Let there be light.
March 30, 2023 8:16 AM Subscribe
Why are movies so dark these days? [Polygon] “The truth can’t be boiled down to any one factor. But one key element has largely gone missing from this conversation: filmmaking choices, and the current trends that have directors producing darker imagery. If streaming compression is a necessary evil of modern distribution, and if viewers will choose to watch movies and shows in suboptimal conditions regardless of the filmmaker’s intent, then why are so many directors, DPs, and colorists designing their work in a manner that’s incompatible with how so many people view media nowadays? What benefit are filmmakers getting out of this? The answers are complicated.”
• Why it's so hard to see what's happening on your favorite movies and shows [A.V. Club]
• Why it's so hard to see what's happening on your favorite movies and shows [A.V. Club]
“Is this a creative trend, the result of technical advances, or just bad filmmaking? We reached out to some experts for answers, and while it turns out to be a combination of all three, it seems that viewers also share some of the blame for the way they’re watching this content on their home screens. [...] Paul Maletich, a digital imaging technician whose resume includes films like Blade Runner 2049 and Collateral as well as TV series like You and Mayfair Witches, agrees that the darkness we’re seeing is a deliberate decision on the part of creators. “It’s an artistic choice, absolutely,” says Maletich, whose job is to make sure everything is captured properly on set and to color the raw feed before it goes to post-production. “Sometimes the filmmakers don’t want you to see everything. If you catch just a cheek or you catch an eyelid, maybe that’s all they want you to see. You don’t have to see the entire face. It is intentional. Is it intentional 100 percent of the time? No, of course not.””• It’s not you — movies are getting darker [Vox]
“It comes down to aesthetics and technology. The first one’s pretty simple: As popular content leans grittier and darker in tone (i.e. The Batman, Stranger Things, Game of Thrones, etc.) the visuals tend to reflect that. But productions have also moved from shooting on film to shooting with digital cameras, and the way scenes get lit has changed dramatically. Shooting on film meant that you couldn’t see the final product until everything was developed. Under those limitations, it made more sense to flood dark scenes with light to ensure the footage would be usable. With digital cameras and digital monitors, it’s easy to see what the final product will look like — and that can embolden a cinematographer to film scenes darker and darker. But how dark is too dark? And how do filmmakers ensure that their vision gets accurately represented on the screen you’re watching it on?”• Don’t Adjust the Brightness: Here’s Why TV and Movies Are So Dark Now [Variety]
“Beyond aesthetic or practical motivation, though, sometimes the reason for a scene’s dark lighting is much more mundane. If a movie utilizes special effects makeup or if a shot picks up lighting cables in the background, the darkness provides a great solution for hiding things that filmmakers don’t want the audience to notice. The modern techniques of CGI and VFX editing can fix the issue, but for lower budget projects, the old-school way is often much easier. “‘Just paint it black’ is literally the answer to everything,” Kay said. “‘Alien’ is a great example of hiding things like prosthetics, all that kind of stuff. Those prosthetics look real, because they’re in a real environment and they’re lit realistically. To light them more, you start to reveal that they’re fake.””
I consume this content on a projection screen in a room that has a modest amount of unavoidable light and bitch, please.
I would like to see what is going on at times.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:23 AM on March 30, 2023 [15 favorites]
I would like to see what is going on at times.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:23 AM on March 30, 2023 [15 favorites]
The image is getting darker and the dialog is getting quieter and harder to hear... it's like they don't want us to actually watch movies.
posted by Foosnark at 8:41 AM on March 30, 2023 [32 favorites]
posted by Foosnark at 8:41 AM on March 30, 2023 [32 favorites]
I just want to commend these filmmakers for choosing the exact moment when I've become hyper-paranoid about macular degeneration (which has caused multiple family members to suddenly go blind at a certain age) to adopt this seemingly near-universal trend.
It absolutely sucks, but the people I feel are probably getting the worst possible viewing experience are drive-in theater moviegoers. It's impossible to douse all ambient light in that setting for obvious reasons, and if the moon's even just a little bit visible in the sky? Forget it. You're listening to a movie you basically cannot see.
This all makes me miss the crap out of the converted garage in my old rental house. No windows, just a huge two-car-sized room with a sunken floor and dark wood-paneled walls. It made an ideal tornado shelter, movie or gaming room and a great place to recover from jet lag after long trips. If you can't see an intentionally dark film in the theater, watching it in a pitch-black room at home on a big enough screen is better than nothing.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 8:46 AM on March 30, 2023 [11 favorites]
It absolutely sucks, but the people I feel are probably getting the worst possible viewing experience are drive-in theater moviegoers. It's impossible to douse all ambient light in that setting for obvious reasons, and if the moon's even just a little bit visible in the sky? Forget it. You're listening to a movie you basically cannot see.
This all makes me miss the crap out of the converted garage in my old rental house. No windows, just a huge two-car-sized room with a sunken floor and dark wood-paneled walls. It made an ideal tornado shelter, movie or gaming room and a great place to recover from jet lag after long trips. If you can't see an intentionally dark film in the theater, watching it in a pitch-black room at home on a big enough screen is better than nothing.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 8:46 AM on March 30, 2023 [11 favorites]
It seems like with digital workflows it should be possible to have a version of the movie that will read just dark enough to be atmospheric in movie theatres and also have a version that is right for streaming to home television sets and also cut a trailer that will look good on youtube on a shitty phone and also cut a trailer that will look good when properly streamed.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:48 AM on March 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by jacquilynne at 8:48 AM on March 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
Rather than insisting on filmmakers bending their work to meet the lowest common denominator — that is, people streaming trailers on their phones via YouTube — we should take their commitment to the naturalistic light style as a demand for viewers to honor the intention of their work ...
I can't see! This isn't any other art-v.-artist dustup about intention. My dude, I can't see. I also can't build a home theater setup that would optimize my picking the crescent shapes of the characters out in the way that was intended. Sometimes I've given up on shows like The Last of Us until hours later because I literally cannot see anything but the image of a window blind on the near-black screen. Sometimes I don't even come back -- once I gave up on the BBC's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell adaptation because I couldn't see or hear the damn thing.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:49 AM on March 30, 2023 [19 favorites]
I can't see! This isn't any other art-v.-artist dustup about intention. My dude, I can't see. I also can't build a home theater setup that would optimize my picking the crescent shapes of the characters out in the way that was intended. Sometimes I've given up on shows like The Last of Us until hours later because I literally cannot see anything but the image of a window blind on the near-black screen. Sometimes I don't even come back -- once I gave up on the BBC's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell adaptation because I couldn't see or hear the damn thing.
posted by Countess Elena at 8:49 AM on March 30, 2023 [19 favorites]
I dunno, I've been watching this show lately that's just dim gray compression artifacts and unintelligible mumbling, and it's fantastic. I can't wait to find out what happens next! In fact, I can't even wait to find out what happened last!
posted by phooky at 8:51 AM on March 30, 2023 [35 favorites]
posted by phooky at 8:51 AM on March 30, 2023 [35 favorites]
Fuck this Dogme 95 "naturalistic is the only true cinema" bullshit.
The image is getting darker and the dialog is getting quieter and harder to hear... it's like they don't want us to actually watch movies.
Exactly. Fuck this "um AKSHUALLY it's the technology and people watching on TVs/phones" bullshit. Complaints about modern movie sound and image are basically universal at this point. Surely it is possible, knowing how the vast majority of people watch movies these days, to think of ways to address these problems beyond the apparent current approach of a shrug. One would think that in a medium that works in image and sound, the audience not being able to see or hear anything is kind of a problem that makers of such works would be scrambling to fix.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:54 AM on March 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
The image is getting darker and the dialog is getting quieter and harder to hear... it's like they don't want us to actually watch movies.
Exactly. Fuck this "um AKSHUALLY it's the technology and people watching on TVs/phones" bullshit. Complaints about modern movie sound and image are basically universal at this point. Surely it is possible, knowing how the vast majority of people watch movies these days, to think of ways to address these problems beyond the apparent current approach of a shrug. One would think that in a medium that works in image and sound, the audience not being able to see or hear anything is kind of a problem that makers of such works would be scrambling to fix.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:54 AM on March 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
From Harper's Index, Feb. 2023:
Portion of Americans who watch shows or movies with subtitles on “most of the time” : 1/2posted by neuron at 8:59 AM on March 30, 2023 [20 favorites]
Of Gen Z-ers who do : 7/10
the audience not being able to see or hear anything is kind of a problem that makers of such works would be scrambling to fix
I don't know what you guys are talking about explosions are super bright and guns and bombs are super loud. Oh you mean the characters talking? Lame-O!
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:01 AM on March 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
I don't know what you guys are talking about explosions are super bright and guns and bombs are super loud. Oh you mean the characters talking? Lame-O!
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:01 AM on March 30, 2023 [10 favorites]
Of Gen Z-ers who do : 7/10
A-HA! I *knew* I was hip to the kids these days, I *knew* it!
Hello fellow youths and young adults, how art thou doing this fine morn? I myself am doing fine, 'tis indeed a fine day to-day!
posted by aramaic at 9:06 AM on March 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
A-HA! I *knew* I was hip to the kids these days, I *knew* it!
Hello fellow youths and young adults, how art thou doing this fine morn? I myself am doing fine, 'tis indeed a fine day to-day!
posted by aramaic at 9:06 AM on March 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
In the past, people complained about movies being too loud, now they are too quiet. Do studios still do test screenings in real movie theaters with real audiences anymore?
posted by njohnson23 at 9:10 AM on March 30, 2023
posted by njohnson23 at 9:10 AM on March 30, 2023
Thanks for posting this. We were excited to see Wakanda Forever at the theater with super fancy new screens and sound system. We still don’t know if it was any good or not because the picture and sound were so murky.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 9:11 AM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 9:11 AM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
In the past, people complained about movies being too loud, now they are too quiet. Do studios still do test screenings in real movie theaters with real audiences anymore?
They do. In the one I was in, they did not ask about volume or lighting.
posted by Silvery Fish at 9:12 AM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
They do. In the one I was in, they did not ask about volume or lighting.
posted by Silvery Fish at 9:12 AM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
In retrospect, it turns out it was a big mistake to make "Made for TV movie" a slur.
posted by srboisvert at 9:12 AM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by srboisvert at 9:12 AM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Also, industry experts can talk till they are blue in the face about: "It's not actually about hiding bad CGI!". Whatever, it may not be the sole reason but its certainly convenient that this choice also helps hide the absolute dog-shit CGI that I see in most television and film these days. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is one of the most egregious films when it comes to this, super dark, hard to see anything, filled with terrible ass CG. Yuck.
Pay people more, take a bit more time, & listen to your audience.
/end of rant
posted by Fizz at 9:13 AM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
Pay people more, take a bit more time, & listen to your audience.
/end of rant
posted by Fizz at 9:13 AM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
I don't have much to say about current cinema but I'm always reminded of how Stanley Kubrick managed to get special lenses from Zeiss to film Barry Lyndon's interior scenes by candlelight and it still looks better than most of the films today.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:14 AM on March 30, 2023 [34 favorites]
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:14 AM on March 30, 2023 [34 favorites]
From Harper's Index, Feb. 2023:
Portion of Americans who watch shows or movies with subtitles on “most of the time” : 1/2
Of Gen Z-ers who do : 7/10
I can't even picture Roy Kent without words below him.
posted by srboisvert at 9:14 AM on March 30, 2023 [11 favorites]
Portion of Americans who watch shows or movies with subtitles on “most of the time” : 1/2
Of Gen Z-ers who do : 7/10
I can't even picture Roy Kent without words below him.
posted by srboisvert at 9:14 AM on March 30, 2023 [11 favorites]
Lighting crews are unionized and expensive. Postproduction colorists are freelance and much cheaper.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:17 AM on March 30, 2023 [21 favorites]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 9:17 AM on March 30, 2023 [21 favorites]
Surely it is possible, knowing how the vast majority of people watch movies these days, to think of ways to address these problems beyond the apparent current approach of a shrug.
Was it Brian Wilson who, back in the 60s, would listen to the final mix through a cheap car speaker, because he knew that’s how a lot of people would be actually listening to the songs?
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:23 AM on March 30, 2023 [24 favorites]
Was it Brian Wilson who, back in the 60s, would listen to the final mix through a cheap car speaker, because he knew that’s how a lot of people would be actually listening to the songs?
posted by Blue Jello Elf at 9:23 AM on March 30, 2023 [24 favorites]
Pretty sure this is the DP community overcorrecting from the low-contrast, “wet cement” marvel look from last decade. I’m more liable to give actual films a pass because they are picking between maximum impact in the theater and legibility on devices - for those saying “we need two versions”, color grading is a pretty laborious process and it’s not exactly like flipping a switch, but it would be a solution. We used to get this for free because it was built into the process of converting for dvd or blue-ray— this, combined with the amazing natural grading of film is mainly why old movies look better on your tv. The raw image was better and we spent more time correcting it.
The trend of prestige tv shows color grading and lighting as if we’re in a theater- yeah. It’s dumb. It’s not universal though - Andor was fx laden and it looked pretty nice even at night or when people were pew pewing. Maybe Disney has a better grasp on film- for -tv.
posted by q*ben at 9:39 AM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
The trend of prestige tv shows color grading and lighting as if we’re in a theater- yeah. It’s dumb. It’s not universal though - Andor was fx laden and it looked pretty nice even at night or when people were pew pewing. Maybe Disney has a better grasp on film- for -tv.
posted by q*ben at 9:39 AM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
In talking intentions, I will listen and engage if we're talking art films, mumblecore 2.0, or some such. But if we're talking big esplody super hero nonsense, the intention is give us your money. You want my money bitch? Give me clear images and intelligible sound. The only thing I can imagine with these problems is that somehow the studio is saving money on this. I can't even begin to figure out how. This is why I no longer waste my money on films.
posted by evilDoug at 9:40 AM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by evilDoug at 9:40 AM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Was it Brian Wilson who, back in the 60s, would listen to the final mix through a cheap car speaker, because he knew that’s how a lot of people would be actually listening to the songs?
Lots of pop producers have a “listen pass” through car speakers. Similar to film, though, there’s no magic mix that works perfectly on nice speakers, on headphones and in your car. If it was easy we wouldn’t notice the flaws.
posted by q*ben at 9:42 AM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Lots of pop producers have a “listen pass” through car speakers. Similar to film, though, there’s no magic mix that works perfectly on nice speakers, on headphones and in your car. If it was easy we wouldn’t notice the flaws.
posted by q*ben at 9:42 AM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
The Lord of the Rings trilogy had a fairly new looking "desaturated" look at the time, but well lit. The Shire was colorful and pastoral. There was variation. This was obviously intentional to set the mood.
posted by Liquidwolf at 9:45 AM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Liquidwolf at 9:45 AM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
A confounding factor: Bad Projection Is Ruining the Movie Theater Experience: Multiplexes are failing at their most basic function: delivering a bright, sharp image.
posted by chrchr at 9:52 AM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by chrchr at 9:52 AM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
Hello fellow youths and young adults, how art thou doing this fine morn? I myself am doing fine, 'tis indeed a fine day to-day!
Getst þe off mine lawne.
posted by The Bellman at 9:52 AM on March 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
Getst þe off mine lawne.
posted by The Bellman at 9:52 AM on March 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
It's definitely an artistic choice, and it's not just movies. I was thinking about this while watching recent episodes of the new season of Star Trek: Picard, which finds our heroes Picard and Riker back on a Federation starship. But long gone are the brightly-lit, office-fluorescent-light look of the Enterprise in Next Generation, replaced by everything being lit (if at all) from below, and maybe just by the light-up consoles.
I know this has been going on for a while, but the reason why it particularly struck me in this instance is that the bridge of a starship is a workplace. Those people need to be able to see what they're doing! When will Space OSHA step in?!
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 9:56 AM on March 30, 2023 [23 favorites]
I know this has been going on for a while, but the reason why it particularly struck me in this instance is that the bridge of a starship is a workplace. Those people need to be able to see what they're doing! When will Space OSHA step in?!
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 9:56 AM on March 30, 2023 [23 favorites]
I think it's just that this crop of directors, dps and editors grew up with well lit night scenes and have to slap their dicks down and make Something Different to prove they're Advancing the Art or something. Fuckin' mooks, the lot of 'em. You have one job: tell a story. It's like printing a book in light grey ink. Hello? Motherfucker.
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:57 AM on March 30, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 9:57 AM on March 30, 2023 [11 favorites]
In the past, people complained about movies being too loud
The dialog is too low these days. Everything else is loud. It's not unusual to have "background" music that's as loud as the actors talking. I'm one of those that always have closed captioning on.
posted by LindsayIrene at 9:57 AM on March 30, 2023 [12 favorites]
The dialog is too low these days. Everything else is loud. It's not unusual to have "background" music that's as loud as the actors talking. I'm one of those that always have closed captioning on.
posted by LindsayIrene at 9:57 AM on March 30, 2023 [12 favorites]
They do. In the one I was in, they did not ask about volume or lighting.
"Thank you all for coming to this preview and watching our movie today. We'd like to get your feedback on what you just saw. Yes, you there, blue shirt in the third row."
"Uh, actually, I couldn't really see what was happening on the screen or hear what anyone was saying. Are you going to fix that?"
"Sorry, we're only taking feedback on how excited you are for sequels to the film you just saw. Would you say very, or extremely?"
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:00 AM on March 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
"Thank you all for coming to this preview and watching our movie today. We'd like to get your feedback on what you just saw. Yes, you there, blue shirt in the third row."
"Uh, actually, I couldn't really see what was happening on the screen or hear what anyone was saying. Are you going to fix that?"
"Sorry, we're only taking feedback on how excited you are for sequels to the film you just saw. Would you say very, or extremely?"
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:00 AM on March 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
Most people are positively terrible at choosing the settings on their TV sets, and that doesn't help either.
It's pretty simple: turn off anything that sounds like software ("enhance," "emphasize," "detect" etc.) All of that motion smoothing bullshit, especially. Then turn the brightness way up and the sharpness way down.
It is a known thing in my circle of friends that if they buy a new TV, they can and should invite me over to arrange the settings for them.
In summary: if you think your TV settings aren't what they should be, ask your autistic friend who watches 400 movies a year.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:02 AM on March 30, 2023 [24 favorites]
It's pretty simple: turn off anything that sounds like software ("enhance," "emphasize," "detect" etc.) All of that motion smoothing bullshit, especially. Then turn the brightness way up and the sharpness way down.
It is a known thing in my circle of friends that if they buy a new TV, they can and should invite me over to arrange the settings for them.
In summary: if you think your TV settings aren't what they should be, ask your autistic friend who watches 400 movies a year.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:02 AM on March 30, 2023 [24 favorites]
I think a lot of the complaints about dialogue are caused by content being primarily mixed for 5.1 systems with stereo sound treated as an after thought. In a 5.1 system, there’s a dedicated center channel speaker that carries almost all of the dialogue while the ambient sound, music, and other effects are in the other channels. I don’t know what percentage of viewers actually have center channel speakers at home. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was under 1%.
A sound bar doesn’t really cut it either. They’re just not physically large enough to provide any real separation.
posted by chrchr at 10:05 AM on March 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
A sound bar doesn’t really cut it either. They’re just not physically large enough to provide any real separation.
posted by chrchr at 10:05 AM on March 30, 2023 [9 favorites]
It seems to me that the new era of digital photography would enable shooting in higher light quality and reducing light fairly easy compared to shooting dark and trying to add light back in.
We have a two screen setup for video gaming and, while watching movies, have set it up with one of the screens perfectly calibrated in HDR and the other with a high brightness setting. There are many times where that second screen becomes necessary.
posted by Revvy at 10:08 AM on March 30, 2023
We have a two screen setup for video gaming and, while watching movies, have set it up with one of the screens perfectly calibrated in HDR and the other with a high brightness setting. There are many times where that second screen becomes necessary.
posted by Revvy at 10:08 AM on March 30, 2023
I watch a lot of movies in theaters, and it's not uncommon to have inaudible dialog or scenes that look like outtakes from The Blair Witch Project. This isn't strictly a streaming issue.
posted by exolstice at 10:11 AM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by exolstice at 10:11 AM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
yeah even with running 3 speakers in the front I've found I'm riding the volume all the time.
{whispering dialogue}
{BLARRRINGGGGG MUSIC CUE}
"shoot, shoot, shoot... down volume, down volume, down volume"
{whisper dialogue}
ARGGGH!
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:12 AM on March 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
{whispering dialogue}
{BLARRRINGGGGG MUSIC CUE}
"shoot, shoot, shoot... down volume, down volume, down volume"
{whisper dialogue}
ARGGGH!
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:12 AM on March 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
The image is getting darker and the dialog is getting quieter and harder to hear... it's like they don't want us to actually watch movies.
It should be noted that a large component of this is how incredibly shitty built-in television speakers have gotten. I've been rocking a 5-speaker plus subwoofer combo for years and was always confused why people complained about muffled dialogue, etc. until I bought a new tv a couple months and had to use the built-in speakers for a couple days. Wow, they suck.
posted by rhymedirective at 10:26 AM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
It should be noted that a large component of this is how incredibly shitty built-in television speakers have gotten. I've been rocking a 5-speaker plus subwoofer combo for years and was always confused why people complained about muffled dialogue, etc. until I bought a new tv a couple months and had to use the built-in speakers for a couple days. Wow, they suck.
posted by rhymedirective at 10:26 AM on March 30, 2023 [7 favorites]
joezydeco, that was great -
The lens had been specifically designed and made for the NASA Apollo lunar program to photograph the dark side of the Moon in 1966. There were just ten in existence, of which Kubrick bought three (six were sold to NASA and Carl Zeiss kept one himself).posted by clew at 10:30 AM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
I found a DVD called "The '70s Greatest Cop Shows" for a buck at the library sale (which has the pilot episodes of five shows) and when I watched it the other night I was struck by how even stuff like Charlie's Angels and Starsky & Hutch looked fucking *great* compared to a lot of ostensibly high-budget television shows or even movies. Shit, Charlie's Angels had an action set piece which looked like something out of No Country For Old Men in terms of how it was staged, filmed and edited, in a way that gave you the viewer a sense of space, where the characters were in relation to each other, clearly defined series of actions leading one to another, etc.. I mean, none of this should be rocket science, but it really stood out as skillfully crafted entertainment in a way that a lot of stuff doesn't these days because it's full of lazy CGI, lit and recorded horribly, etc..
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:30 AM on March 30, 2023 [16 favorites]
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:30 AM on March 30, 2023 [16 favorites]
It's like printing a book in light grey ink. Hello? Motherfucker.
Which has the effect of making the pages harder to photocopy.
Is any of this driven by an effort to deter the kind of piracy that starts with videoing a screen?
posted by jamjam at 10:31 AM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Which has the effect of making the pages harder to photocopy.
Is any of this driven by an effort to deter the kind of piracy that starts with videoing a screen?
posted by jamjam at 10:31 AM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
jacquilynne: "It seems like with digital workflows it should be possible to have a version of the movie that will read just dark enough to be atmospheric in movie theatres and also have a version that is right for streaming to home television sets and also cut a trailer that will look good on youtube on a shitty phone and also cut a trailer that will look good when properly streamed."
I seem to recall that James Cameron, being a real movie nerd, wound up producing numerous different prints of Avatar for different viewing situations. Like, one print for small theaters and a different print for big theaters, where the projector would be farther away from the screen but with a brighter light source. And so on.
posted by adamrice at 10:31 AM on March 30, 2023
I seem to recall that James Cameron, being a real movie nerd, wound up producing numerous different prints of Avatar for different viewing situations. Like, one print for small theaters and a different print for big theaters, where the projector would be farther away from the screen but with a brighter light source. And so on.
posted by adamrice at 10:31 AM on March 30, 2023
It absolutely sucks, but the people I feel are probably getting the worst possible viewing experience are drive-in theater moviegoers. It's impossible to douse all ambient light in that setting for obvious reasons, and if the moon's even just a little bit visible in the sky? Forget it. You're listening to a movie you basically cannot see.
We first saw NOPE at the drive-in, and they basically start the show just after sunset when it's not even fully dark yet. Re-watched it at home just a couple months ago, and boy was there a lot we missed.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:37 AM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I appreciate hearing from those of you who are also choosing to watch with closed captions on because good lord, the amount of crap I get from family if they see a caption on the screen..
posted by Nerd of the North at 10:37 AM on March 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by Nerd of the North at 10:37 AM on March 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
Is this new? I've never watched Star Trek DS9, though I really like TNG and Voyager, just because it was so dark I couldn't stand it. This isn't realistic lighting, unless we're expecting that in the future there are no light bulbs.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:39 AM on March 30, 2023
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:39 AM on March 30, 2023
there’s a dedicated center channel speaker that carries almost all of the dialogue while the ambient sound, music, and other effects are in the other channels.
I have a center speaker for my 5.1 surround sound system. Turning it to max volume doesn't help. IMO, sound in most movies is just poorly mixed, and blaming it on 5.1 is kind of a copout.
Go watch Spongebob Squarepants or a tv show sometime. They are also recorded in 5.1 (generally) and the dialogue is pretty clear.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:40 AM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have a center speaker for my 5.1 surround sound system. Turning it to max volume doesn't help. IMO, sound in most movies is just poorly mixed, and blaming it on 5.1 is kind of a copout.
Go watch Spongebob Squarepants or a tv show sometime. They are also recorded in 5.1 (generally) and the dialogue is pretty clear.
posted by The_Vegetables at 10:40 AM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
For dialogue I find it can help to turn down the base and turn up the treble.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:42 AM on March 30, 2023
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 10:42 AM on March 30, 2023
Obligatory Whisper and Explosion: The Movie. Though maybe it's just my aging ears.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:01 AM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by TheophileEscargot at 11:01 AM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
They have mixed luck emphasizing dialogue, but there are "night modes" on some soundbars/systems now that pull the loudest and quietest sounds back to the middle of the spectrum.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:07 AM on March 30, 2023
posted by DirtyOldTown at 11:07 AM on March 30, 2023
Oh, yeah, we have captions on permanently. Dialogue levels are so fucked up. And actors in general seem to have forgotten to enunciate. Also also, we watch a lot of non-english stuff subbed because can't stand dubbing anyway.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:15 AM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:15 AM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I'm reminded of an anecdote I think I heard here of Christopher Nolan listening to one of his less intelligible movies in his perfectly attuned studio, going "I don't know what people are complaining about. It sounds perfectly fine to me".
"Just get a better home setup" has the same kind of snide, arrogant, and clueless ring as some libertarian bro saying "can't afford to make ends meet? Just get better job!"
posted by treepour at 11:18 AM on March 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
"Just get a better home setup" has the same kind of snide, arrogant, and clueless ring as some libertarian bro saying "can't afford to make ends meet? Just get better job!"
posted by treepour at 11:18 AM on March 30, 2023 [8 favorites]
knowing how the vast majority of people watch movies these days...
sorta? i mean for a decade, recording studios have been mixing music for teeny tiny shit earbuds. put it on a real stereo, garbage.
mp3 has always been a lossy pos format.
your streaming content, too (mostly).
I'd rather have sound and light mixed to be good, not 'good enough'.
studios are failing for both home and theatrical viewing.
posted by j_curiouser at 11:26 AM on March 30, 2023
sorta? i mean for a decade, recording studios have been mixing music for teeny tiny shit earbuds. put it on a real stereo, garbage.
mp3 has always been a lossy pos format.
your streaming content, too (mostly).
I'd rather have sound and light mixed to be good, not 'good enough'.
studios are failing for both home and theatrical viewing.
posted by j_curiouser at 11:26 AM on March 30, 2023
Media should be, and I'm pointing at the sign here, accessible.
If that means some people aren't getting the absolute best version of whatever it is on their fifty thousand dollar home cinema, toob ad. Go buy the criterion edition, or hire the cast to come in and perform it for you.
People with earbuds, crappy tvs, streaming on the cheap Netflix plan or over LTE, people who can only watch on 5" phone screens, projector systems in washed out rooms, drive-in-movie goers, people who are a little deaf or have a hard time processing mumbled speech, folks with macular degeneration or baby cataracts, all these folks deserve to enjoy media.
God I cannot believe this needs to be said.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:31 AM on March 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
If that means some people aren't getting the absolute best version of whatever it is on their fifty thousand dollar home cinema, toob ad. Go buy the criterion edition, or hire the cast to come in and perform it for you.
People with earbuds, crappy tvs, streaming on the cheap Netflix plan or over LTE, people who can only watch on 5" phone screens, projector systems in washed out rooms, drive-in-movie goers, people who are a little deaf or have a hard time processing mumbled speech, folks with macular degeneration or baby cataracts, all these folks deserve to enjoy media.
God I cannot believe this needs to be said.
posted by seanmpuckett at 11:31 AM on March 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
I care about "motivated" light sources in mass entertainment about as much as I care that the characters are shown having regular bathroom breaks.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:42 AM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 11:42 AM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
The image is getting darker and the dialog is getting quieter and harder to hear
I noticed these changes and thanks to this post I have now good reasons to blame filmmakers. Waiting for the followup so I can further blame filmmakers for my back pain and other ailments.
posted by ApplAuD at 11:44 AM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
I noticed these changes and thanks to this post I have now good reasons to blame filmmakers. Waiting for the followup so I can further blame filmmakers for my back pain and other ailments.
posted by ApplAuD at 11:44 AM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
It should be noted that a large component of this is how incredibly shitty built-in television speakers have gotten. I've been rocking a 5-speaker plus subwoofer combo for years and was always confused why people complained about muffled dialogue, etc. until I bought a new tv a couple months and had to use the built-in speakers for a couple days. Wow, they suck.
Eh, I have a soundbar and can't use it because in order to hear the dialogue the volume has to be way up and it wakes up my kids. If I actually want to hear dialogue, its gotta be the tv speakers.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:50 AM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Eh, I have a soundbar and can't use it because in order to hear the dialogue the volume has to be way up and it wakes up my kids. If I actually want to hear dialogue, its gotta be the tv speakers.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:50 AM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
This was one of - far from the only, but one of - the reasons I was so completely delighted by Our Flag Means Death. At some point a couple of episodes in, I noticed, hey, I can see and hear everything that's going on!
I do find a lot of stuff that I would otherwise like to see completely unwatchable, and I do mean unwatchable; not that I can't enjoy it but literally that I can't follow what's going on, because it's either too dark, the camera work's too disorientatingly choppy and fast-moving, and/or I can't understand anything that's being said. And I do have auditory and, to a lesser extent, visual processing Stuff going on so I'm probably a bit of a canary in the coal mine, but I also hear this stuff from totally neurotypical people so it isn't just me. I don't want to sit and look at the reflection of my squinty face in the screen, I want to see what's happening!
posted by BlueNorther at 12:00 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
I do find a lot of stuff that I would otherwise like to see completely unwatchable, and I do mean unwatchable; not that I can't enjoy it but literally that I can't follow what's going on, because it's either too dark, the camera work's too disorientatingly choppy and fast-moving, and/or I can't understand anything that's being said. And I do have auditory and, to a lesser extent, visual processing Stuff going on so I'm probably a bit of a canary in the coal mine, but I also hear this stuff from totally neurotypical people so it isn't just me. I don't want to sit and look at the reflection of my squinty face in the screen, I want to see what's happening!
posted by BlueNorther at 12:00 PM on March 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
I know this has been going on for a while, but the reason why it particularly struck me in this instance is that the bridge of a starship is a workplace. Those people need to be able to see what they're doing! When will Space OSHA step in?!
If people have a problem seeing they can just put on a pair of Geordy's.
posted by srboisvert at 12:00 PM on March 30, 2023
If people have a problem seeing they can just put on a pair of Geordy's.
posted by srboisvert at 12:00 PM on March 30, 2023
Christopher Nolan listening to one of his less intelligible movies...
Tenet. Tenet audio mix was done on a weekend by an intern. Add a score with some atonality and some Shepard tone. It just sounds garbled.
posted by ovvl at 12:10 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Tenet. Tenet audio mix was done on a weekend by an intern. Add a score with some atonality and some Shepard tone. It just sounds garbled.
posted by ovvl at 12:10 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
We usually prefer subtitles off, but it was a game changer for our family when we learned that you can hold down the Mic button on the Apple TV remote, ask “What did he/she say?” and have it automagically back up a few seconds, turn subtitles on temporarily, replay the scene, and then continue the show without them.
The rewind is surprisingly accurate even in multiparty conversations with rapid line delivery. I find it super interesting that someone deep in the bowels of whatever system is responsible for this for is maintaining gender flags for each character.
posted by FallibleHuman at 12:24 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
The rewind is surprisingly accurate even in multiparty conversations with rapid line delivery. I find it super interesting that someone deep in the bowels of whatever system is responsible for this for is maintaining gender flags for each character.
posted by FallibleHuman at 12:24 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Previously. But yeah murky sound and poor colour grading with either bad projection or weird TV setups really make it hard to enjoy contemporary film & television.
In summary: if you think your TV settings aren't what they should be, ask your autistic friend who watches 400 movies a year.
Hey resemble that remark! I watch a lot of film in a lot of different formats & sources so I had to long ago tweak my TV to give at least a viewable image (VHS and modern TVs don't always work out). I've been dragging my heels about replacing my 20 year old TV because I fear newer TVs will do an even worse job with some of my misbegotten films.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:29 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
In summary: if you think your TV settings aren't what they should be, ask your autistic friend who watches 400 movies a year.
Hey resemble that remark! I watch a lot of film in a lot of different formats & sources so I had to long ago tweak my TV to give at least a viewable image (VHS and modern TVs don't always work out). I've been dragging my heels about replacing my 20 year old TV because I fear newer TVs will do an even worse job with some of my misbegotten films.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:29 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
The image is getting darker and the dialog is getting quieter and harder to hear... it's like they don't want us to actually watch movies.
Oh, they want us to watch; we're just being conditioned to eventually buy tickets to just sit with strangers in a dark, quiet room for a while, eating junk food from the concession. Maybe they'll call that film "John Cage 4'33"
posted by Rash at 12:37 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Oh, they want us to watch; we're just being conditioned to eventually buy tickets to just sit with strangers in a dark, quiet room for a while, eating junk food from the concession. Maybe they'll call that film "John Cage 4'33"
posted by Rash at 12:37 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
The image is getting darker and the dialog is getting quieter and harder to hear
Simultaneously with me getting older! I've been starting to suspect that part of why seniors get addled is because they get locked out of society by a combination of deteriorated senses and cultural gaslighting.
posted by srboisvert at 12:39 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
Simultaneously with me getting older! I've been starting to suspect that part of why seniors get addled is because they get locked out of society by a combination of deteriorated senses and cultural gaslighting.
posted by srboisvert at 12:39 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
I love the anecdote about Sean Astin asking Andrew Lesnie about where the light was coming from in a particular scene in the LOTR trilogy. Lesnie replied, "Same place as the music."
posted by goatdog at 12:44 PM on March 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
posted by goatdog at 12:44 PM on March 30, 2023 [14 favorites]
It's creating a good argument for people to acquire their shows and movies of choice through "alternative means" and using something like VLC to watch them, where the user has greater control of gamma, contrast, etc.
Don't think VLC has a de-mumble option yet, but fiddling with the EQ can help.
posted by Ayn Marx at 12:47 PM on March 30, 2023
Don't think VLC has a de-mumble option yet, but fiddling with the EQ can help.
posted by Ayn Marx at 12:47 PM on March 30, 2023
We didn't watch Game of Thrones so we missed that particular example firsthand, but the overall darkening of content was a creeping issue that came along right as the backlight in our old TV was starting to lose intensity. Our TV is in a room in the basement with only one window so I'd been able to do the lazy cinemaphile's calibration with one of those DVDs and not have to worry about maximum brightness levels. The last year or so of that TV's life, though, was an irregular struggle where I'd turn up the brightness for something (often House of Cards in particular) and then turn it back down for almost everything else. But then the backlight started randomly not coming on at all, so we bought a new TV and reset all our expectations. I know we watched Arrival on the newer TV and I don't recall thinking the dark parts were too dark, but I see it called out in the links in the FPP. If you don't have a super-bright viewing room and you can afford it, an OLED TV really does wonders for this stuff. (And yes, I know we are in a couple minorities there, and this doesn't excuse filmmaker excesses).
Sound is the thing that really drives us nuts, though. We've got a receiver and nice speakers and don't have to worry about understanding dialog most of the time, but we do have to ride the volume buttons for anything with action or heavy scoring. Transient loud noises will actually trip a limiter in our receiver if they're loud enough, so all the Marvel movies and series on Disney+ are interspersed with momentary audio dropouts when that happens (Moon Night did this a lot). I started noticing problems with extreme dynamic range with DTS audio tracks on DVDs years ago, but I feel like it gets worse as the years go by and technology allows the loud parts of movies to get even louder while the dialog gets more indistinct. When the time comes to replace our receiver I'll definitely be looking for one with a night mode, but I kind of wish I didn't have to.
posted by fedward at 12:52 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Sound is the thing that really drives us nuts, though. We've got a receiver and nice speakers and don't have to worry about understanding dialog most of the time, but we do have to ride the volume buttons for anything with action or heavy scoring. Transient loud noises will actually trip a limiter in our receiver if they're loud enough, so all the Marvel movies and series on Disney+ are interspersed with momentary audio dropouts when that happens (Moon Night did this a lot). I started noticing problems with extreme dynamic range with DTS audio tracks on DVDs years ago, but I feel like it gets worse as the years go by and technology allows the loud parts of movies to get even louder while the dialog gets more indistinct. When the time comes to replace our receiver I'll definitely be looking for one with a night mode, but I kind of wish I didn't have to.
posted by fedward at 12:52 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I've been starting to suspect that part of why seniors get addled is because they get locked out of society by a combination of deteriorated senses and cultural gaslighting.
Friend of mine had declining hearing and grew to enjoy closed captions. Her doctor warned her about this; the more one relies on captions, the less the brain is working to decode the assorted sounds, and one's ability to comprehend speech may decline further. A vicious cycle.
It seems some movies are geared to a very narrow range of human abilities. Lack top-notch vision and hearing? Oh well, tough luck.
posted by Ayn Marx at 12:52 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Friend of mine had declining hearing and grew to enjoy closed captions. Her doctor warned her about this; the more one relies on captions, the less the brain is working to decode the assorted sounds, and one's ability to comprehend speech may decline further. A vicious cycle.
It seems some movies are geared to a very narrow range of human abilities. Lack top-notch vision and hearing? Oh well, tough luck.
posted by Ayn Marx at 12:52 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Commenting on the sound thing, my wife spent a lot of time playing in rock bands when we were young, and put charitably, she's deaf as fuck now. I always used earplugs even back in the 80s, so my hearing is excellent. We can't put the volume high enough for her to hear without hurting my ears (seriously, by myself it's on 9, and by herself 33), so we have to use the subtitles... and gods, I hate them. 1) the visual distraction makes me miss details in the rest of the frame, and 2) they ruin the timing of lines, especially jokes/repartee.
I just needed to bitch about that; I don't actually want my wife not to know what's going on. Thanks.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 12:54 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I just needed to bitch about that; I don't actually want my wife not to know what's going on. Thanks.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 12:54 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Complaints about modern movie sound and image are basically universal at this point.
We're getting old, is what that is.
posted by flabdablet at 12:57 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
We're getting old, is what that is.
posted by flabdablet at 12:57 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
Pretty sure this is the DP community overcorrecting from the low-contrast, “wet cement” marvel look from last decade
I think it is this and also a new attempt to replicate the "authentic" look of film from the 60s and 70s, because the tools are more accessible to do so now. That tone is muted because of the film process but the movies look amazing anyway. So the temptation to take that aesthetic and update it after a long time of overlit, day-to-night cyan and orange is understandable.
A new generation of DPs are discovering interesting lighting techniques, naturalistic composition etc, but I think many are finding it's very difficult to get right and very easy to get wrong. Like good design that disappears, good production design also seems effortless and natural.
Personally I like muted colors and filmic looks, if they are a good creative decision. But equating desaturated/dull=realistic/gritty is not so easy and the other production processes need to support this. Like you can't make your movie look like Pusher but play out like Crank. And a movie that looks like Thor:Ragnarok but plays like My Dinner With Andre will also feel wrong. I'm glad people are embracing this look (and darkness honestly) but it is very simply not easy to do!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:00 PM on March 30, 2023
I think it is this and also a new attempt to replicate the "authentic" look of film from the 60s and 70s, because the tools are more accessible to do so now. That tone is muted because of the film process but the movies look amazing anyway. So the temptation to take that aesthetic and update it after a long time of overlit, day-to-night cyan and orange is understandable.
A new generation of DPs are discovering interesting lighting techniques, naturalistic composition etc, but I think many are finding it's very difficult to get right and very easy to get wrong. Like good design that disappears, good production design also seems effortless and natural.
Personally I like muted colors and filmic looks, if they are a good creative decision. But equating desaturated/dull=realistic/gritty is not so easy and the other production processes need to support this. Like you can't make your movie look like Pusher but play out like Crank. And a movie that looks like Thor:Ragnarok but plays like My Dinner With Andre will also feel wrong. I'm glad people are embracing this look (and darkness honestly) but it is very simply not easy to do!
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 1:00 PM on March 30, 2023
I'm sure things look better in a dark movie theatre but at home my TV is by a large window and stuff definitely gets missed in dark scenes unless I'm watching at night time. I'm re-watching The Expanse and the interior of a lot of the ships and buildings is so dark when I would think they ought to be pretty bright. In their case it probably is to hide bad VFX.
I think the darkness is also being used as a way to control what the viewer sees in the same way that focus and depth of field are. How often in a show are people or things in the background blurry these days? By keeping them in shadow viewers will see what they're supposed to and not get distracted by other things happening.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:02 PM on March 30, 2023
I think the darkness is also being used as a way to control what the viewer sees in the same way that focus and depth of field are. How often in a show are people or things in the background blurry these days? By keeping them in shadow viewers will see what they're supposed to and not get distracted by other things happening.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:02 PM on March 30, 2023
I think it is this and also a new attempt to replicate the "authentic" look of film from the 60s and 70s,
I am very confused by this statement. Hollywood films of the 60s and 70s—especially the 70s—were most certainly not “muted”, they were far more saturated and contrast-y than todays movies.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:40 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I am very confused by this statement. Hollywood films of the 60s and 70s—especially the 70s—were most certainly not “muted”, they were far more saturated and contrast-y than todays movies.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 1:40 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think the audio problem most people are having, if they watch movies at home, is that most movies are using Dolby 5.1 to encode their audio on all playback devices. So if you have a stereo TV, you're missing the center channel which carries most of the dialog. (I may be completely wrong).
posted by doctor_negative at 3:39 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by doctor_negative at 3:39 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
> I was thinking about this while watching recent episodes of the new season of Star Trek: Picard, which finds our heroes Picard and Riker back on a Federation starship. But long gone are the brightly-lit, office-fluorescent-light look of the Enterprise in Next Generation, replaced by everything being lit (if at all) from below, and maybe just by the light-up consoles.
> I'm re-watching The Expanse and the interior of a lot of the ships and buildings is so dark...
I think that in both cases the "doom and gloom" look may be a concession to the ubiquity of displays and holograms in those kinds of shows. Science fiction reflects modern life: surrounded by screens in real life, we expect to see them in genre television, and most of those displays are difficult to read in bright light.
It may also be both a flair for the dramatic and a nod to reality: a modern naval battleship's CIC - the equivalent to the command deck on a starship - really are very dark.
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 3:55 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Naw. On a stereo system the 5.1 mix will down convert to a stereo approximation. You would seriously get no dialogue at all if it worked the way you describe. But I still think sound mixed for 5.1 systems and then converted to stereo is part of the problem. If you’ve got three distinct channels to work with as a sound mixer you can put more detail into the soundtrack and it might sound less distinct when that gets crammed into two channels.
posted by chrchr at 3:58 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by chrchr at 3:58 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I dunno, I've been watching this show lately that's just dim gray compression artifacts and unintelligible mumbling, and it's fantastic. I can't wait to find out what happens next! In fact, I can't even wait to find out what happened last!
I just want to say, phooky, that this comment is MAD-magazine-level funny.
posted by mikelieman at 4:14 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
I just want to say, phooky, that this comment is MAD-magazine-level funny.
posted by mikelieman at 4:14 PM on March 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
Wow...at lot's been said here already, much of which I relate to and agree with. I will try to add rather than simply repeat observations/sentiments/recommendations:
- When film post-production workflows went digital (and I was still in the business) there was discussion that the use of a so-called digital intermediate (DI) cut of the film could be used to generate a variety of renderings (specifically color gradings/timings) suitable for different delivery formats. I think creation and use of DIs became standard (at least for big budget films) but I don't know if the idea of multiple renditions, especially for smaller screens and streaming, ever really caught on.
- I definitely recall that when surround mixes for DVD became more common, many films still included a separate 2.0 (stereo) mix specifically because the mixdown you got from disc players and TVs connected two channel audio was inferior--and still is---to a proper stereo mix. Directors who care about sound quality might even insist on still including one today, but that's the exception not the rule.
- Anecdote: the way my home theater is set up (out of discrete component amps and speakers of different sizes) I have to power up all the channels individually. More than once I've watched most of a film---something like 'Fifth Element'---with just the center channel turned on. So much more than then dialog runs through the center that I didn't even notice the lack right away. It was only in sections w/ just music, no dialog and no effects that not having L/R/Lr/Rr really became apparent. The lesson to me was that the speaker used for the center channel is more important than probably any other speaker. And it should be given more gain, at least 3 db, so it stands out from the rest of the mix.
- And few folks mentioned the variability of quality of movie theaters. I could not agree more, esp. noticeable if we're talking about direct film projection and NOT digital. Projector lamps age and dim over time. They are also expensive and many theaters don't replace them when this happens and you wind up with under illuminated projection. Digital projectors, esp. the ones made/branded by Dolby using lasers, don't suffer this problem. It's really worth seeking out screens that use this tech, if possible.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:18 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
- When film post-production workflows went digital (and I was still in the business) there was discussion that the use of a so-called digital intermediate (DI) cut of the film could be used to generate a variety of renderings (specifically color gradings/timings) suitable for different delivery formats. I think creation and use of DIs became standard (at least for big budget films) but I don't know if the idea of multiple renditions, especially for smaller screens and streaming, ever really caught on.
- I definitely recall that when surround mixes for DVD became more common, many films still included a separate 2.0 (stereo) mix specifically because the mixdown you got from disc players and TVs connected two channel audio was inferior--and still is---to a proper stereo mix. Directors who care about sound quality might even insist on still including one today, but that's the exception not the rule.
- Anecdote: the way my home theater is set up (out of discrete component amps and speakers of different sizes) I have to power up all the channels individually. More than once I've watched most of a film---something like 'Fifth Element'---with just the center channel turned on. So much more than then dialog runs through the center that I didn't even notice the lack right away. It was only in sections w/ just music, no dialog and no effects that not having L/R/Lr/Rr really became apparent. The lesson to me was that the speaker used for the center channel is more important than probably any other speaker. And it should be given more gain, at least 3 db, so it stands out from the rest of the mix.
- And few folks mentioned the variability of quality of movie theaters. I could not agree more, esp. noticeable if we're talking about direct film projection and NOT digital. Projector lamps age and dim over time. They are also expensive and many theaters don't replace them when this happens and you wind up with under illuminated projection. Digital projectors, esp. the ones made/branded by Dolby using lasers, don't suffer this problem. It's really worth seeking out screens that use this tech, if possible.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:18 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Was it Brian Wilson who, back in the 60s, would listen to the final mix through a cheap car speaker, because he knew that’s how a lot of people would be actually listening to the songs?
I can't comment on that, but I would like to add a little bit to the hypothesis that targeting lo-fi isn't a bad thing.
I've been working my way through Gen-X nostalgia TV on Amazon Prime. Night Court. Lost in Space. The Partridge Family. And although I hit the mono button, I almost never have to turn on captions. There's something about mixing for speech intelligibility on a shitty 2" speaker that really enhances speech intelligibility when it's not on a shitty 2" speaker.
posted by mikelieman at 4:21 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I can't comment on that, but I would like to add a little bit to the hypothesis that targeting lo-fi isn't a bad thing.
I've been working my way through Gen-X nostalgia TV on Amazon Prime. Night Court. Lost in Space. The Partridge Family. And although I hit the mono button, I almost never have to turn on captions. There's something about mixing for speech intelligibility on a shitty 2" speaker that really enhances speech intelligibility when it's not on a shitty 2" speaker.
posted by mikelieman at 4:21 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
if you listen to the official podcasts with the creators for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul (you should, they are great) you will hear them geek out with some regularity about the lens and cameras. As the years pass on, they marvel at the new cameras and lens to allow them to use les and less and less light for scene. They claim that some of the things they shot at the end of the run were impossible to do with the technology they had at the beginning.
posted by mmascolino at 4:26 PM on March 30, 2023
posted by mmascolino at 4:26 PM on March 30, 2023
I would also like to recommend checking out The Birth of 5.1 Sound, originally distributed on one of the 'Apocalypse Now' DVD sets. (AP was ostensibly the first film to use surround sound.) It features Walter Murch (the sound engineer for the film) and Ioan Allen (from Dolby Labs). It shows the evolution of film sound and speaker set ups.
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:32 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 4:32 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
…a nod to reality: a modern naval battleship's CIC - the equivalent to the command deck on a starship - really are very dark.
That’s fascinating, and it also makes a lot of sense to me (once you pointed it out).
But it’s also inherently problematic in that application because dim light increases a person's reaction time, essentially by slowing down the firing rate of light receptors in the retina.
Which is the basis of the Pulfrich effect:
posted by jamjam at 4:36 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
That’s fascinating, and it also makes a lot of sense to me (once you pointed it out).
But it’s also inherently problematic in that application because dim light increases a person's reaction time, essentially by slowing down the firing rate of light receptors in the retina.
Which is the basis of the Pulfrich effect:
The Pulfrich effect has typically been measured under full field conditions with dark targets on a bright background, and yields about a 15 ms delay for a factor of ten difference in average retinal illuminance.[8][9][10][11] These delays increase monotonically with decreased luminance over a wide (> 6 log-units) range of luminance.[8][9] The effect is also seen with bright targets on a black background and exhibits the same luminance-to-latency relationship.If there’s anyplace you’d think fast reactions would be absolutely critical, the command center of a battleship would seem to be it.
posted by jamjam at 4:36 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have watched a lot of Game of Thrones.
It taught me something about TV settings: don't settle for this dim, dim lighting. Hit the settings and brighten everything up. It's not a visually dark show on my TV, even in the episode that's notorious for it. And now I watch most stuff on those settings, and it's much better all around. I wouldn't have gotten there if GoT hadn't been especially questionable!
posted by verbminx at 6:32 PM on March 30, 2023
It taught me something about TV settings: don't settle for this dim, dim lighting. Hit the settings and brighten everything up. It's not a visually dark show on my TV, even in the episode that's notorious for it. And now I watch most stuff on those settings, and it's much better all around. I wouldn't have gotten there if GoT hadn't been especially questionable!
posted by verbminx at 6:32 PM on March 30, 2023
Fuck this Dogme 95 "naturalistic is the only true cinema" bullshit.
I don't tend to find most Dogme 95 films I've watched very dark. They tend to be pretty clear and bright for the most part.
I have watched a lot of Game of Thrones.
It taught me something about TV settings: don't settle for this dim, dim lighting. Hit the settings and brighten everything up. It's not a visually dark show on my TV, even in the episode that's notorious for it.
I use the same display for films/TV and for my PC (usually using the later as the device for the former) and settings that make something like Stranger Things decipherable at all practically make my eyes bleed even in a fully lit room when you open a website, switch to broadcast TV, or even access the display's built in menus.
(And as an side, even with "night mode" or other compression, I'm still constantly riding the volume buttons because, mainly, of music and dumb stuff like engine noise. I want to hear the dialogue, and I don't want to be deafened seconds later. I don't want things to go from a whisper to background music that's at actual nightclub level ever.)
posted by Dysk at 7:12 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't tend to find most Dogme 95 films I've watched very dark. They tend to be pretty clear and bright for the most part.
I have watched a lot of Game of Thrones.
It taught me something about TV settings: don't settle for this dim, dim lighting. Hit the settings and brighten everything up. It's not a visually dark show on my TV, even in the episode that's notorious for it.
I use the same display for films/TV and for my PC (usually using the later as the device for the former) and settings that make something like Stranger Things decipherable at all practically make my eyes bleed even in a fully lit room when you open a website, switch to broadcast TV, or even access the display's built in menus.
(And as an side, even with "night mode" or other compression, I'm still constantly riding the volume buttons because, mainly, of music and dumb stuff like engine noise. I want to hear the dialogue, and I don't want to be deafened seconds later. I don't want things to go from a whisper to background music that's at actual nightclub level ever.)
posted by Dysk at 7:12 PM on March 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm reminded of an anecdote I think I heard here of Christopher Nolan listening to one of his less intelligible movies in his perfectly attuned studio, going "I don't know what people are complaining about. It sounds perfectly fine to me".
lol. We also saw Tenet at the drive-in. I managed to tune the car stereo so that we heard it fine, but it didn't make a whole lot of sense anyway!
posted by oneirodynia at 7:37 PM on March 30, 2023
This sounds like the equivalent of video games doing this brightness calibration thing where they ask you to move the slider until you can "just barely" see this dark grey image on black background, which is actually a pretty handy way of adjusting to everyone's different monitor and room conditions.
Watching TV at home is rarely optimal. You end up with a situation where, well, you get distracting background reflections in the screen during dark scenes, so maybe you put yourself in a dark room and block out all the light. But then you get distracting back-light bleed and the blacks are mostly an uneven ugly grey, so you think you will buy a cutting edge OLED TV to fix that. Now you have gorgeous blacks but now you have issues in the daytime because OLED peak brightness is pretty poor.
Like, the best bet you have right now is getting a large OLED TV in a dedicated room in full darkness, because that mimics the movie theater that the film was designed for.
The other issue (purportedly) with that infamous Game of Thrones episode is that due to high demand on streaming services, HBO resorted to giving customers a lower bandwidth version of the episode. One incidence where pirates got a better viewing experience than actual paying customers, there were people who stopping streaming in disgust and pirated the show later instead lol. This brings to mind one of Korea's streaming sites which was based on a torrent swarm - each person who was watching the stream was simultaneously available to upload bits of it to another nearby peer, so even when millions of people tuned into a broadcast at once the servers never got overloaded, since the more people watching it the more robust the network becomes.
YouTube also did this quality downgrade during Covid, due to a surge of demand. If you had the original full definition version of the Game of Thrones episode it would have been a lot better, but still dark. Netflix offers roughly 9mbps video for 1080p, so that's 4GB for an hour of video, for 4K video they'd use a more efficient codec (H265 / HEVC) at 16mbps so that's about 8GB for an hour of video.
posted by xdvesper at 7:57 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Watching TV at home is rarely optimal. You end up with a situation where, well, you get distracting background reflections in the screen during dark scenes, so maybe you put yourself in a dark room and block out all the light. But then you get distracting back-light bleed and the blacks are mostly an uneven ugly grey, so you think you will buy a cutting edge OLED TV to fix that. Now you have gorgeous blacks but now you have issues in the daytime because OLED peak brightness is pretty poor.
Like, the best bet you have right now is getting a large OLED TV in a dedicated room in full darkness, because that mimics the movie theater that the film was designed for.
The other issue (purportedly) with that infamous Game of Thrones episode is that due to high demand on streaming services, HBO resorted to giving customers a lower bandwidth version of the episode. One incidence where pirates got a better viewing experience than actual paying customers, there were people who stopping streaming in disgust and pirated the show later instead lol. This brings to mind one of Korea's streaming sites which was based on a torrent swarm - each person who was watching the stream was simultaneously available to upload bits of it to another nearby peer, so even when millions of people tuned into a broadcast at once the servers never got overloaded, since the more people watching it the more robust the network becomes.
YouTube also did this quality downgrade during Covid, due to a surge of demand. If you had the original full definition version of the Game of Thrones episode it would have been a lot better, but still dark. Netflix offers roughly 9mbps video for 1080p, so that's 4GB for an hour of video, for 4K video they'd use a more efficient codec (H265 / HEVC) at 16mbps so that's about 8GB for an hour of video.
posted by xdvesper at 7:57 PM on March 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Oh, they want us to watch; we're just being conditioned to eventually buy tickets to just sit with strangers in a dark, quiet room for a while, eating junk food from the concession.
Technically it’s kind of been done.
The second dual-screened cinema in Canada was a place called the Elgin, in Ottawa. In the mid-nineties the operators (Famous Players) announced they were going to close the cinema. It sat empty for several years despite efforts to reopen and reuse it in some fashion. Eventually the owners announced their plan to let developers turn the building into restaurants.
There was an outcry at this and as it happened, a municipal election was coming up. One candidate for that ward ran on a “Save the Theatre” platform and won. It would take some time to get the vacant Elgin set up with heritage protection, so there was a short-term fix passed in council, which said that for the next year, anything closing on this twelve blocks or so of Elgin Street (the location of the shuttered cinema), the building could not be rezoned for a different use. Close a laundromat, you cannot open a café there.
With a few days before the new bylaw went into effect, Famous found a loophole. The shuttered cinema was reopened as a restaurant, one which sold only hot digs and popcorn and Coke. People would come in, buy such of the above as they saw fit, then go sit in the auditorium, looking a blank screen as they dined.
Bra-VO, Famous.
The building now houses a burger place, an Italian place, a shawarma place and a Starbucks, all beneath a large sign declaring it THE ELGIN.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:06 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Technically it’s kind of been done.
The second dual-screened cinema in Canada was a place called the Elgin, in Ottawa. In the mid-nineties the operators (Famous Players) announced they were going to close the cinema. It sat empty for several years despite efforts to reopen and reuse it in some fashion. Eventually the owners announced their plan to let developers turn the building into restaurants.
There was an outcry at this and as it happened, a municipal election was coming up. One candidate for that ward ran on a “Save the Theatre” platform and won. It would take some time to get the vacant Elgin set up with heritage protection, so there was a short-term fix passed in council, which said that for the next year, anything closing on this twelve blocks or so of Elgin Street (the location of the shuttered cinema), the building could not be rezoned for a different use. Close a laundromat, you cannot open a café there.
With a few days before the new bylaw went into effect, Famous found a loophole. The shuttered cinema was reopened as a restaurant, one which sold only hot digs and popcorn and Coke. People would come in, buy such of the above as they saw fit, then go sit in the auditorium, looking a blank screen as they dined.
Bra-VO, Famous.
The building now houses a burger place, an Italian place, a shawarma place and a Starbucks, all beneath a large sign declaring it THE ELGIN.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:06 PM on March 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Watching TV at home is rarely optimal.
Remember when every tv station spent some time every night showing test patterns after playing the Star Spangled Banner?
posted by mikelieman at 12:41 AM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
Remember when every tv station spent some time every night showing test patterns after playing the Star Spangled Banner?
posted by mikelieman at 12:41 AM on March 31, 2023 [3 favorites]
This video explains how the "Day for Night" process, or how studios will shoot night scenes during the day then swap the light in post, can do awful things to video quality if directors don't think carefully about what they're doing. The video focuses on "Nope", the new film by Jordan Peele with a ton of night scenes that are surprisingly very well lit and compares it with Game of Thrones, among others.
posted by Glibpaxman at 5:10 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Glibpaxman at 5:10 AM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
I think that in both cases the "doom and gloom" look may be a concession to the ubiquity of displays and holograms in those kinds of shows. Science fiction reflects modern life: surrounded by screens in real life, we expect to see them in genre television, and most of those displays are difficult to read in bright light.
I like to watch movies on a tablet/laptop when i hit the dreadmill in my building's gym. I always have to ask if everyone is okay with me turning off the lights so I don't have direct overhead glare hitting my screen.
posted by srboisvert at 12:09 PM on March 31, 2023
I like to watch movies on a tablet/laptop when i hit the dreadmill in my building's gym. I always have to ask if everyone is okay with me turning off the lights so I don't have direct overhead glare hitting my screen.
posted by srboisvert at 12:09 PM on March 31, 2023
A few years back, I shelled out for a fancy (to me) LG OLED because of the promise of infinite contrast but below a certain threshold, the shadows are still inky black….there is NO INFORMATION in them.
posted by brachiopod at 4:51 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by brachiopod at 4:51 PM on March 31, 2023 [1 favorite]
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And, I mean, it's Wes Anderson and so they're not wrong. But I find it an interesting contrast that here's someone who is standing apart from the dark tone many films take as a personal style signature, and you have people saying "ew, no".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:23 AM on March 30, 2023 [38 favorites]