Why don't movies look like *movies* anymore?
Video Overview & Insights
#videoessay #cinematography #movies
make movies that look like movies again
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Remember when movies used to look good?
I've always hated how modern iPhone pictures look, now I know why.
Rich shadows, bold colors, and depth. But now? A lot of films and shows look flat, dull, and lifeless. In this video, I break down why modern cinematography feels so uninspired, and itās NOT digitalās fault. Letās talk about dynamic range, lighting, and why intentional choices matter more than ever.
What youāll learn:
This is an excellent discussion and you are correct. The only thing I would point out is that while your 2013 digital examples look better in terms of shadows, the image is still way too sharp compared to film.
ā¢ Why older movies look better than modern ones
ā¢ How dynamic range & contrast affect the cinematic look
It is indisputable film, cinema, series are horrendous today. They were getting worse for years and tipped the scales to trash.
Bland untalented actors have no depth and applauded more for their gaudy clothes and than shallow acting. There are no real screen sirens or leading men.
There is a reason Academy Words audiences having been declining for years.
"Cutting the cord" phrase qull soon be replaced with cancel streaming services. Silly because its the same cable and now costs twice as much. Sports are the only thing keep screens large and small going. Your phone your tablet you ipad your PC and your TV are all screens. Its called "tele-vision"; telporting images. If your on your phone your watching TV. Kiddies.
ā¢ The role of VFX, lighting, and production design in the decline of movie aesthetics
James Mathieson clip from The Unscriptify Podcast.
There will come a day when true artistical paintings will hold more emotion & beauty than even the clearest digital ai creations...
Movies featured:
The Parent Trap
There are crews and talent out there that can and want to make films of substance and craftsmanship again, but the sausage factory mentality vs taking the time to craft something has become too much the norm in todays arts and entertainment industry. You get McDonalds vs a Michelin quality meal. I think things will change though, you can't "live a healthy life" solely on fast food.
Superbad
Zodiac
Okay, there are three issues here.
First: It's not just contrast. Its color! Look at Gone With the Wind, The Sound of Music, and Star Wars for examples.
They have great color, and so do hundreds of other movies.
Second: Dark is bad. For example, Ashoka, The Skeleton Crew, The Bad Batch, Daredevil, Maul, and The Acolyte are all examples of movies that are too dark.
I can't see anything in the frame, and I don't want to strain my eyes and wreck my vision to do so.
Add Solo to that list.
Summary: I want to see, and I want to see color. I can't do that with modern movies. I am tired of seeing a completely black frame.
Third: Dean Cundy also shot "Romancing the Stone" and 'Back to the Future,' both of which had excellent color, and the frames weren't black.
WICKED
Se7en
Musician here that loves movies chiming in: this is an issue in audio as well. We have so many digital guitar and bass amps, synths, and drums now, as well as strings and orchestra elements that are all up for purchase for less than $200 and now everyone can just push a button and have access to those sounds. As amazing as it is, it comes with a downside. Most people making music have no idea how to properly record a source of audio with a microphone. Or properly treat a space. Or mix audio correctly. They rely on software to do the work for them. An art form is dying and those of us that still practice it are looked at as dinosaurs even though weāre like 36. The result is a music scene overly saturated with music that mostly sounds the same genre by genre. Listen to any genre and youāll see how everything somehow sounds similar to the last group or artist. Somehow we ended up with country artists using 808s and auto tune, and metal bands making pop records. Technology isnāt always a huge leap forward. Limitations are what make us dig deeper for creativity
The Killer
Find me:
I rarely go to the movie theater anymore. Actually, I donāt even recall the last time I did. I watch everything on my laptop, movies/tv, on my cell phone too, sometimes.
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everything looks like Netflix now
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Sir, what an outstanding, well-articulated, and expertly delivered post. I am thoroughly impressed by your explanations. You present a technical perspective that remains engaging.
I genuinely appreciate technological advancements. Yet, I've wonderedāif movies are now primarily shot with green screens, what does the future look like? I think about actors performing without a real environment to interact with. I can only assume that mainstream 21st-century actors don't enter the profession hoping to act against nothing (green screen).
I've said it for yearsāIMHO, photography (and perhaps videography) is fundamentally about capturing light.
I could continue praising your insights and the topic endlessly. Please keep producing these kinds of videos. I notice subtle nuances in our environment. You have clearly shown me a new way to perceive the screen. Your passion for videography is evident, with just the right balance of shadows.
You have a fanāME.
More User Perspectives
this is absurd; moving on
@arturodelvalle3457Films are shit and crap documentarys are better
@fergaoneill5323Gotta love how we know have affordable 80" OLED TV's with almost infinite contrast ratio and Dolby Digital sound systems with a dozen speakers...
All so films and shows can be designed to play on a 6" iPhone screen in split screen while playing Subway Surfers...
The irony of this dude saying modern color graders have bad taste then it cuts to his own footage and it's just an overblown orange and teal filter and a vignette.
@jaredvdgAbsolutely agree. I will add (as a lay-person) that highlights tell you where to look. Shadows, what you can't see, create tension. I think the bland cinematography isn't just a visual loss--it's also a narrative one.
@Kelbel5995It's a problem, the digital cameras are set to low contrast and sharpness to give greater latitude and shadow detail that can be enhanced in post production, but this is probably leading to these kind of choices about lighting not being made
@artistphilbI agree with you but it's so ironic that your picture is exactly as bad as the boring movies.
@mikegrin2323Ohhh. That would explain why i sometimes felt like characters in modern shows and movies somehow didn't have real physical forms, despite being able to see so much more detail
@tobyanderson7642All movies became hallmark on christimas š
@dayflaubertI prefer the older 80s 90s and early 2000s movie look anyday.
@King_Lamar85I'm 63 yrs old and I remember when movies looked like movies. Thank you for pointing this out because I was wondering if something had changed or is this an age thing.
@scetch2006They Live was a movie that did that for me too.
@ThingsForYourHeadMovies then have more props, more effort. Today they just cgi everything. Are you a computer?
@AnthonySantiago-tontu2:38 this part made me laugh so hard! š
@m.hreelsThis is why I love high contrast, looking movies! It makes them pop more!
@m.hreelsI remember back in the day watching that as a kid in the 90s thinking to myself the exact same thought that this movie looks way better than it should for that kind of movie.
@m.hreelsThis video alone makes me wanna go back and watch the Parent Trap! Awesome video!
@m.hreelsDefinitely agree, movies right now rarely are fun to watch, actors donāt act, visually itās boring, the music is forgettableā¦
@HatshepsutVarowell that explains why newer spiderman movies look so shit
@arcitem-2So well said, couldn't have put it better myself
@ts_00518It's just that too much aesthetic decisions are made during color grading now. There's anyway a 2009 movie that I found magnificent yet based on simple looks it's, you may be surprised, Drew Barrymore's Whip It !.
@rickdeckard2240Setting aside for the moment the questionable equivalence of personal preference and objective superiority - the best bits of creativity are often fueled by limitations. If there IS no easy way, you are forced to figure out a solution that makes the best of the options you have left, and sometimes these wind up being unique bits of creativity that might not have sprung up without a little push. I don't believe anyone's forgotten how to make bold choices, but cinema and peak TV are huge, highly competitive and centralized, pipelined industries, within which each trade is inherently discouraged to stick their neck out lest the people writing the checks move on to someone else.
@light_speed_LAWe passed from Renoir to Playboy covers, from paint, shadows, lights to ridicule silicon.
@Paul-r3vI guarantee we know how to make cinematic shots. One point you missed is the studio politics that demands a blandness throughout the entire production process. This is what happens when you have execs, and multiple layers of corporate enshitification, creative decision making based on focus groups and social media trends that bypass the directors instincts. This happened less in other decades and will require the sort of blockbuster market failures we see continually before companies are forced to remember why they make films in the first place.
@ThisDanielI'm still learning a lot. I'm a self taught "filmmaker" (I need to make more stuff, lol) and I'm currently working on a project actually. But going forward, one of my main goals was to bring back real filmmaking values, going as far back as the Noir era like the 40s to the late 50s. Together fellow artists, let's make film great againāļøāļøš„š„š„š„šÆšÆ
@GatrxPortWhere movies fail for people with familiarity with video, is on image "texture". Lighting and shading are always a little off. Fine details and textures are too smooth. Hollyweird's use of 3D generated backdrops / screens is a major contributor. In 3D generated scenes have the lighting and sometimes texture issues as the cost goes up as you increase texture detail, number of lights, and polygons, which increases rendering times, making them expensive and they aren't willing to spend the extra money.
When your backdrops are going to look washed out compared to a well colored and lit foreground, and you aren't willing to build an actual set, yo have to make changes to the filming to match the flat looking background.
And BTW, I stay away from remastered video as it changes the visual look, just like I stay away from remastered audio because they auto tune the songs, killing the emotional impact.
Heavy CGI can look great. Speed Racer is an incredible film. There really is no excuse, it isn't the tech, it's laziness.
@LimeyLassenWoke DOES NOT IMPLY TALENT...
Omg. Hitchcock could direct.
When writing is more about story than Political narratives, perhaps you will find a way to write something that isn't garbage.
We need steady camsā¦handheld jittery cams looks cheap
@Kajak-900kThis is why kmovies and kdramas gained traction. Some of them were still tastefully done and intentional with their cinematography.
@francinev3971Most movies today feel like a rinse and repeat. No real new stories are coming out of the industry. There is also A lot more political messages in bedded into movies today! Can't really go to the movies without it feeling like they are trying to force a political point of view. It's just not enjoyable any more. A good friend left Hollywood because of this. She has been in a lot of movies and TV shows but she said enough was enough and walked away from it all. Can't really blame her. No really new ideas are in the works, So it's hard for actors to find rolls that can truly let them shine! and they end up type cast to one kind of roll and get stuck in a endless loop!
@MrRedd9999I remember the first time I watched a HD movie at home, it was the first Avengers movie and it looked like play.
@Rydonatelloi glad someone said it because movies now have lost their heart. in how they look and even some of the writing an as some who loves film it makes it hard to want to watch anything new sometimes.
@BonnetbunniIn high school I had to color grade flat MCU movies to look like real movies. I used to edit all the time travel scenes in Endgame to look like the cinematography of the other movies.
@Rapscallion2871Ha knew it
@JoMo-o1rMovies aren't movies anymore. They're ads written by lobbyists.
@dave23024It was on film.. vs digital
@marcosgonzales7080In 2010, I worked on a lower budget horror movie called Lovely Molly (from the guys who did The Blair Witch Project). It was shot using REDS spliced with POV shots. John Rutland was the DP, and he made it look pretty good. It was dark or gritty where it needed to be and warm and bright at certain times, while still keeping with Sanchez's 'found footage' style. Shooting digital gives you the ability to do multiple long takes w/o worry of film stock. However, I agree, nothing is better than actual film.
@JacobSanders-zc7sqDrive is definitely a good looking movie
@CalebMay-bf1ci