6 ms·

To many film artists, what you’re suggesting seems like the equivalent of hardcoding a custom massive bass boost into commercial headphones because “it makes m

by rtev 4y ago

To many film artists, what you’re suggesting seems like the equivalent of hardcoding a custom massive bass boost into commercial headphones because “it makes music better”. It might seem better to you, but you’re modifying someone’s art, which is actively detracting from the film for many.

eru 4y ago
You could interpret mjevans' plea to be for artists to embrace this style in their 'true art'. Not as a plea to Netflix to alter any existing films.
fao_ 4y ago
To be fair, in the mid-2010s that's basically what consumer headphones did -- e.g. Beats, etc. Before I got my Shure SE215-es I ended up doing a lot of research to figure out which headphones were actually going to give me a reasonable balance between treble and bass.
- brookst 4y ago
  Headphones/speakers and music production are locked in a prisoner’s dilemma. If you get accurate reproduction equipment, you have to Hope the content wasn’t mastered to sound good on Beats/etc.
- arprocter 4y ago
  215 actually has more bass than the 425 The Aonic 3 is my daily, although using the cable that came with the 425 (EAC64BKS - more pliable than the transparent one)
  - fao_ 4y ago
    > 215 actually has more bass than the 425 Sure, but I don't see where I said the opposite! I didn't say the SE215 was the op of the line, just that I did a lot of research first :) Part of that research included finding out that the SE215 was only 80 quid, but the SE425 was 300+ quid...
knaik94 4y ago
The artists' intent argument doesn't hold up, but is one that continues to be used as justification for "tradition". Most people aren't watching movies strictly in IMAX or even a color calibrated TV. Most default TV settings, even on the most high end devices, have things like dynamic saturation and motion smoothing on by default. The most popular brands of headphones do have custom eq from the factory, most people don't listen to studio monitor style flat audio. Most people don't realize there is a difference. The meaning of art is up to the viewer, not the artist. There's nothing wrong with having a preference, like using things like temporal denoising or increasing/decreasing saturation. Even an IMAX movie theater isn't enough because that's not what the film was graded with. Pretending that art shouldn't be modified because it moves away from the artist's intent is a bad faith argument. There were certain House of Dragon color grading decision that made me feel very disappointed, and I was watching in Dolby Vision on a nice high dynamic range TV. Artists' intent is useless if 99.999% of the population can't enjoy the actual art. https://www.vulture.com/article/why-house-of-the-dragon-episode-7-driftmark-was-so-dark.html https://www.vulture.com/article/why-house-of-the-dragon-epis...
- rtev 4y ago
  Your first paragraph seems to be “others are already doing it”. That’s a problem, not a justification for doing more of it. It’s a shame to see embedded analog grain stripped out because it was inconvenient for a dev team. It strikes me as a good example of the bad reputation developers hold for constantly prioritizing their own convenience over the end user’s experience. To address your second- I think that’s an example of the “slippery slope” fallacy. I’m stating only that film noise and grain is a big part of the atmosphere of many movies and shouldn’t be removed; I’m not suggesting that a viewing experience needs to be done in a world-class theater under perfect conditions to capture artistic intent. Anyone with a basic HD television can see analog noise and grain.
  - knaik94 4y ago
    We fundamentally disagree on how removing film grain, or changing things like saturation, affects end user experience. I don't believe it harms the viewing experience in a meaningful way. I respect that you care about artists' intent, but I think you're assuming more people care or notice than actually do. I don't believe adhering so strictly to the artists' intent will lead to a better watching experience. For some films where only a 1080p master remains, if you don't denoise before upscaling and then adding in artificial film grain, it'll look terrible. There is an endless list of poor Bluray and UHD Bluray transfers where the the film grain makes it unwatchable. The unfortunate thing is that the nicer the display is, the sharper the image and the more distracting the grain. In some cases, I would trust the AV1 endcoder decoder to do a better job at adding a more reasonable amount of grain than the 4k transfer did. It's not a slippery slope, bad transfers and poorly color graded films/shows already exist. Mistakes exist in both directions, the UHD remaster release of Terminator 2 is a exceptionally horrible example of too much DNR. In my opinion T2 is bad enough to bring real actors into the uncanny valley. The developers aren't doing anything different from what films do when going through an analog to digital transfer.
bee_rider 4y ago
This analogy seems off. In your analogy, it is suggested that playback devices be made somehow worse, while the request is for the recording to not have the effect applied. I’d say it is more like asking musicians to stop adding feedback — another phenomenon that began as an error but became an artistic tool — to their songs. Or requesting that sound engineers stop the engaging in the loudness wars.
- bobsmooth 4y ago
  If someone wanted to make a black and white movie, would you insist that they make it in colour?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I’m not a film producer, so I’m not in a position to insist on that sort of thing.
  - kbenson 4y ago
    Insist? No. Make a plea because you think it's stupid or harmful or counterproductive? Everyone should feel free to do that.
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      Sure but it is a lot easier to attack people’s preferences if we consider having a preference to be equivalent to wanting dictatorial control over every creative project.
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    I prefer color, so I’d insist with my dollars and attention, yes. Same if someone wanted to make a silent movie or ask me to join a dating site where all the profile photos are daguerreotypes.
  - 4y ago
llanowarelves 4y ago
In music, many engineers add "color" (artifacts like tape noise and analog "warmth" (subtle saturation/distortion which were undesirable side-effects of the original circuitry)).
- ilyt 4y ago
  But it is a tool to be used tactically, on a specific instrument or sound, to achieve specific effect. They don't master in 24bit/192kHz then just dump it to tape and send it. If used as element to paint the scene noise is fine and can work well, but the trend to just slap the grain on anything "coz that's how movies looked before" is just silly.
- CuriouslyC 4y ago
  That is typically done to genres of music where it makes sense though. A lot of hip hop, funk and stoner rock have a certain vintage aesthetic they're going for which tape noise and overdrive help achieve. The analogy to video would be VHS artifacts for retro-80s content or sepia tones for early/mid-20th century stuff.
ilyt 4y ago
It's noise dude, you can add it back in but removing it is hard. Exact opposite of your analogy

by rtev 4y ago

eru 4y ago

You could interpret mjevans' plea to be for artists to embrace this style in their 'true art'. Not as a plea to Netflix to alter any existing films.

fao_ 4y ago

To be fair, in the mid-2010s that's basically what consumer headphones did -- e.g. Beats, etc. Before I got my Shure SE215-es I ended up doing a lot of research to figure out which headphones were actually going to give me a reasonable balance between treble and bass.

brookst 4y ago
Headphones/speakers and music production are locked in a prisoner’s dilemma. If you get accurate reproduction equipment, you have to Hope the content wasn’t mastered to sound good on Beats/etc.
arprocter 4y ago
215 actually has more bass than the 425 The Aonic 3 is my daily, although using the cable that came with the 425 (EAC64BKS - more pliable than the transparent one)
- fao_ 4y ago
  > 215 actually has more bass than the 425 Sure, but I don't see where I said the opposite! I didn't say the SE215 was the op of the line, just that I did a lot of research first :) Part of that research included finding out that the SE215 was only 80 quid, but the SE425 was 300+ quid...

knaik94 4y ago

The artists' intent argument doesn't hold up, but is one that continues to be used as justification for "tradition". Most people aren't watching movies strictly in IMAX or even a color calibrated TV. Most default TV settings, even on the most high end devices, have things like dynamic saturation and motion smoothing on by default. The most popular brands of headphones do have custom eq from the factory, most people don't listen to studio monitor style flat audio. Most people don't realize there is a difference. The meaning of art is up to the viewer, not the artist. There's nothing wrong with having a preference, like using things like temporal denoising or increasing/decreasing saturation. Even an IMAX movie theater isn't enough because that's not what the film was graded with. Pretending that art shouldn't be modified because it moves away from the artist's intent is a bad faith argument. There were certain House of Dragon color grading decision that made me feel very disappointed, and I was watching in Dolby Vision on a nice high dynamic range TV. Artists' intent is useless if 99.999% of the population can't enjoy the actual art. https://www.vulture.com/article/why-house-of-the-dragon-episode-7-driftmark-was-so-dark.html https://www.vulture.com/article/why-house-of-the-dragon-epis...

rtev 4y ago
Your first paragraph seems to be “others are already doing it”. That’s a problem, not a justification for doing more of it. It’s a shame to see embedded analog grain stripped out because it was inconvenient for a dev team. It strikes me as a good example of the bad reputation developers hold for constantly prioritizing their own convenience over the end user’s experience. To address your second- I think that’s an example of the “slippery slope” fallacy. I’m stating only that film noise and grain is a big part of the atmosphere of many movies and shouldn’t be removed; I’m not suggesting that a viewing experience needs to be done in a world-class theater under perfect conditions to capture artistic intent. Anyone with a basic HD television can see analog noise and grain.
- knaik94 4y ago
  We fundamentally disagree on how removing film grain, or changing things like saturation, affects end user experience. I don't believe it harms the viewing experience in a meaningful way. I respect that you care about artists' intent, but I think you're assuming more people care or notice than actually do. I don't believe adhering so strictly to the artists' intent will lead to a better watching experience. For some films where only a 1080p master remains, if you don't denoise before upscaling and then adding in artificial film grain, it'll look terrible. There is an endless list of poor Bluray and UHD Bluray transfers where the the film grain makes it unwatchable. The unfortunate thing is that the nicer the display is, the sharper the image and the more distracting the grain. In some cases, I would trust the AV1 endcoder decoder to do a better job at adding a more reasonable amount of grain than the 4k transfer did. It's not a slippery slope, bad transfers and poorly color graded films/shows already exist. Mistakes exist in both directions, the UHD remaster release of Terminator 2 is a exceptionally horrible example of too much DNR. In my opinion T2 is bad enough to bring real actors into the uncanny valley. The developers aren't doing anything different from what films do when going through an analog to digital transfer.

bee_rider 4y ago

This analogy seems off. In your analogy, it is suggested that playback devices be made somehow worse, while the request is for the recording to not have the effect applied. I’d say it is more like asking musicians to stop adding feedback — another phenomenon that began as an error but became an artistic tool — to their songs. Or requesting that sound engineers stop the engaging in the loudness wars.

bobsmooth 4y ago
If someone wanted to make a black and white movie, would you insist that they make it in colour?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bee_rider 4y ago
  I’m not a film producer, so I’m not in a position to insist on that sort of thing.
- kbenson 4y ago
  Insist? No. Make a plea because you think it's stupid or harmful or counterproductive? Everyone should feel free to do that.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    Sure but it is a lot easier to attack people’s preferences if we consider having a preference to be equivalent to wanting dictatorial control over every creative project.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  I prefer color, so I’d insist with my dollars and attention, yes. Same if someone wanted to make a silent movie or ask me to join a dating site where all the profile photos are daguerreotypes.
- 4y ago

llanowarelves 4y ago

In music, many engineers add "color" (artifacts like tape noise and analog "warmth" (subtle saturation/distortion which were undesirable side-effects of the original circuitry)).

ilyt 4y ago
But it is a tool to be used tactically, on a specific instrument or sound, to achieve specific effect. They don't master in 24bit/192kHz then just dump it to tape and send it. If used as element to paint the scene noise is fine and can work well, but the trend to just slap the grain on anything "coz that's how movies looked before" is just silly.
CuriouslyC 4y ago
That is typically done to genres of music where it makes sense though. A lot of hip hop, funk and stoner rock have a certain vintage aesthetic they're going for which tape noise and overdrive help achieve. The analogy to video would be VHS artifacts for retro-80s content or sepia tones for early/mid-20th century stuff.

ilyt 4y ago

It's noise dude, you can add it back in but removing it is hard. Exact opposite of your analogy