6 ms·

Another aspect of this is staffing. It doesn't immediately seem tech related, but it is. There's less people in the background as extras, less people making ba

Another aspect of this is staffing. It doesn't immediately seem tech related, but it is. There's less people in the background as extras, less people making background scenes or setting up. It can mostly filled in by production technology if necessary. Some movies just seem so empty, and they look "cheap" if you see it in this angle. Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely more than three actors visible in the whole film. I've noticed there's a lot of these hollow/empty productions with very few actual actors visible, and they are rather lifeless.

9dev 4y ago
That is a great observation, and something that has put me off a lot of movies too. It’s an uncanny valley type of thing.
DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
I hadn’t thought of this at all but you’re totally right. Movies and shows have way fewer people on the screen just in the background.
weinzierl 4y ago
I noticed the increasing "emptiness" as well but my initial thought was that it is a COVID thing. Less people on set less risk.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  It's definitely a COVID thing, especially things like the lack of populated restaurant scenes as pointed to in the article.
tested23 4y ago
Another movie that does this is Tenet. There is this massive action set piece at the end, people are literally fighting for the fate of the world. Then you have people running around, shooting at nothing. Are massive set pieces with hundreds of extras just not economically feasible anymore?
- rubslopes 4y ago
  I remember that. There were so few people in that scene, it felt uncanny.
drc500free 4y ago
IMO, that's part of what made Game of Thrones fall off a quality cliff. It wasn't just subpar writing on the main plot lines when the source material ran out. The world itself became hollowed out, and the main characters stopped existing within an organic world. It turned into an avengers movie, where the leads were largely alone on screen only interacting with each other (except for designated Crowd Scenes).
- duxup 4y ago
  > where the leads were largely alone on screen only I feel like that is many movies now. The worlds are small and the consequences / events are just there for the primary actors to respond to and seem entirely disconnected from any kind of universe. Massive events happen just for the sake of having a hero mug for the camera. But no consideration otherwise. At this point in the Star Wars universe I expect the regular people of the universe would realize that ALL force sensitive people are more trouble than they are worth… but no the people of the universe show up, say dumb things, die (or don’t show up… literally nobody at times) at the appointed time for really no reason that to give the heroes or villains something to do.
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    There does seem to be an absence of "angry villagers raid the wizard's tower" stories in the Star Wars universe. Missed opportunity, probably has something to do with Star Wars primarily being escapist fantasy for people who wish to be the wizard. Maybe the EU novels have such stories, but I haven't read those.
    - Izkata 4y ago
      There's a scene in the original movie that kind-of explains this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzs-OvfG8tE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzs-OvfG8tE > "Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebels' hidden fortr-" From what I remember from wikis the EU novels expanded on this as: Jedi/Sith/force-sensitives are rare enough that even at the height of the Jedi's power, most people believed them to be a myth, that the Jedi Order was more like a powerful religious group of regular people.
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
Reading this, and looking at the example photos in the article, it's the Nighthawks aesthetic (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/111628/nighthawks https://www.artic.edu/artworks/111628/nighthawks ). It has a place in cinema and art, and always has. But when any aesthetic becomes dominant people would notice the lack of the other aesthetics that they are used to experiencing.
ClassyJacket 4y ago
The Matrix 4 felt so empty because of this. It felt like a small group of actors together on a cramped stage.
- maest 4y ago
  That film is so meta and self-critical that you could argue it was on purpose.
LegitShady 4y ago
to be completely fair to netflix, Amazon spent like $80-100m releasing season 1 of wheel of time and those 8 episodes also looks like lifeless garbage.
dylan604 4y ago
This is one of the things that made The Breakfast Club such a great example for low budget filmmakers. Very small number of people on camera, low number of locations, yet it does not feel weird within the context of the script. There have been others that are great examples of it being odd. The TV show The Good Guys was shot on empty streets in a dead part of town because of low budgets, and it comes across that way. Was the crew so small that they couldn't send a couple of the grips or PAs to walk down the side walk? Another of the low-budget examples I like is in Queen of the South's first season, they used the production's grip truck as the bad guy vehicle in an episode. Maybe it was the pilot? It was just one of those hung head in shame moments for me
- mejutoco 4y ago
  Clerks and Cube are other movies where this happens.
Teever 4y ago
This is quite apparent in the most recent Law & Order season. Compare/contrast an episode from season 22 which aired in 2022 vs season 1 which aired in 1990. There are scenes in the original that have like a 15-20 people on screen doing a highly complex choreography for a crime scene with different actors playing uniformed cops, detectives, evidence specialists, witnesses, bystanders, just every one that you would expect to be in such a scenario in real life. And that's just one scene. There are many more with unique locations, with remarkable shots on location outside and inside buildings -- all with many more people on screen. Now they barely have 20 people in the final court room scene when the original seasons used to have 50+ people just for the background, let alone the 12 jurors, 3 lawyers/judge/defendant.
- ballenf 4y ago
  Kind of ironic also that law and order was the place to get your start in acting in NY. There are so many famous actors that had an early role in the show.
- jjeaff 4y ago
  I it was released in 2022, it was probably filmed at the height of COVID. So that would explain fewer people on screen. Working around restrictions was exceedingly difficult. But if they saved money, and there were no big complaints, you can bet they will stick with it. Just like all the hotels that are now not cleaning your room during your stay unless you request it specifically every day.
michaelt 4y ago
I've seen some things on Netflix that look like they're optimising for phone screen viewing. I wonder if they simply think background details aren't important when viewing on a 6" screen.
thewebcount 4y ago
> There's less people in the background as extras, less people making background scenes or setting up. This isn’t actually a new problem. I guess the new part is this: > It can mostly filled in by production technology if necessary. I saw an interview with the director of the 5th (I think?) of the original Planet Of The Apes movie, Battle for the Planet of the Apes. (It might have been a DVD extra, I don’t recall.) It’s supposed to be a war between the humans and the apes, but they didn’t have the budget to hire enough actors, so they had to rely on using particular angles of the camera and various props to make it less obvious how few people there actually were in the movie. Later I saw a review of the movie Jumper which is also supposed to have a war between normal humans and humans that can teleport, basically. The review was talking about how there didn’t really seem to be that many people involved in this supposedly worldwide war.
Slow_Hand 4y ago
I often think about Die Hard With a Vengeance. The city of New York is a huge part of the movie's texture. The movie actively engages with all of the people on the street and in the cars, and who are watching from their office windows. Characters who could have very easily been left out of the movie, but their inclusion make it so much richer. You see and feel their days get ruined because of the carnage. It actually feels like New York City. There are so many different side characters who only have two lines, but each of them were cast with care and feel like real people who are living through their day and intersecting with John McLane. I love this movie for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RVVJmuoAQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RVVJmuoAQ4 On the other hand, I just watched Michael Bay's Ambulance, which is a prolonged police chase through downtown Los Angeles and the only people who seem to be on the street are criminals and dozens of police cars. At no point are we in touch with anyone who isn't directly contributing to the story. The reality is that downtown LA is packed full of traffic and the story would have taken a very different (and interesting) angle if it reckoned with the fact that getting through the traffic is it's own game. Die Hard With a Vengeance, however, acknowledges this reality and comes up with some very creative scenarios for our protagonists to overcome, and it makes for a far more compelling movie as a result. It feels far more realistic, even in a movie as heightened as this.
- parineum 4y ago
  >Die Hard With a Vengeance, however, acknowledges this reality and comes up with some very creative scenarios for our protagonists to overcome I hadn't thought about this before but you're correct and it even extends to the antagonist. As they are unravelling his plot, they come up with the question of "how do you drive that much gold through New York without anyone noticing?". It's a very interesting perspective.
- anonymouskimmer 4y ago
  This reminded me of the Netflix movie Bright (modern day Lord of the Rings kind of people), and while focusing on the main characters, it still manages to incorporate the realness of NPCs going about their lives.
- markeibes 4y ago
antisthenes 4y ago
> Some movies just seem so empty, and they look "cheap" if you see it in this angle. Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely more than three actors visible in the whole film. Maybe that's true, but for Passengers, no extras is an integral part of the movie plot. Anything else would make 0 sense. And they pulled it off rather well.
gumby 4y ago
This can be done, and has been done since early cinema, by making the film essentially a stage play. This definitely can make for some excellent films! It focuses the production on the story, and most of the time of evocation of out-of-scene activity. But your point highlights the opposite: merely having fewer people in the scene to save money without considering what it actually takes to make it work. Even Blum gets this right; these bigger productions have no excuse except laziness. And in my case it's led to me simply watching less video, because it's boring.
thesz 4y ago
I think that Stalker (the movie) [1] does not feature more than 3 people in a scene. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film) Is it empty? Is it cheap?
wkat4242 4y ago
> Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely more than three actors visible in the whole film. I agree with your general comment but in Passengers it was really central to the overall plot and premise. It's not a good example of this phenomenon. I don't think this was drive for budgetary reasons, that film clearly had a huge budget looking at the visuals. As for money, Hollywood should be much less dependent on 'A-listers' and tap unknown talent. This will also make the 'A-listers' cheaper and stop this annoying thing where you see the same faces in every movie, often cast more for the name than for best fit to the role.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  I disagree here about the premise, the premise is part of the problem, these films are hollow.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    It's about 1 guy waking up on a spaceship with 80 years to go :) It's just really part of the story. You might not like the premise but the film would lose its impact without it. It's not a typical "because cheap" scenario where other characters are cut, here it's an integral part of the plot.

9dev 4y ago

That is a great observation, and something that has put me off a lot of movies too. It’s an uncanny valley type of thing.

DoneWithAllThat 4y ago

I hadn’t thought of this at all but you’re totally right. Movies and shows have way fewer people on the screen just in the background.

weinzierl 4y ago

I noticed the increasing "emptiness" as well but my initial thought was that it is a COVID thing. Less people on set less risk.

ch4s3 4y ago
It's definitely a COVID thing, especially things like the lack of populated restaurant scenes as pointed to in the article.

tested23 4y ago

Another movie that does this is Tenet. There is this massive action set piece at the end, people are literally fighting for the fate of the world. Then you have people running around, shooting at nothing. Are massive set pieces with hundreds of extras just not economically feasible anymore?

rubslopes 4y ago
I remember that. There were so few people in that scene, it felt uncanny.

drc500free 4y ago

IMO, that's part of what made Game of Thrones fall off a quality cliff. It wasn't just subpar writing on the main plot lines when the source material ran out. The world itself became hollowed out, and the main characters stopped existing within an organic world. It turned into an avengers movie, where the leads were largely alone on screen only interacting with each other (except for designated Crowd Scenes).

duxup 4y ago
> where the leads were largely alone on screen only I feel like that is many movies now. The worlds are small and the consequences / events are just there for the primary actors to respond to and seem entirely disconnected from any kind of universe. Massive events happen just for the sake of having a hero mug for the camera. But no consideration otherwise. At this point in the Star Wars universe I expect the regular people of the universe would realize that ALL force sensitive people are more trouble than they are worth… but no the people of the universe show up, say dumb things, die (or don’t show up… literally nobody at times) at the appointed time for really no reason that to give the heroes or villains something to do.
- LarryMullins 4y ago
  There does seem to be an absence of "angry villagers raid the wizard's tower" stories in the Star Wars universe. Missed opportunity, probably has something to do with Star Wars primarily being escapist fantasy for people who wish to be the wizard. Maybe the EU novels have such stories, but I haven't read those.
  - Izkata 4y ago
    There's a scene in the original movie that kind-of explains this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzs-OvfG8tE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzs-OvfG8tE > "Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebels' hidden fortr-" From what I remember from wikis the EU novels expanded on this as: Jedi/Sith/force-sensitives are rare enough that even at the height of the Jedi's power, most people believed them to be a myth, that the Jedi Order was more like a powerful religious group of regular people.

anonymouskimmer 4y ago

Reading this, and looking at the example photos in the article, it's the Nighthawks aesthetic (https://www.artic.edu/artworks/111628/nighthawks https://www.artic.edu/artworks/111628/nighthawks ). It has a place in cinema and art, and always has. But when any aesthetic becomes dominant people would notice the lack of the other aesthetics that they are used to experiencing.

ClassyJacket 4y ago

The Matrix 4 felt so empty because of this. It felt like a small group of actors together on a cramped stage.

maest 4y ago
That film is so meta and self-critical that you could argue it was on purpose.

LegitShady 4y ago

to be completely fair to netflix, Amazon spent like $80-100m releasing season 1 of wheel of time and those 8 episodes also looks like lifeless garbage.

dylan604 4y ago

This is one of the things that made The Breakfast Club such a great example for low budget filmmakers. Very small number of people on camera, low number of locations, yet it does not feel weird within the context of the script. There have been others that are great examples of it being odd. The TV show The Good Guys was shot on empty streets in a dead part of town because of low budgets, and it comes across that way. Was the crew so small that they couldn't send a couple of the grips or PAs to walk down the side walk? Another of the low-budget examples I like is in Queen of the South's first season, they used the production's grip truck as the bad guy vehicle in an episode. Maybe it was the pilot? It was just one of those hung head in shame moments for me

mejutoco 4y ago
Clerks and Cube are other movies where this happens.

Teever 4y ago

This is quite apparent in the most recent Law & Order season. Compare/contrast an episode from season 22 which aired in 2022 vs season 1 which aired in 1990. There are scenes in the original that have like a 15-20 people on screen doing a highly complex choreography for a crime scene with different actors playing uniformed cops, detectives, evidence specialists, witnesses, bystanders, just every one that you would expect to be in such a scenario in real life. And that's just one scene. There are many more with unique locations, with remarkable shots on location outside and inside buildings -- all with many more people on screen. Now they barely have 20 people in the final court room scene when the original seasons used to have 50+ people just for the background, let alone the 12 jurors, 3 lawyers/judge/defendant.

ballenf 4y ago
Kind of ironic also that law and order was the place to get your start in acting in NY. There are so many famous actors that had an early role in the show.
jjeaff 4y ago
I it was released in 2022, it was probably filmed at the height of COVID. So that would explain fewer people on screen. Working around restrictions was exceedingly difficult. But if they saved money, and there were no big complaints, you can bet they will stick with it. Just like all the hotels that are now not cleaning your room during your stay unless you request it specifically every day.

michaelt 4y ago

I've seen some things on Netflix that look like they're optimising for phone screen viewing. I wonder if they simply think background details aren't important when viewing on a 6" screen.

thewebcount 4y ago

> There's less people in the background as extras, less people making background scenes or setting up. This isn’t actually a new problem. I guess the new part is this: > It can mostly filled in by production technology if necessary. I saw an interview with the director of the 5th (I think?) of the original Planet Of The Apes movie, Battle for the Planet of the Apes. (It might have been a DVD extra, I don’t recall.) It’s supposed to be a war between the humans and the apes, but they didn’t have the budget to hire enough actors, so they had to rely on using particular angles of the camera and various props to make it less obvious how few people there actually were in the movie. Later I saw a review of the movie Jumper which is also supposed to have a war between normal humans and humans that can teleport, basically. The review was talking about how there didn’t really seem to be that many people involved in this supposedly worldwide war.

Slow_Hand 4y ago

I often think about Die Hard With a Vengeance. The city of New York is a huge part of the movie's texture. The movie actively engages with all of the people on the street and in the cars, and who are watching from their office windows. Characters who could have very easily been left out of the movie, but their inclusion make it so much richer. You see and feel their days get ruined because of the carnage. It actually feels like New York City. There are so many different side characters who only have two lines, but each of them were cast with care and feel like real people who are living through their day and intersecting with John McLane. I love this movie for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RVVJmuoAQ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RVVJmuoAQ4 On the other hand, I just watched Michael Bay's Ambulance, which is a prolonged police chase through downtown Los Angeles and the only people who seem to be on the street are criminals and dozens of police cars. At no point are we in touch with anyone who isn't directly contributing to the story. The reality is that downtown LA is packed full of traffic and the story would have taken a very different (and interesting) angle if it reckoned with the fact that getting through the traffic is it's own game. Die Hard With a Vengeance, however, acknowledges this reality and comes up with some very creative scenarios for our protagonists to overcome, and it makes for a far more compelling movie as a result. It feels far more realistic, even in a movie as heightened as this.

parineum 4y ago
>Die Hard With a Vengeance, however, acknowledges this reality and comes up with some very creative scenarios for our protagonists to overcome I hadn't thought about this before but you're correct and it even extends to the antagonist. As they are unravelling his plot, they come up with the question of "how do you drive that much gold through New York without anyone noticing?". It's a very interesting perspective.
anonymouskimmer 4y ago
This reminded me of the Netflix movie Bright (modern day Lord of the Rings kind of people), and while focusing on the main characters, it still manages to incorporate the realness of NPCs going about their lives.
markeibes 4y ago

antisthenes 4y ago

> Some movies just seem so empty, and they look "cheap" if you see it in this angle. Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely more than three actors visible in the whole film. Maybe that's true, but for Passengers, no extras is an integral part of the movie plot. Anything else would make 0 sense. And they pulled it off rather well.

gumby 4y ago

This can be done, and has been done since early cinema, by making the film essentially a stage play. This definitely can make for some excellent films! It focuses the production on the story, and most of the time of evocation of out-of-scene activity. But your point highlights the opposite: merely having fewer people in the scene to save money without considering what it actually takes to make it work. Even Blum gets this right; these bigger productions have no excuse except laziness. And in my case it's led to me simply watching less video, because it's boring.

thesz 4y ago

I think that Stalker (the movie) [1] does not feature more than 3 people in a scene. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalker_(1979_film) Is it empty? Is it cheap?

wkat4242 4y ago

> Some big hollywood production like for example Passengers where there are barely more than three actors visible in the whole film. I agree with your general comment but in Passengers it was really central to the overall plot and premise. It's not a good example of this phenomenon. I don't think this was drive for budgetary reasons, that film clearly had a huge budget looking at the visuals. As for money, Hollywood should be much less dependent on 'A-listers' and tap unknown talent. This will also make the 'A-listers' cheaper and stop this annoying thing where you see the same faces in every movie, often cast more for the name than for best fit to the role.

kzrdude 4y ago
I disagree here about the premise, the premise is part of the problem, these films are hollow.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  It's about 1 guy waking up on a spaceship with 80 years to go :) It's just really part of the story. You might not like the premise but the film would lose its impact without it. It's not a typical "because cheap" scenario where other characters are cut, here it's an integral part of the plot.