rosanne and Happy Days (ABC) and compare with old Magnum PI and 60 minutes (CBS) and Cosby Show or Cheers (NBC).
- raydev 4y agoYes! This was especially obvious to me as a kid watching all the popular 90s sitcoms with my mom every evening. ABC shows (oddly with the exception of Roseanne, now that you mention, that set really balanced it out) always had a bright, almost washed out look, eg Ellen, Boy Meets World, Drew Carey Show. NBC shows always looked more cozy and lived-in regardless of story location, eg Just Shoot Me, Friends, Seinfeld.
- sjs382 4y agoI've always thought so, too! Cool to see it discussed here because I'm not sure I've ever talked to anyone about it other than my wife. She finds it strange that I can tell what service or channel a show is on and we've joked that its a Letterman-esque "stupid human trick" that I can do it. I can even tell the difference between football games on NBC, CBS and FOX without seeing the score bug.
- thrill 4y agoWhy does everything on Vice read like that?
- umeshunni 4y agoCTR and CPM, mostly.
- nichochar 4y agoHow is there only one picture in this article discussing visual features?
- wyager 4y agoIt's funny to me that Netflix has such strict standards for cameras, but their content delivery is usually such low quality. Maybe my friends with netflix just aren't paying enough to get decent-looking video? One example that I remember is a horror movie where a bogey comes out of a dark doorway. I was totally distracted from the scene by the atrocious brightness levels. I won't even call it "banding", because that implies a sort of geometric layout to the levels - this was more like "blocking". It was even worse than I would normally expect from dark bt.709 content. I assume the issue was something like their compression eliminated any natural dithering that would make dark zones look OK in SDR content. Hopefully their compression strategy does a better job with dark content using bt.2100 transfers.
- astrange 4y agoSDR video barely has the bit depth to represent dark content uncompressed (16-235 YUV 4:2:0 is quite less than 0-255 RGB 480p). Highly saturated red and blue scenes also can't be represented well. Higher bit depth video helps here, but it seems like people want to sell you 4K even if all you want is HDR. And nobody wants to pay for the 4K Netflix tier.
- deckard1 4y agoCouldn't find the point of this article, like others have claimed. But I did find it interesting they messed with the aspect ratio in The Sandman. I watched the trailer and it's incredibly obvious. A weird creative choice if you ask me. It would annoy me so much to watch that. Reminds me of my dad. Going to his house and seeing his nice large 16:9 TV showing stretched 4:3 content. And me being too polite to tell him that he's being uncivilized.
- rtkwe 4y agoHaven't watched Sandman yet but Westworld does something similar to that where they use the aspect ratio to denote different eras or real vs virtual.
- kpozin 4y agoIt's not just changes in aspect ratio (i.e. the shape of the frame). In Sandman, they compress the actual image, so everything looks stretched vertically.
- KevinGlass 4y agoI was exited for Sandman. It had the potential to be very good, good actors, good budget, decently long timeline, etc. Unfortunately it got "Netflix'd" and suffers for it. It's kind of bland and boring. Visually it's not very interesting and the music is alright but could have been lifted from something else entirely. Listen here [1] The best comparison I can think of is the BBC's Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Similarly fantastic source material, the show had a lower budget but is far more interesting to watch and that comes down to set design, cinematography, editing choice, etc. It's like the Sandman production crew picked the safest possible choice at every opportunity. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2gCRK-f1pM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2gCRK-f1pM
- bergenty 4y agoI don’t know how to say it but it feels like it has no gravitas. Like the original lord of the rings had gravitas, battlefield galactic a has gravitas, the wire has gravitas. What’s making this so… bland? It’s not just the writing I presume, I don’t know.
- serverlessmom 4y agoThis is the first decent criticism I've actually seen about the show. Netflix scraping for every penny is definitely hurting production value
- fezfight 4y agoI feel very similar about Disney Plus. The shows are all very safe and bland. Even the hyped ones, at the end, I kind of feel like I just watched the adult version of Airbud, you know?
- hedora 4y agoYeah; it took about 5 minutes for me to go from initial sign up, to realizing the Miramax catalog is completely missing from Disney+, to deciding to cancel it ASAP. The Mandalorian was OK, I guess, but meh. Also, they're censoring the back catalog in offensive ways (Daryl Hannah's disturbing case of carpet butt comes to mind.) Anyway, I'd pay for access to the back catalog they bought monopoly rights to. Since it's not for sale, my money is going elsewhere. (Edit: had the wrong actress...)
- PaulWaldman 4y agoBranding. Netflix is simply more interested in furthering their brand and associated content than the artistic value of their content. This isn't really any different than traditional movie producers or record labels developing cohesive content.
- exmadscientist 4y agoThe cameras are a total red herring. Any competent DP can get any looks they want (short of maybe 70mm IMAX) with any of those cameras. The issue lies elsewhere.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y agoFor me the biggest issue in modern movies and tv isn’t the “Netflix aesthetic”, but the overwhelming prevalence of what I think of as the perpetual golden hour. It used to be that by virtue of the golden hour being necessarily a very short slice of time in which physical sets could make use of that especially dramatic lighting it was only used it some scenes. Now it feels like every outdoor scene in every film is shot with that lighting because it’s all just CGI and they can make the light look however they want. The result is a massively distracting (to me) effect of the lighting looking over-engineered, I guess I’d call it? It seems like every single scene is either a night scene or shot at 6pm on a sunny summer day. It’s more off-putting than badly done cgi.
- fezfight 4y agoIt is strange. I guess it's the same as pop music and pachelbels canon. Most people love it. So we are stuck with it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- croisillon 4y agoHave you seen Top Gun?
- isx726552 4y agoYeah seriously, the “perpetual golden hour” phenomenon goes way back. Bruckheimer 80s blockbusters were big on this. Even in the 1970s, shooting large portions of a full movie during “magic hour” was staring to become a trend, see for example 1978’s Days of Heaven[0]: > Much of the film would be shot during magic hour… [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Heaven#Principal_photography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Heaven#Principal_photo...
- pwthornton 4y agoIt's not always CGI. They are using LED lighting panels to create the exact lighting conditions they want. Some movies and shows are using giant overhead panels to create hyper-focused idealized conditions. A lot of times, it is overdone, but in a movie like Knives Out it helped with the indoor scenes.
- susodapop 4y agoI first heard about network styles listening to Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould on the _Better Call Saul Insider_ podcast. Many studios have them. A unified style streamlines production at the cost of artistry. A typical television episode has just a few days to film. So the more creative a crew becomes in their framing, lighting, audio recording etc. the less time they have to move through the shot list. It takes a talented (and expensive) crew to make this magic happen within 5-10 days. It's to the credit of Sony and AMC that they gave Marshall Adams et. al. the flexibility to make a masterpiece out of _Better Call Saul_. But it was expensive and risky. Not every script justifies that risk and expense. Without a style guide to fall back on I think we would see fewer series overall.
- AtNightWeCode 4y ago"Extremely saturated" as in extremely de-saturated and then highlighted? Looks just awful. Even worse in 4K. That incorrect shallow focus range that does not exist outside N is also a pain. The screenshot in the article pretty much sums it up. Looks terrible.
- dekhn 4y agoI have a different problem: I hate everything shot in Canada as a stand-in for american cities. Everything looks wrong: the streets are clean, there's almost no cars, and everybody is well-dressed. Even the people who are dressed up to look homeless look well-dressed. I can really annoy my wife by shouting out where something was filmed -- "that's obviously toronto!" and "that's obviously british columbia" but you could easily train an ML to do the same thing.
- dreamcompiler 4y agoI used to laugh about the Canada effect on Stargate SG-1. It's a well-written show about traveling to other planets in the galaxy, but almost every planet looks like a forest in British Columbia because that's where it was shot.
- bluefirebrand 4y agoI'm watching through SG-1 for the first time right now and as someone who grew up in BC I am actually delighted by this. It's very fun for me seeing little easter eggs about my home region. And one huge one: They called a planet "Kelowna", which is just the name of a city near Vancouver. But who would know that unless you live nearby?
- dekhn 4y agoAh, yeah, SG-1 is a good example. The 100 is another (post-apocalyptic earth). And Battlestar Galatica. In retrospect I realized I grew up with a few major styles, including "shot in a back lot in LA" (Back to the Future), "shot on a ranch outside LA" (Little House on the Prairie), "movie set in city actually shot in city by director who loved the city" (the Conversation), and "shot at Elmstree" (Star Wars interiors). Ultimately I want to watch a movie where I can't tell what forest it was shot it, especially if it's off-planet.
- glonq 4y agoI remember watching it and saying "hey, that's the same forest in North Van where my friends and I go mountain biking after school"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y agothis is what happens when you're making "content", as martin scorsese described it. it's like every new show they make feels like the final season of a show that lost it's spark many seasons ago - just made out of obligation to a contract. conveyor belt tv.
- CitizenKane 4y agoI can't help but feel like article kind of beats around the bush with the answer, i.e. that there are tradeoffs between artistic freedom and streaming performance/compression. I'm guessing Netflix did their best to find cameras that worked well with the compression and streaming infrastructure that Netflix has. There's probably no perfect answer, and I can understand why they'd want to specific hardware for their productions. It's kind of fascinating that it's ended up forming a certain style, but I wouldn't be surprised to see engineering concerns start to permeate other streaming services in terms of style.
- silisili 4y ago'Extremely saturated', immediately below an image from The Sandman that is very clearly neutral at best, perhaps even undersaturated....
- rhino369 4y agoThe author must have meant extremely under-saturated. I've only watched 2 episodes, but it was pretty colorless. I assumed it was an artistic choice.
- ssizn 4y ago“a Hallmark movie by it’s bright, fluffy, pastel look” Argh… editor… where’s the bloody editor!!!
- causi 4y agoThe fake-ass Depth of Field effects are what drive me nuts. Some series have the top and bottom thirds of the screen blurred to hell with a sharp dividing line for no discernable reason.
- andix 4y agoWhats so bad about Netflix 4K? Yes, it's compressed. And yes, it loses some information and quality. But the picture quality is still good. Superior to most other sources. (Yes, Blue-ray will be better, but I really don't want to jiggle disks). I don't think that 1080p with the same bitrate would look any better.
- oriolid 4y agoI noticed that 1080p version of The Sandman streamed at average 3 mbit/s. I would expect that kind of numbers from Youtube, not supposed high-quality stream. The picture is still sharp and doesn't have obvious compression artifacts so there must be something else in play.
- bzzzt 4y ago3 mbit/s is enough - most of the time. You'll see compression artifacts when objects are moving on a background with a complicated pattern (like a fence) in focus. I guess directors are optimizing for compression-friendly scenes nowadays and use larger apertures to blur backgrounds more to prevent artifacts.
- oriolid 4y agoThe thing is that just like it was said in the TFA, The Sandman looks flat and saturated compared to anything on Amazon Prime or Apple TV that coincidentally have much higher bit rates. Maybe it's intentional attempt to make the show look like comic book and the bit rate is a side effect, maybe the other way round.
- bzzzt 4y agoWas that on a 4K Netflix subscription? Image quality on Netflix varies between shows, so I'd guess it was intentional. Possibly the quality gets a little downgraded on a less-than 4K resolution (which also squashes the dynamic range due to lack of HDR).
- entropie 4y agoIts not only netflix. Its just 4k cameras (RED and friends, I guess?) - not sure what brands actually exist. I watched my first movies in the 90s and it took a while to adapt to the new looks but I actually love it. Its so detailed and still many elements from classical movies are adapted (if you read about them, you never forget and begin to actually see them used. Hitchcocks dolly zoom as prominent example.) At least I am visually pleased and on my PC I actually start edge to watch 4k netflix, besides sometimes it just freezes my windows PC and just make them reboot).
- kachurovskiy 4y agoIt makes me sad that there's so much focus on image and VFX on Netflix while having a below average story in most cases. There are movies that consist of a person talking on the phone in a room that are more enjoyable than Netflix's feature film of the week like Day Shift.
- yakshaving_jgt 4y agoI actually rather enjoyed Locke, and it's exactly that — one man talking on the phone while driving his car at night for 90 minutes. The Queen's Gambit however, as visually compelling as it was, couldn't hold my attention. Too many tropes.
- turnsout 4y agoI reject the premise that all Netflix shows have the same look. Just a theory, but it's possible the author is viewing HDR shows on a non-HDR TV/display, leading to a similar look as the HDR is tone mapped to SDR. Consistent tonemapping could also explain why they feel the content is dark or over-saturated. But honestly, the other reality is that cinematography is an art, and there are trends in art. Right now, cinematographers are embracing the shadows—maybe because they're finally able to. For most of film history, cinematographers had to avoid deep shadows due to technical limitations (including film latitude, VHS, DVD and lack of color consistency on TVs).
- InitialLastName 4y agoTo be fair, 2 of the 3 available tiers of Netflix don't include HDR; if they are delivering a color palate for HDR to all of those tiers, it's no wonder it looks bad.
- t0mas88 4y agoVery possible. I really like the Netflix produced stuff because nearly all of it is in Dolby Vision When my old TV died I switched to a new OLED one that has Dolby Vision / HDR. The colors on that are much better and the calibration is built-in so the manufacturer can't fuck it up with over saturation and too much brightness like most TV brands do. It also adjusts to the amount of ambient light via a sensor, so it's great to watch both with sunlight in the room and at night.
- Melatonic 4y agoYea thats possible. ALthough if you are actually incorrectly mapping HDR to SDR it REALLY looks like crap.
- turnsout 4y agoYeah, if they're doing it well (which I think they are, based on viewing Netflix on a laptop) it shouldn't look bad, but I could see how using the same tone & gamut mapping might make highlights and bright colors look similar across shows. But if they're not doing it well… We watch Apple TV+ shows on the Apple TV app on a MacBook Air, and it looks objectively too dark compared to our TV (OLED). I think the TV app is Catalyst, or at least shares a lot of code with iOS, and those devices have some HDR headroom. My theory is that app is just assuming the display is HDR, leading to ultra-dark SDR representation. It's kind of crazy, considering they own the whole stack, from silicon to the streaming service.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoCinematography by committee.
- Animats 4y agoA/B testing? They have so much data about the behavior of watchers that they can optimize, which will lock them into a look.
- carabiner 4y agoThat's why you watch HBO instead.
- the_af 4y agoI'm liking The Sandman so far, being a fan of the source material like many others watching it I guess, but this critique is spot on. I skimmed the article to see if it mentioned the "Hallmark look", and was not disappointed to see it did. One can instantly recognize the bright, bland, inoffensive and boring look of any Hallmark production, and quickly zap out of it. TFA also mentions Syfy, which is also instantly recognizable as "cheap CGI".
- parkingrift 4y agoI tried to read this article, but I have absolutely no idea what they're talking about. Why aren't there any example images? I have never noticed this supposed phenomenon, and I was curious enough to try and read the article, but the article does not even make an attempt to showcase this "issue." Am I missing something so obvious that the author didn't even feel compelled to slightly elaborate on what that "something" is?
- severak_cz 4y agoa) they assume everybody has Netflix b) there are some copyright law problems with screenshots
- dylan604 4y agoB) No, this would clearly fall under fair use to use a screen grab to use as a visual aid in the written article.
- jussion_zoonist 4y agoI think that bypassing DRM would violate DMCA even if it is for fair use.
- dylan604 4y agoOh lawdy! Netflix has promoted these programs. There are all sorts of content floating around on the interwebs released by the producers for the specific purpose of letting people see the content. Even the Netflix interface will show you something that will demonstrate the discussion. Hell, there's probably trailers for content on YouTube.
- DiggyJohnson 4y agoZ) Not every piece of content needs to be accessible to every person that might stumble across it. If you don’t already have a feeling for what this “Netflix look” is, maybe the article just isn’t written for you?
- derekjobst 4y agoI've always thought the Apple TV + shows exhibit the most uniform "look" of any of the streaming services. Ted Lasso is probably the most pronounced example with vibrant colors, bright/uniform lighting, and a consistent "clean" look. I guess it makes a lot of sense given Apple's design aesthetic. Has anyone else noticed this?
- zingplex 4y agoAt least to my eyes there is a huge difference visually between Ted Lasso and Slow Horses.
- mandmandam 4y agoSeverance was distinctive and gorgeous, while maintaining a very consistent and unique look. Foundation was gorgeous too, in a completely different way; again very self consistent. 'See' was fun, lush, and again, totally different. None of these were like Ted Lasso. I wouldn't have guessed any of these were on the same network, either for sound, look or plot. That's all I've really watched there though.
- Apocryphon 4y agoimo I think there is something indescribable that links some of those shows to some degree. Gorgeous, expensive, high-production values and a "mature" form of color-grading, perhaps? Or maybe that just means they look distinctly better than Netflix shows.
- irrational 4y agoWho is the audience for this piece? >Most annoying to me, everything is also shot in an extremely conventional way, using the most conventional set ups to indicate mystery or intrigue as possible—to indicate that something weird is going on the framing always has a dutch angle, for example—or more often just having everyone shot in a medium close up. I have zero idea what the "conventional way" or the "most conventional set ups" are. Likewise, who know what a "dutch angle" even is? I have to assume this was written for an audience of film students or people in the industry, because nobody else knows about this kind of stuff or cares.
- DennisP 4y agoIn part, they blame compression of 4K HDR images. So how do things look on the 4K Netflix plan, with fast internet and a 4K TV?
- f1refly 4y agoThe same, why would netflix allocate more bandwidth which would cost them money? I know people with gigabit and obscenely huge 4k displays and netflix looks just as bad there as it looks at my parents place with a 16MBit broadband connection. In fact, it looks a bit better there because their 1080p screen doesn't have as much contrast and is much smaller so the bad quality is concealed.
- DennisP 4y agoIf you get the $9.99/mo plan and just hook it to a 4k display with gigabit, then no I wouldn't expect improvement. I'm asking how it looks if you pay Netflix twice as much for the "Premium Ultra HD (4K)" plan. I certainly would expect them to allocate more bandwidth if you're paying them double to get the stream they say is higher quality.
- firefoxd 4y agoFor Netflix, I know what he means, but the article has a hard time describing it. It's kinda like you know what a tiktok video looks like, even when the logo is absent. But here is a better phenomenon. Star wars tv series are all shot in a circular room. Everything is arranged in a virtual circle even when they are outdoors. When you see it, you can't unsee it. Ps: having a hard time finding images from the shows. But here is the set. [1] https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/forging-new-paths-for-filmmakers-on-the-mandalorian https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/forging-new-paths-fo... [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bErPsq5kPzE https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bErPsq5kPzE
- dankwizard 4y agoDo you mind elaborating on this? I'm having a hard time getting it
- firefoxd 4y agoThe unreal studio makes it easy to give a natural lighting to elaborate sets like those of star wars. Also less green screen needed. But those sets are relatively small and it forces each scene to have a small circular area for the actor in the middle to act. Even for large scenes tend to feel like all the action is happening in the middle.
- crazygringo 4y agoThis article makes no sense. For some reason this has been some kind of meme going around in the last 2 to 4 weeks, that Netflix shows all look the same because of a limited camera list. And somehow it's turned into a full article now. But it makes no sense because different shows on Netflix are all made by different studios with totally different senses of taste, Netflix doesn't impose any aesthetic, and modern digital cameras don't generate an aesthetic at all. They mostly simply impose limitations around resolution and noise that limit or expand what you can do with dark shots. Everything around aesthetic is cinematography and color grading which has essentially zero to do with your camera. At most, we can say that Netflix chooses to buy a lot of middlebrow drama shows, and middlebrow drama shows today share a similar aesthetic, in the same way that soap operas from the 80's share a similar aesthetic, or gritty HBO crime miniseries share a similar aesthetic, or network cop shows share a similar aesthetic. Directors and cinematographers figure out what works most effectively for a genre and copy what works. None of that has anything to do with Netflix imposing anything or any list of approved cameras, or minimum resolution or HDR or anything else technical.
- koprulusector 4y agoToward the end of the article the author moves on to "compression" of 4K HDR media as another factor affecting the aesthetics. I find this just as baffling as what you’ve pointed out.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago>modern digital cameras don't generate an aesthetic at all For whatever reason, Netflix Originals seem to love having a super strong blur over the foregrounds and backgrounds. My understanding is that this is due to the 1974 Hawk anamorphic lenses they tend to use, although maybe it's a post-production effect? When the characters are on the edge of the frame, sometimes they'll be a blurry mess while a random object in the middle of the room looks super sharp. I've always assumed it's cheap way to look "cinematic", like portrait mode on an iPhone. Or maybe it's a way to cover up flaws in sets. Either way, in shows like The Witcher and Sabrina I find it incredibly distracting.
- 4y ago
- jononomo 4y agoThis article does not include images to demonstrate the point, which means the article is not worth reading.
- dxbydt 4y agoThere's definitely a Netflix aesthetic - if you watch a lot of Netflix you'll see it. Especially in Indian/Bollywood circles, "Netflix movie" is a pejorative. It means its shot in a certain high-res way, favoring aerial shots & cutaways, with a certain unnatural ( unnatural to the Indian mileau/culture) point of view, which is not reflected in the Indian society on average. A certain casualness about foul language, obscenity, adultery etc... all of which certainly has its place if the content is some gangster flick or deals with the seamier side of life. But even if the show is about say the education sector (eg. Kota Factory on Netflix ) - they manage to make it very Netflixy. I don't know how else to describe it. Lots of drone shots. Frequent focus on the abnormalities of the place. Its certainly more dramatic. But its mining for drama that isn't naturally present in the subject matter. I like parts of it but it becomes too much to take after a point. I have to consciously turn it off and walk away, shaking my head. They make a hash of it.
- Apocryphon 4y agoSounds like Netflix learned the wrong lessons from the success of Sacred Games (at least season 1) and tried to apply that show's gritty luridness to every other Indian production.
- mandmandam 4y agoSerious question - why does this place still tolerate Vice? They attacked Stallman on utterly blatantly false pretenses, egregiously misquoting him. Their page is a GPDR violation. And if they've managed any quality journalism in the past ten years or so, I haven't seen it.
- 3327 4y ago
- mywittyname 4y agoI've been complaining for a while that Netflix shows look like video games. While my partner counters that it's just the TV we have. > “One of the weird things that happens when you have a very high resolution image, in general, when you shrink the amount of information the edges get sharper.” I guess this means I'm onto something. I thought at first that this was just because NF series might have been going for a video game aesthetic (Witcher, Stranger Things), but even Peaky Blinders does it now. It's not just look either, shows also feature that excessive camera shake while in vehicles (Call of Duty), the over the shoulder fly behind common in games like Gears of War, and that very generic close up shot games use during dialogs to ensure they can use the ultra-hi-poly models at high frame rates.
- bityard 4y agoIf you think this is annoying (whatever it is, the article didn't make a lot of sense to me), then DON'T look up one of the many articles on the preponderance of "orange and blue" as the standard color palette for virtually all Hollywood movies made in the last decade and going forward. Once you see it, you will start seeing it everywhere.
- Nevermark 4y agoI have had so many 4k screens for so long that filming in 4k to be "future proof" felt like a slap in the face! I have one 8k screen and am only waiting to upgrade other screens until content expands and hardware prices come down. To me, saying 16k is the future, would have not sounded unusual. We are going to have cheap wall screens long before a show like Sandman loses its audience!
- etempleton 4y agoI don’t think this is just Netflix movies, it is almost every movie shot today. The problem is everything digital cameras and modern lenses are too “perfect.” On top of that there is a trend towards extremely bright color grading. And then when you run that and put it on a brand new HDR tv it all looks a bit insane. Clean perfect lenses with clean digital images displayed on blindingly bright HDR TVs. Different films and older lenses create different looks. Film studios will still rent old lenses to get certain looks and a lot of serious filmmakers are adamant about using film only. Hell, even the director of Anchorman 2 talks about how he doesn’t like the look of the movie compared to the first because he was convinced to shoot digitally. And you know what, I thought the same thing watching that movie. Some cinematographers seem to have figured out how to make digital look like a lot like film, but that has to be a very conscious choice.
- shsbdncudx 4y agoWhat’s always stuck out for me more than the visuals is the audio in Netflix shows, it’s like they’re all pulling from the same standard library. Netflix is the Bootstrap of the movie world.
- andsoitis 4y agoThe thesis that Netflix has a prescribed look & feel is misplaced in my view. Instead, my money is on the idea that it is similar to the Instagram effect on contemporary esthetics and artists. The critique from the author doesn't apply to many many titles. For instance the neon / indoor thing is clearly absurd in the case of Grace & Frankie. They also don't apply their "common characteristics" to animated fare... Ozark has a very different look & feel to Atypical.
- andsoitis 4y ago> Sandman.... fans of the show have also gotten frustrated by the show’s aspect ratio, which makes the frames look like they’ve been stretched upward. This is an intentional choice, the elongation. Secondly, this has nothing to do with "the Netflix Look" and the author doesn't even try to make a connection...
- lazyeye 4y agoOn a similar topic https://variety.com/2022/film/news/why-movies-so-dark-hard-to-see-batman-1235195535/ https://variety.com/2022/film/news/why-movies-so-dark-hard-t...
- wink 4y agoJust skimmed the article but I've said for decades that I can recognize a German TV show or movie with any 5s clip because it just looks weird(to me), versus any Hollywood or British production. At some point I stumbled over an article that blamed the lighting technique, and I guess there are now actual German productions that do not like this, but still funny. (I guess I'm mostly talking about daily soaps, but also crime series, nearly everything produced in the 80s and 90s).
- asdff 4y agoIMO a big issue with a lot of modern productions is that they are too clean and colorful. You have a movie set in 1910 and everyone is wearing colorful died fabric and their clothings are spotless, not a hair out of place, when in reality their feet would be covered in horse shit and their hair mattled with sweat from wearing all those layers, plus a lot more smoking and drinking. I think this comes from shooting in a sound room constantly and having every shot run by hair/makeup/wardrobe to make sure everything is perfect. Meanwhile, back in the day when they would shoot, e.g., a western, that would feel a lot more real because it would be shot on an actual movie ranch. You'd feel the heat of the sun, the characters are all sweaty and dirty. Buttons may be loosened on shirts just to make it more comfortable for the actors in the heat, just like they would be by the real character in the scene due to the heat. E.g. this shot from Once upon a time in the west is a good example (1). The sun is beating down with hard shadows. The main characters shoes are dusty, his coat is dusty from brushing on the ground, his hands are dusty, his sleeves are dirty, there is dirt all over his face, he looks sunburned, he looks like he probably smells. It feels so much more authentic. 1. https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTgzNDM5NTY3NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjA4MTc4Mw@@._V1_.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTgzNDM5NTY3NF5BMl5B...