14 ms·

Its a case of "your holding it wrong". These movies (blade runner/etc) should come with screen calibrations to assure that people don't have the brightness on t

Its a case of "your holding it wrong". These movies (blade runner/etc) should come with screen calibrations to assure that people don't have the brightness on their TV's turned up too high. A problem that is far to prevalent, along with having the contrast set at cartoon levels to make them pop. These old movies were _DARK_. For long stretches you could barely see anything much less all the details of the ships. I read/watched an interview with H.R. Giger many years ago, where he talks about how he created fear in his movies by barely showing anything and letting the mind fill in the horrible details. So, if you can see the details of the drop ship beyond what is being directly lit by the landing lights/etc then your TV needs to be seriously adjusted. Same for the alien itself, it should only barely be visible. And for a movie like Alien this makes sense, between being in the depths of space, or below heavy/dark cloud cover there shouldn't be a lot of light, particularly ambient light.

Eisenstein 4y ago
I am curious about this H.R. Giger interview. I am unaware of him making any movies though your wording could just be confusing. Did you mean 'created fear in the the elements of the movies he contributed to' or did you really mean 'created fear in his movies'?
- StillBored 4y ago
  He was part of the special effects team for Alien. I'm not sure where/what interview it was, may have been some commentary on the movie I remember it from many years ago.. But i'm 99% sure the interview was about the special effects in Alien, and how he intentionally kept the alien mostly hidden. Google yields a lot of results but I'm not going to watch all of them for you :) Anyway, I so I guess he "contributed" the fear since he wasn't the director.
the_af 4y ago
Agreed in general but do note the dropship scene is not particularly dark. The dropship is going through the clouds and the "superimposed" image is pretty bad. I'm pretty sure Cameron cringes nowadays when he looks at it. Do note most of the other Aliens SFX stood the test of time very well, and of course, it's a Well made movie with awesome pacing, making it easy to forgive those few effects that aren't very good.
- StillBored 4y ago
  Yah I re-watched it after posting that comment, and I think i conflated it with the landing in the original. But even so, with the brightness on my 10" tablet turned down most of the way it didn't look too bad, some of the dialog though.. guess i've outgrown that kind of stuff.. lol.
caskstrength 4y ago
> These movies (blade runner/etc) should come with screen calibrations to assure that people don't have the brightness on their TV's turned up too high. A problem that is far to prevalent, along with having the contrast set at cartoon levels to make them pop. You don't need a hardware calibrator for controlling brightness. Just enable Filmmaker mode and disable everything else like "dynamic contrast", all kinds of motion interpolation, etc.
- StillBored 4y ago
  I was thinking more like those "alpha channel" screen calibrators that lots of games had. Adjust the contrast until the top bar looks to be the same brightness as the bottom bar, then you get another screen where you adjust the brightness until a gray bar is just barely visible. But yah film modes help with this as long as all the fancy stuff can be disabled. OTOH, I actually like having some basic motion/frame interpolation enabled, because 24FPS drives me almost as crazy as bad 3:2 pull down encoded (or not encoded) streams where slow motion pans/etc are jerky. I guess some of these TV's have a black frame insertion mode (or its part of the film mode) where it drops black frames between 24 FPS content and that helps too.

Eisenstein 4y ago

I am curious about this H.R. Giger interview. I am unaware of him making any movies though your wording could just be confusing. Did you mean 'created fear in the the elements of the movies he contributed to' or did you really mean 'created fear in his movies'?

StillBored 4y ago
He was part of the special effects team for Alien. I'm not sure where/what interview it was, may have been some commentary on the movie I remember it from many years ago.. But i'm 99% sure the interview was about the special effects in Alien, and how he intentionally kept the alien mostly hidden. Google yields a lot of results but I'm not going to watch all of them for you :) Anyway, I so I guess he "contributed" the fear since he wasn't the director.

the_af 4y ago

Agreed in general but do note the dropship scene is not particularly dark. The dropship is going through the clouds and the "superimposed" image is pretty bad. I'm pretty sure Cameron cringes nowadays when he looks at it. Do note most of the other Aliens SFX stood the test of time very well, and of course, it's a Well made movie with awesome pacing, making it easy to forgive those few effects that aren't very good.

StillBored 4y ago
Yah I re-watched it after posting that comment, and I think i conflated it with the landing in the original. But even so, with the brightness on my 10" tablet turned down most of the way it didn't look too bad, some of the dialog though.. guess i've outgrown that kind of stuff.. lol.

caskstrength 4y ago

> These movies (blade runner/etc) should come with screen calibrations to assure that people don't have the brightness on their TV's turned up too high. A problem that is far to prevalent, along with having the contrast set at cartoon levels to make them pop. You don't need a hardware calibrator for controlling brightness. Just enable Filmmaker mode and disable everything else like "dynamic contrast", all kinds of motion interpolation, etc.

StillBored 4y ago
I was thinking more like those "alpha channel" screen calibrators that lots of games had. Adjust the contrast until the top bar looks to be the same brightness as the bottom bar, then you get another screen where you adjust the brightness until a gray bar is just barely visible. But yah film modes help with this as long as all the fancy stuff can be disabled. OTOH, I actually like having some basic motion/frame interpolation enabled, because 24FPS drives me almost as crazy as bad 3:2 pull down encoded (or not encoded) streams where slow motion pans/etc are jerky. I guess some of these TV's have a black frame insertion mode (or its part of the film mode) where it drops black frames between 24 FPS content and that helps too.