That battle against the undead in the last season of Game of Thrones was basically watched different shades of black blobs move around when I watched it live.
If anything it immersed me into the scene all the more and added to the horror/helplessness of the scene. Even though it was really dark, that’s what our characters were fighting in. So to me it makes sense.
I know for stuff with a lot of CGI they make it dark because it is easier to hide the effects. CGI in bright light is a lot harder and probably much more expensive.
The brightness would fall down slowly over the course of the infamous scene cause APL was just so low. It’s a problem with all oleds and it’s how oleds “assume” a static image is onscreen by estimating a constant brightness So it begins to auto dim.
I had to constantly pull up the settings menu to get my oled to brighten back up to where it was supposed to be
I bought one after the first two episodes of HoD came out (not for the show, just coincidentally) and went back and watched the first two episodes on the new TV and it was, quite literally, a night and day difference.
Looked WAY better on the new TV.
Not saying people *should* buy a new TV because of this trend, but it *does* look really really good on the right calibrated screen.
I had to foil my windows and mess with a lot of settings just to see what's going on the be instantly flash banged by the subtitles casting my shadow onto the wall behind me that will be the only evidence of my demise.
Editor here and we often work with proxies, not full 4K files (which would be huge and bog down playback) but you are right about VFX artists. I’m constantly flagging this problem and also their slick/tasteful/minimal titles which look cool from 16 inches away on a $5000 monitor but are teeeeeeny tiny
The REAL problem is compression. Whatever these smoky darks look like in the edit bay, they will turn to brown blocks once they go through the compression YouTube or your streaming service uses.
Y’all should do what a friend of mine - an editor for a famous band - does. He takes the track, burns it to cd and pops it into his 1999 Nissan Sentra. Only if it sounds good there then he uses it.
Taking a page from that. These VFX folks need to have a $199 Black Friday TV mounted on the wall behind them.
This is more or less my mixing strategy as well. You can sit there listening to a 2 minute loop for 3 hours to the point that you can no longer perceive if changes to the mix are positive or not.
Quickly exporting a mix and running out to my car to play it gives an immediate palate cleansing and hearing it in a natural setting can highlight what needs to be brought forward and what needs to be reeled in.
Another good test is blasting it full volume from my phone. Several times i've spent hours mixing tracks so that everything is clear and audible as I intend it to be through my headphones but ill play it from my phone and its a shitty wall of noise.
Most do. It’s not the vfx folks it’s the colorist that do the color. Every high end color bay I’ve been in has a consumer TV in it along with the high end professional ones. But it’s up to the director/show runner/cinematographer to decided if they care.
Many mixing bays have a pair of shit speakers in them too.
This is the problem I had with the notorious battle in GoT. Had just upgraded to a 4k TV, but the cable box was still 1080p and was apparently known to have issues with 4K displays. The whole battle was a mosaic of compression artifacts with an occasional glimpse of a face.
The compression destroyed the battle against the night king in the finale of GoT; that and the terrible fucking writing. I would have at least enjoyed the spectacle, but it turned into bad pixel art. I wish HBO and some of these streamers would offer some higher-priced tier that lets you pre-load uncompressed versions of these shows. Hopefully internet speeds get to a point where the heavy compression is no longer needed; meanwhile, I suspect the compression was actually required for use on cable provider TV networks and they didn't bother to offer a better version for internet streaming.
It's funny because I'm a photographer, and I deliberately proof on a crappy Dell monitor, as well as an old iPhone and a Samsung Phone. Because I know this how most people view their content.
\*Raises hand\*
I have ... 4:
* one for TV
* One as a main monitor
* two as side monitors
best investment ever as long as you can control room loightning and get a model where you can turn off the autodimming.
If it was just an excuse then it wouldn’t look ok on any screen. Right?
If that’s true, then why does it look fine on my Oled and why are there other people who also say it looks great?
I remember going into the episode thinking “ok, when is it supposed to get too dark?”
These shows are made for higher quality set ups - that’s not how it should be, but that’s how it is.
I mean I own an LG C3 and can't see shit in these shows with auto dimming off, eco mode off, and brightness on 100. That's a pretty good TV, if everyone needs something BETTER than that then who the fuck is this stuff for.
Turning off hdr on my projector makes a dramatic difference in the brightness of everything. My projector just isn’t capable of displaying quality hdr even though it officially supports it. On the fire stick max and Apple TV there are options to not show hdr and it is absolutely necessary. You should try turning it off if you can.
Virtually no consumer projectors are actually bright enough to qualify as being properly HDR, even if they support HDR10/10+/Dolby Vision/etc. Reflected light is just nowhere near as bright as LEDs of whatever type shining directly at you. I spent $10,000 on a JVC NX-7 projector, which is basically the cheapest one you can get that has any benefit to HDR at all (and it’s still on the marginal side). I entirely agree with this, turn it off, it’s doing you no favors.
I doubt this to be honest.
Even the HDR versions of these episodes are notoriously dark. "Cinematic" HDR content (not games or nature content) tends to be very reserved with it's use of anything above 300nits or so.
I played that YouTube video on my iPhone 12 and it looks *nothing* like what I was seeing on my oled tv.
It’s definitely dark but they don’t have any issues making out what’s on the screen. Do you think the people doing the editing can’t see what’s on their own screens when they’re working?
You’d need a Professional editors monitor and to not be streaming also (heavy compression doesn’t help) so sure, grab the UHD Blu-ray and a $13,000 32” display
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1657412-REG/sony_pvm_x3200_32_4k_hdr_professional.html/
That scene from Once was so interesting: when they record an album, edit it in the studio, then burn a CD and play it on their car's crappy stereo to see how it sounds without expensive speakers.
It’s the same thing as when color tv came out. Productions were made with the highest end hardware in mind, not what the general population actually has/uses. Color took almost 20 years to actually kick off because their price was so high initially
Same issue with audio. The audio engineers mix on their super advanced sound system and just ignore that people are watching on normal tvs. Result is that the dialogue is sometimes impossible to understand.
That scene looks like shit on high end HDR displays too, ironically watching it in SDR is the only way to actually see anything... They had the same problem with the last season of GoT you could see absolutely fucking nothing in the big fight against the night king.
The same reason the dialogue is drowned out by the effects and ambient sounds. There seems to be a set of directors that have forgotten that the audience needs to be able to see and hear the movie/show to be able to enjoy it.
The sound mixing is weird in a lot of movies too. When I'm watching at home, I have to turn the volume up quite a bit to hear the dialogue, and then when there's an action scene, the soundtrack and the effects sound is deafening. It's so annoying to play DJ with the volume button while I'm watching any action media
On netflix for example you have to usr a NOT 5.1 audio channel if you don't actually have a 5.1 system. Makes dialog mostly hearable and you can put your volume quite a bit lower again.
Agreed! At this point I just keep it on a reasonable volume for the action scenes and keep subtitles on to make sure I get all the whispering dialogue.
Editor here: I always listen to my final mixes on shitty speakers or a phone because our mix houses have $500k worth of speakers in a sound dampened professional studio. They are adding shit regular people cannot hear
I mean, I’m guilty of that for rough cuts. Sfx come in at their loudest possible level so I’d have to adjust them all down every time which I TRY to do but it’s a PITA. I count on our mix team to get it right in the final mix.
there's also a bit of blame to be cast on the audio department on set... or the assistant directors that hustle through setups without letting sound get set up. Run and gun shoots are more common but the end result is spotty sound quality. "Fix it in post" doesn't work for bad dialog.
Resulting in people like me abandoning shows.
I stopped watching Carnival Row somewhere in season 2 since I couldn't understand what they were saying. And IIRC it was dark as fuck, too.
Great job, guys. I guess the producers loved it on their home cinema screens in a basement that cost more than my home. I didn't.
And yet in one of the biggest movies of the year, they actors were talking fast over loud music (Oppenheimer).
It's like we have fully regressed. That is, all visual spectacle and non verbal communication, no dialog. It's all just good visuals now backed by some Hans Zimmer track like "WOOOOOOOOOOMP *tick tick tick tick* WOOOOOMP *tick tick tick* DUUUUUUH (slightly lower) *doo Doo doo Doo* DUUUUUUH..."
Soon it'll just be the images and we'll have gone full circle.
It's super annoying.
It's not always the case but often these scenes can really look amazing on a top of the line HDR TV and might look ok on an SDR set the issue is when you have a midrange or cheaper HDR set and it cant really do the contrast differences justice
Like Man in the High Castle has an opening and a lot of scenes where there's subtle color differences that looked pretty damn good on my HDR TV but on my computer trying to watch looked bad.
Oppenheimer did it too. Sound effects shake the house, dialogue inaudible.
People defending Christopher Nolan are dumb.
It’s like, if Chris Nolan made jeans, you’d wear his pants out of the store and they’d look great. Then you’d wash them once and they’d shrink to look like chode jeans - 55 inch waist, 10 inch legs, fucking junk.
Similarly to HDR problem, Nolan movies sound AMAZING on a good sound system in the correct environment. Set the sound at where the dialogue is audible and let the BOOMs shake you to your core.
Of course most people don’t have a good sound system and also aren’t in an appropriate environment. I waited over a week to watch Oppenheimer at home because, despite the fact I have a good sound system, I’ve got a little one that has difficulty sleeping on a good day, let alone with a nuke going off in the next room.
Video games are getting made with multiple dynamic ranges to select from. We are already have multiple tracks for stereo and 5.1 mixes. There really is no reason to not have a low dynamic range mix to choose from.
I mean, it was only mixed for IMAX, any other setups producing a decent sound is incidental. You could tell Nolan it’s selfish, but I’d doubt he’d care. He thinks his movies should be seen in the theater, not on the couch.
Good for the out of touch old coot, but we live in reality where a movie has a short theatrical run and then to streaming and physical media it goes. He can't change that, even if we can't change him.
The sound was horrible when I watched Oppenheimer in imax. Only caught about half of what they were saying as the bass was just drowning everything out.
Seriously. And it wasn’t the actual soundtrack (usually) or lack of ADR either.
At least 1/3 of the movie had this, I’m not even sure how best to describe it, but synth-y background noise that overpowered the dialogue. If Nolan just dropped that noise or replaced with properly tuned musical score, it’d probably be fine but then the score was so loud during the lead up to the test that I gave up trying to understand what was being said.
I’d estimate that I just flat out could not hear at least 15-20% of the dialogue in Oppenheimer.
And the argument is always “but high dynamic range!” And they don’t explain anything past that as a defense. Which, no man. I know what dynamic range is in audio, and it doesn’t automatically make audio better. Get a better argument.
Christopher Nolan refuses to ADR famously(infamously?). So if you're wondering why it's hard to pick up what people are saying it's usually because of that. Also he makes the music too loud but we all knew that
Am I dumb or something because there was only a few scenes in tenet where the audio drowned out the dialog… but it seemed an intentional choice, as the dialog was irrelevant?
Did you watch the video? The excuse, if you prefer that term, is that the content is made for a specific method of consumption (high end theaters). It would be like complaining that a AAA game performs poorly on a smartphone.
With respect to video content, we have been fortunate that many improvements to the media have been functionally backwards compatible (for lack of a better term), like higher resolution video looks better on a device even if that device can't display the higher resolution. Now, however, we're coming up against an improvement (more realistic lighting) that requires newer technology or the experience is degraded. This is unfortunate, but what other solution is realistic? Shoot everything twice with different lighting?
I do get the annoyance, but I also understand the "excuses" for the annoyance and they make sense.
Nope. That's an excuse. And lighting isn't different than before, cameras are. They can pick up darker scenes, so these dipshits are using it like everyone watches in a dark controlled theater space in their home, which is not how tv (or movies) is consumed.
I don't see anything you've said that contradicts what I said. You are correct; they're making their media for a very specific consumption, on purpose. Just like most AAA video games are made for higher end equipment.
Are you suggesting that movies and TV shows should be created to look good on a 6" phone screen, even if that results in a substandard experience on higher end setups and in theaters? Like, I think we all agree on the issue, but I'm unclear about what you're implying for a solution.
The cameras themselves can pick up the low light, but televisions can't display it properly. That's not the same as making something for one thing. Unless they've specifically made it for the theater (like Nolan does) then it's a failure of the DP and director. To not calibrate your monitors to what the footage will be watched on means they don't know what they're doing. GOT showed that these dummies don't know what they're doing. And if this crap is done during editing, that's a whole new level of incompetence.
So I think you are giving them an excuse by saying technology is better, which might be true, but the ability to see what you've just shot is a billion times better and easier than it was during old playback days.
PA: Sir, the latest feedback is in, and the number one thing viewers said is, and I quote, "I can't hear shit!"
Director: Hmm. I see. Bring me the DP.
\[a few moments later\]
DP: Yo?
Director: Exactly how dark can you make the finished product?
>The same reason the dialogue is drowned out by the effects and ambient sounds.
I find that the biggest issue is that dialogue is always on the centre channel and unless you have a decent setup with a decent center speaker then you are going to have trouble hearing it. It is even worse when you are downmixing the surround sound to stereo speakers because the downmixers rarely ever get the center speaker sound right.
I disagree, audio quality on old stuff tends to be really bad because you had like a 50 year period where everything in audio was recorded on magnetic tape.
I still get mad as fuck just thinking about that episode of HOD.
They KNEW that there was severe backlash from the GoT episode that was dark af... and then they just doubled down and made one DARKER and contrasty af.
Such a good show too.
I just assumed his issue is that he gets to shoot it and watch it on top quality equipment where I'm sure it looks good. I get to watch it on a 10 year old TV streamed via HBO on the lowest quality possible.
*"We appreciate you reaching out about a night scene in House of the Dragon: Episode 7 appearing dark on your screen. The dimmed lighting of this scene was an intentional creative decision."*
He is cutting them way too much slack.
"I don't want to judge these professional producers." Way to be an ass-kisser, dude. You don't need to be a Michelin star chef to know the steak is burnt.
That night scene at 2:19 looks so dogshit. I would legitimately be ashamed to show that to anyone.
The contrast with Army of Darkness was STARK. Those scenes are definitely night scenes, we as the audience get that, but you can still see spectacular detail on all the skeletons and the trees....
Literally the only "excuse" I let the GOT episodes get away with is that the "darkness as the enemy" theme of those episodes is supposed to be there. The idea that the army of the dead is unseen and terrifying in the darkness, I get that. There's thematic reasons you'd have a scene be actual, literal darkness. That should not apply to scenes of two characters talking in a fucking castle, but I get what they were going for at least.
i know a bunch of sound engineers. they all work from home and mix on headphones. then producers view the end product in amazing dolby soundproof rooms with thousands of dollars worth of high end amplifiers and reference speakers that cost more than most cars. if no one runs through a regular old TV that's what you get.
adjusting sound for televisions is a process in itself - i used to work at a sound house that almost exclusively brought commercials up to broadcast standard. i don't think they do that for streaming.
last thing - if you expect your phone, tablet or laptop to deliver good sound it just isn't going to happen. what you run through actually matters.
So the lesson of the day is to bar your engineers and editors from using expensive equipment if you want to get the high-quality work you're paying for.
Any good editor/engineer knows to reference on shit systems. It’s why the laptop test is tried and true.
Sounds like they know and don’t care which is even worse.
I think you’ve missed the point in what I was trying to say. But I also didn’t explain it very well so maybe that’s my fault.
Movies today have people whispering all the time for dramatic effect I suppose. But it can make everything very difficult to hear and it seems super unnecessary. It’s hard to explain but it’s almost always a gruff, low volume, exaggerated whisper -like dialogue.
It’s colour grading. The process has become such an essential (and expensive) part of post production that it’s managed to breed this bizarre group of weirdos that seem to think it’s a dark art only a select few can do - so producers see something that’s premium and specialist, and give them too much creative freedom. That also means the guys who actually do the colour grading are rarely questioned because “they know best”. Not to mention that they do the job in a dark room on really premium HDR monitors, so what they see is very rarely what’s being broadcast to people’s consumer TVs.
Pretentious directors who think low light cinematography for TV is art and an intentional creative decision. From my point of view: someone who doesn’t understand the audience the medium is intended for.
I can’t see shit, boss.
Byproduct of streaming services supporting HDR content. I imagine there's some top down pressure to show off what HDR can do which might also be related to industry pressure to get people to buy tvs
Some of this is one of my least favorite modern filming approaches: the aggressive, lazy use of filters. The filters diminish the vibrancy of natural light causing the scenes to wash out, and, in general, contribute to the film makers not making an effort to block and frame scenes, think about the time of day they film in, think about lighting, or just think about anything other than “we’ll fix it in post”. The result, among other things, are drab, lifeless looking frames.
Filters are not being used. This is color grading. Unfortunately, studios and streaming services are pushing colorists to make use of HDR tech, that will make a scene like this look like a realistic night shot. The problem is, the TV's that can take advantage of this cost an absurd amount of money. There are barely any of them on the market for consumers.
What powers the ability of a TV to make use of HDR is the amount of light it can emit. That's measured in "nits". Streaming services are releasing shows right now with HDR capabilities of upwards of around 1000 nits. Consumer TV's are pushing around 300 nits or so, they don't even advertise nits levels because, most people aren't even interested in it. They just see HDR on the box, and don't really even know what that means.
A true, 1000-nit capable UHD HDR television that's only 40 inches in size costs around $30,000 at the moment. Streaming services are future-proofing their shows for when the cost for these TV's come down in the future. There will be a TV arms race some day in the future, as HDR can do a whole lot more than just 1000 nits.
Right now, the only real consumer HDR experiences are in movie theaters.
But most of the newer OLEDs do reach 1000 nits..? My S90C is said to reach 1000 nits and it costed me like a $1000 bucks. Are you saying that's not "real" 1000 nits or what?
I truly hate the awful idea that filming a night scene in the day and just putting a blue hue over it, or dimming it into oblivion ever came up and then actually stuck around. Used to be a thing made-for-tv movies did like the sci-fi channel etc... low budget on display but this is premium "fuck it, I don't feel like filming at night and having to deal with poor lighting even though it looks 100x's better" levels of fuckery
That fight scene in the last season of game of thrones when it was all pitch black omg that was so terrible. They completely dropped the ball on that, what a total shit show
I’m not interested in analysing why they do it I just want them to stop. The same with shocking sound mixing. I don’t care what great reason they had for making bad television. They just need to make better television.
Nah, that's the reason they do shaky, frantic cutting during a fight scene. This was a thing before the Bourne movies, in Walter Murch's book In The Blink Of An Eye about film editing, he mentions that fight scenes should be edited in this way. I disagree, I think fight scenes should be good enough that smooth, wide shots of the action look just as good as the rest of the movie. This is why even though everyone else hates it, I think the fight scenes in The Matrix sequels (Not the 4th one) are fantastically shot even if the CGI isn't up to snuff. I want more fight scenes like that, not fast editing where you can't tell what the hell is going on so they can hide the fact that it doesn't look like a real fight.
I don't know how popular Every Frame A Painting is (he obviously has lots of views), but he breaks down how Jackie Chan fights work and how showing the whole impact and follow through emphasize the impact and result better than clipping everything.
I think I've found the main point of the video where he talks about it, but I didn't rewatch the whole thing just now, so there could be more about it. I think it's more a feature of all Kung Fu to show the whole fight - which might be another one of this guy's videos, actually.
[https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM\_GQ?si=Z61ydwPWV-0RhzxH&t=254](https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM_GQ?si=Z61ydwPWV-0RhzxH&t=254)
Man, I wish they would come back and make more videos. Good Chinese "kung-fu" movies do come to mind for great fight choreography and cinematography that compliments how good it is. We do see that influence sometimes in American cinema, such as John Wick, even if it gets more ridiculous in every sequel.
Man, I can just imagine between takes like two PAs hoisting Neeson higher and higher over the fence, moving out of the way for a two second shot, then they come back and hoist him more.
Generally darkness is actually used to hide bad CGI. CGI is much easier to make look believable in night scenes. It’s why so much of Venom was during the night
when filming "day for night," a scene will be underexposed in-camera and darkened during post, often with a blue tint added, to lend the take the illusion that it was done at night.
i also hate interior shots in thrillers.
Similar to the audio mixing, it’s like whoever is producing these forgot the home part of home theater. It was impossible to watch some of HOD in the day time and had to wait for night with all lights off.
New fad of shooting night scenes during the day and fixing it in post. They call it “day for night”.
[Here’s a video with more info.](https://youtu.be/1ctQIIl1PxY?si=u5_Rg9KK6-wrQmuw)
I always thought it was so they could go cheaper on the set dressing of location shoots. If you can’t see the background, the production doesn’t need to spend money making every detail look authentic.
This isn't known by many people, but modern televisions have options that enable the adjustment of brightness, contrast and many other technical aspects that allow for a much clearer picture. Said enhancements allow the viewer a much better viewing experience. I got your back, man.
I feel like its a way to combat piracy. Like viewing this through any dubious means would cause the picture to degrade. Its like when starting up a game and they tell you to have the symbol just visible. I never do that my eyes suck
I didn’t watch the video but basically It’s to hide details and save on production costs. Upping shadows means you need more details. Lower shadows means less. They go as low as they think they can get away with
Having subtitles on made the dark scenes nearly impossible to watch on my TV. The white produced by the subtitles simply drowned out everything else, especially if watched in darkness. What made it even worse is the fact the TV would try to compensate for overblown whites suddenly showing up and would make the entire scene darker.
One of the episodes was just an absolute write off because it was dark and it was just long white hair talking in hushed whispers so it was hard to sometimes tell which one was talking
I don't know if he mentions this in the video, but it's too long for me to scrub through. Apart from the obvious physical hardware limitations of some displays. I've noticed compression noise making overly dark scenes impossible to watch when streaming. Some shows and movies seem to be so dark that the algorithm they are using considers the image to be the same shade and compresses it into oblivion. It's mostly noticeable on my PC through a browser where the streamers limit the quality of the image we are allowed to receive. It was pretty annoying in recent movies like The Killer.
I am limited as to which movie theaters I can go to in my area because some of them don't project bright enough to see what's going on in today's movies. I had to see "Dune" a second time because, surprisingly, a movie that takes place mostly in the desert was too dark at my closest theater.
This reminds me of one game where developers redone all the sound design. They hired pro studio, recorded everything top-notch quality and all.
People hated it.
Turns out if you mix your sound for a top-notch studio sound equipment - it doesn't sound well on consumer level. They remixed it for mid-range audio devices and everyone liked it again.
Except movie production doesn't care, they would be glad to forbid any kind of movie watching outside of theaters.
Because dark and muddy graphics make it easy to hide the crust of CGI similar to how old video games looked very dirty and musty to hide inconsistencies in UV mapping and stuff like that
This paired with the horrible audio problems is so infuriating.
And the video where editors acknowledge the audio problem but blame the consumer is outrageous.
Film makers are out of touch.
It's especially bad when streaming compression technology absolutely chokes on and mangles dark scenes. Tom Scott has a video on it:
https://youtu.be/h9j89L8eQQk?si=ir4beUhTSTY-Fm6A
Actually, depending on how far back you compare, there’s a good reason for this.
Back in the 80s and 90s, the silver-based film they used allowed for very high capture quality, but it required very high ambient light levels. So sets were lit extremely aggressively. This was unpleasant for the actors who often had to be powdered regularly to keep from appearing shiny in the hot, blinding studio lights.
As technology progressed, low-light capture was much simpler and much higher quality, so directors used this new avenue of filmmaking to their creative advantage. Thus, you see many more examples of low-light cinematography (television or otherwise) as the years go by; and that’s why by comparison shows from the 80s and 90s appear very bright and daylight-tinged.
^(and the dialog is like this, especially when it's something incredibly important, but you can't hear properly because)
**THE MUSIC IS LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME WHILE THEY'RE TALKING**
How American is it to have massively invested in bandwidth only use it on the proliferated quantity of crap content instead of make the truly good content even better?
maybe answers here - but it's pretty hard to great for all different screens out there - at people are watching in more and more diverse setting, in the sun etc etc....
What a lot of people don’t realise is that they are answering their own question when wondering why visuals and sound don’t looks like they used to, when in reality that’s the entire point. We are in the current trend of more “naturalistic” dark visuals and muffled sound. This might be considered a bad trend, but something worse than following a bad trend in following an old out of date trend. This is why filmmakers avoid the blue-ish sci-fi lighting of the 80s, the music video aesthetic of the 90’s, and the filtered instagram look of the 00’s. Yes, Rob Marshall has already directed a mermaid heavy movie in pirates of the Caribbean On Strangers Tide, but he intentionally underlit The Little Mermaid because he doesn’t want his newest film to look like one he did in 2011.
They’re assuming everyone owns a PVM 4kOLED HDR display because their editors do.
I own one and still couldn´t see shit in the dark House of Dragons scenes.
That battle against the undead in the last season of Game of Thrones was basically watched different shades of black blobs move around when I watched it live.
silver lining; everyone got a chance to see how dirty their screen was
I legit thought my TV backlight was broken.
I remember the sound of them running and you couldn't see shit until they were like a foot away from the characters. Really frustrating
If anything it immersed me into the scene all the more and added to the horror/helplessness of the scene. Even though it was really dark, that’s what our characters were fighting in. So to me it makes sense.
I know for stuff with a lot of CGI they make it dark because it is easier to hide the effects. CGI in bright light is a lot harder and probably much more expensive.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/O8YfgxF3APY/hqdefault.jpg
You watched it live? Holy shit dude, are like an eternal being or something?
I was there Gandalf! 3000 years ago.
The brightness would fall down slowly over the course of the infamous scene cause APL was just so low. It’s a problem with all oleds and it’s how oleds “assume” a static image is onscreen by estimating a constant brightness So it begins to auto dim. I had to constantly pull up the settings menu to get my oled to brighten back up to where it was supposed to be
I bought one after the first two episodes of HoD came out (not for the show, just coincidentally) and went back and watched the first two episodes on the new TV and it was, quite literally, a night and day difference. Looked WAY better on the new TV. Not saying people *should* buy a new TV because of this trend, but it *does* look really really good on the right calibrated screen.
I had to foil my windows and mess with a lot of settings just to see what's going on the be instantly flash banged by the subtitles casting my shadow onto the wall behind me that will be the only evidence of my demise.
This. I can’t see crap even in HDR. The fight between Obi wan and Vader was unwatchable.
Editor here and we often work with proxies, not full 4K files (which would be huge and bog down playback) but you are right about VFX artists. I’m constantly flagging this problem and also their slick/tasteful/minimal titles which look cool from 16 inches away on a $5000 monitor but are teeeeeeny tiny The REAL problem is compression. Whatever these smoky darks look like in the edit bay, they will turn to brown blocks once they go through the compression YouTube or your streaming service uses.
Y’all should do what a friend of mine - an editor for a famous band - does. He takes the track, burns it to cd and pops it into his 1999 Nissan Sentra. Only if it sounds good there then he uses it. Taking a page from that. These VFX folks need to have a $199 Black Friday TV mounted on the wall behind them.
With an open window near it!
This is more or less my mixing strategy as well. You can sit there listening to a 2 minute loop for 3 hours to the point that you can no longer perceive if changes to the mix are positive or not. Quickly exporting a mix and running out to my car to play it gives an immediate palate cleansing and hearing it in a natural setting can highlight what needs to be brought forward and what needs to be reeled in. Another good test is blasting it full volume from my phone. Several times i've spent hours mixing tracks so that everything is clear and audible as I intend it to be through my headphones but ill play it from my phone and its a shitty wall of noise.
Most do. It’s not the vfx folks it’s the colorist that do the color. Every high end color bay I’ve been in has a consumer TV in it along with the high end professional ones. But it’s up to the director/show runner/cinematographer to decided if they care. Many mixing bays have a pair of shit speakers in them too.
This is the problem I had with the notorious battle in GoT. Had just upgraded to a 4k TV, but the cable box was still 1080p and was apparently known to have issues with 4K displays. The whole battle was a mosaic of compression artifacts with an occasional glimpse of a face.
The compression destroyed the battle against the night king in the finale of GoT; that and the terrible fucking writing. I would have at least enjoyed the spectacle, but it turned into bad pixel art. I wish HBO and some of these streamers would offer some higher-priced tier that lets you pre-load uncompressed versions of these shows. Hopefully internet speeds get to a point where the heavy compression is no longer needed; meanwhile, I suspect the compression was actually required for use on cable provider TV networks and they didn't bother to offer a better version for internet streaming.
It’s also a cost thing for the streaming companies. Streaming bigger files costs them more in bandwidth charges.
It's funny because I'm a photographer, and I deliberately proof on a crappy Dell monitor, as well as an old iPhone and a Samsung Phone. Because I know this how most people view their content.
Vfx artist here - we are all working from home on whatever monitor we bought for $200 from Best Buy :P
Our VFX guys took the nice monitors home for the pandemic and kept 'em
It looks like they are color grading assuming people have an HDR TV that can handle upwards of 1000 nits, and literally no one has one of those TVs.
\*Raises hand\* I have ... 4: * one for TV * One as a main monitor * two as side monitors best investment ever as long as you can control room loightning and get a model where you can turn off the autodimming.
They use that excuse, but these shows still look dark as fuck on my oled
If it was just an excuse then it wouldn’t look ok on any screen. Right? If that’s true, then why does it look fine on my Oled and why are there other people who also say it looks great? I remember going into the episode thinking “ok, when is it supposed to get too dark?” These shows are made for higher quality set ups - that’s not how it should be, but that’s how it is.
I mean I own an LG C3 and can't see shit in these shows with auto dimming off, eco mode off, and brightness on 100. That's a pretty good TV, if everyone needs something BETTER than that then who the fuck is this stuff for.
That makes sense. So they expect HDR feature to be common in every devices.
Turning off hdr on my projector makes a dramatic difference in the brightness of everything. My projector just isn’t capable of displaying quality hdr even though it officially supports it. On the fire stick max and Apple TV there are options to not show hdr and it is absolutely necessary. You should try turning it off if you can.
Virtually no consumer projectors are actually bright enough to qualify as being properly HDR, even if they support HDR10/10+/Dolby Vision/etc. Reflected light is just nowhere near as bright as LEDs of whatever type shining directly at you. I spent $10,000 on a JVC NX-7 projector, which is basically the cheapest one you can get that has any benefit to HDR at all (and it’s still on the marginal side). I entirely agree with this, turn it off, it’s doing you no favors.
HDR400 certification is funny. Certified to not be HDR pretty much.
I doubt this to be honest. Even the HDR versions of these episodes are notoriously dark. "Cinematic" HDR content (not games or nature content) tends to be very reserved with it's use of anything above 300nits or so.
I played that YouTube video on my iPhone 12 and it looks *nothing* like what I was seeing on my oled tv. It’s definitely dark but they don’t have any issues making out what’s on the screen. Do you think the people doing the editing can’t see what’s on their own screens when they’re working?
Wait, so if I own one of these TVs that will make things brighter? It this is the case, maybe I can finally get my wife to agree to buy one of these.
You’d need a Professional editors monitor and to not be streaming also (heavy compression doesn’t help) so sure, grab the UHD Blu-ray and a $13,000 32” display https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1657412-REG/sony_pvm_x3200_32_4k_hdr_professional.html/
That scene from Once was so interesting: when they record an album, edit it in the studio, then burn a CD and play it on their car's crappy stereo to see how it sounds without expensive speakers.
My TV is 4K OLED HDR. That episode was dark as f. Almost unwatchable.
I had to switch from my 135” project to my 48” oled monitor just so I can enjoy it. It was great
It’s the same thing as when color tv came out. Productions were made with the highest end hardware in mind, not what the general population actually has/uses. Color took almost 20 years to actually kick off because their price was so high initially
Same issue with audio. The audio engineers mix on their super advanced sound system and just ignore that people are watching on normal tvs. Result is that the dialogue is sometimes impossible to understand.
That scene looks like shit on high end HDR displays too, ironically watching it in SDR is the only way to actually see anything... They had the same problem with the last season of GoT you could see absolutely fucking nothing in the big fight against the night king.
The same reason the dialogue is drowned out by the effects and ambient sounds. There seems to be a set of directors that have forgotten that the audience needs to be able to see and hear the movie/show to be able to enjoy it.
The sound mixing is weird in a lot of movies too. When I'm watching at home, I have to turn the volume up quite a bit to hear the dialogue, and then when there's an action scene, the soundtrack and the effects sound is deafening. It's so annoying to play DJ with the volume button while I'm watching any action media
On netflix for example you have to usr a NOT 5.1 audio channel if you don't actually have a 5.1 system. Makes dialog mostly hearable and you can put your volume quite a bit lower again.
Yeah, Netflix part is mostly bearable for most newer media. Amazon especially is horrible at that, I haven't found a way to do that
turn dynamic range off, maybe..?
Agreed! At this point I just keep it on a reasonable volume for the action scenes and keep subtitles on to make sure I get all the whispering dialogue.
Editor here: I always listen to my final mixes on shitty speakers or a phone because our mix houses have $500k worth of speakers in a sound dampened professional studio. They are adding shit regular people cannot hear
Does that explain the difference in levels though? It really seems like some editors slam the levels to the max for everything but the dialogue track.
I mean, I’m guilty of that for rough cuts. Sfx come in at their loudest possible level so I’d have to adjust them all down every time which I TRY to do but it’s a PITA. I count on our mix team to get it right in the final mix.
Dialog needs to be prioritized. We can't hear shit.
there's also a bit of blame to be cast on the audio department on set... or the assistant directors that hustle through setups without letting sound get set up. Run and gun shoots are more common but the end result is spotty sound quality. "Fix it in post" doesn't work for bad dialog.
Resulting in people like me abandoning shows. I stopped watching Carnival Row somewhere in season 2 since I couldn't understand what they were saying. And IIRC it was dark as fuck, too. Great job, guys. I guess the producers loved it on their home cinema screens in a basement that cost more than my home. I didn't.
And yet in one of the biggest movies of the year, they actors were talking fast over loud music (Oppenheimer). It's like we have fully regressed. That is, all visual spectacle and non verbal communication, no dialog. It's all just good visuals now backed by some Hans Zimmer track like "WOOOOOOOOOOMP *tick tick tick tick* WOOOOOMP *tick tick tick* DUUUUUUH (slightly lower) *doo Doo doo Doo* DUUUUUUH..." Soon it'll just be the images and we'll have gone full circle. It's super annoying.
It's not always the case but often these scenes can really look amazing on a top of the line HDR TV and might look ok on an SDR set the issue is when you have a midrange or cheaper HDR set and it cant really do the contrast differences justice
Like Man in the High Castle has an opening and a lot of scenes where there's subtle color differences that looked pretty damn good on my HDR TV but on my computer trying to watch looked bad.
Tenet intensifies...
Oppenheimer did it too. Sound effects shake the house, dialogue inaudible. People defending Christopher Nolan are dumb. It’s like, if Chris Nolan made jeans, you’d wear his pants out of the store and they’d look great. Then you’d wash them once and they’d shrink to look like chode jeans - 55 inch waist, 10 inch legs, fucking junk.
Similarly to HDR problem, Nolan movies sound AMAZING on a good sound system in the correct environment. Set the sound at where the dialogue is audible and let the BOOMs shake you to your core. Of course most people don’t have a good sound system and also aren’t in an appropriate environment. I waited over a week to watch Oppenheimer at home because, despite the fact I have a good sound system, I’ve got a little one that has difficulty sleeping on a good day, let alone with a nuke going off in the next room.
Then, there should be multiple mixes in the release of the film. Only catering to a niche audio setup is selfish.
Video games are getting made with multiple dynamic ranges to select from. We are already have multiple tracks for stereo and 5.1 mixes. There really is no reason to not have a low dynamic range mix to choose from.
I mean, it was only mixed for IMAX, any other setups producing a decent sound is incidental. You could tell Nolan it’s selfish, but I’d doubt he’d care. He thinks his movies should be seen in the theater, not on the couch.
Good for the out of touch old coot, but we live in reality where a movie has a short theatrical run and then to streaming and physical media it goes. He can't change that, even if we can't change him.
The sound was horrible when I watched Oppenheimer in imax. Only caught about half of what they were saying as the bass was just drowning everything out.
Seriously. And it wasn’t the actual soundtrack (usually) or lack of ADR either. At least 1/3 of the movie had this, I’m not even sure how best to describe it, but synth-y background noise that overpowered the dialogue. If Nolan just dropped that noise or replaced with properly tuned musical score, it’d probably be fine but then the score was so loud during the lead up to the test that I gave up trying to understand what was being said. I’d estimate that I just flat out could not hear at least 15-20% of the dialogue in Oppenheimer.
And the argument is always “but high dynamic range!” And they don’t explain anything past that as a defense. Which, no man. I know what dynamic range is in audio, and it doesn’t automatically make audio better. Get a better argument.
I almost killed myself, Chris Nolan!
Look out! I'm a shark!
It's for IMAX, babyyy
Christopher Nolan refuses to ADR famously(infamously?). So if you're wondering why it's hard to pick up what people are saying it's usually because of that. Also he makes the music too loud but we all knew that
Am I dumb or something because there was only a few scenes in tenet where the audio drowned out the dialog… but it seemed an intentional choice, as the dialog was irrelevant?
There are reasons for this: https://youtu.be/VYJtb2YXae8?si=2UaV70c--CFYrLkr
Not reasons excuses. There is no acceptable justification for a large chunk of your audience not being able to fully consume your content.
Did you watch the video? The excuse, if you prefer that term, is that the content is made for a specific method of consumption (high end theaters). It would be like complaining that a AAA game performs poorly on a smartphone. With respect to video content, we have been fortunate that many improvements to the media have been functionally backwards compatible (for lack of a better term), like higher resolution video looks better on a device even if that device can't display the higher resolution. Now, however, we're coming up against an improvement (more realistic lighting) that requires newer technology or the experience is degraded. This is unfortunate, but what other solution is realistic? Shoot everything twice with different lighting? I do get the annoyance, but I also understand the "excuses" for the annoyance and they make sense.
It boils down to film makers are completely out of touch with consumers. The consumer is to blame for their shit audio?
Nope. That's an excuse. And lighting isn't different than before, cameras are. They can pick up darker scenes, so these dipshits are using it like everyone watches in a dark controlled theater space in their home, which is not how tv (or movies) is consumed.
I don't see anything you've said that contradicts what I said. You are correct; they're making their media for a very specific consumption, on purpose. Just like most AAA video games are made for higher end equipment. Are you suggesting that movies and TV shows should be created to look good on a 6" phone screen, even if that results in a substandard experience on higher end setups and in theaters? Like, I think we all agree on the issue, but I'm unclear about what you're implying for a solution.
The cameras themselves can pick up the low light, but televisions can't display it properly. That's not the same as making something for one thing. Unless they've specifically made it for the theater (like Nolan does) then it's a failure of the DP and director. To not calibrate your monitors to what the footage will be watched on means they don't know what they're doing. GOT showed that these dummies don't know what they're doing. And if this crap is done during editing, that's a whole new level of incompetence. So I think you are giving them an excuse by saying technology is better, which might be true, but the ability to see what you've just shot is a billion times better and easier than it was during old playback days.
PA: Sir, the latest feedback is in, and the number one thing viewers said is, and I quote, "I can't hear shit!" Director: Hmm. I see. Bring me the DP. \[a few moments later\] DP: Yo? Director: Exactly how dark can you make the finished product?
>The same reason the dialogue is drowned out by the effects and ambient sounds. I find that the biggest issue is that dialogue is always on the centre channel and unless you have a decent setup with a decent center speaker then you are going to have trouble hearing it. It is even worse when you are downmixing the surround sound to stereo speakers because the downmixers rarely ever get the center speaker sound right.
I disagree, audio quality on old stuff tends to be really bad because you had like a 50 year period where everything in audio was recorded on magnetic tape.
Hide shitty CGI 😅
That episode is mostly people fucking on the beach though IIRC.
I still get mad as fuck just thinking about that episode of HOD. They KNEW that there was severe backlash from the GoT episode that was dark af... and then they just doubled down and made one DARKER and contrasty af. Such a good show too.
It was the same director în both cases. He has this issue.
I just assumed his issue is that he gets to shoot it and watch it on top quality equipment where I'm sure it looks good. I get to watch it on a 10 year old TV streamed via HBO on the lowest quality possible.
Editor here and you nailed it. That’s exactly the problem
Yeah that episode was a pain. Even with all lights closed, blinders down over the windows, it was very hard to see.
*"We appreciate you reaching out about a night scene in House of the Dragon: Episode 7 appearing dark on your screen. The dimmed lighting of this scene was an intentional creative decision."*
He is cutting them way too much slack. "I don't want to judge these professional producers." Way to be an ass-kisser, dude. You don't need to be a Michelin star chef to know the steak is burnt. That night scene at 2:19 looks so dogshit. I would legitimately be ashamed to show that to anyone.
Relax dude, I'm not kissing ass, but I am aware that many people work hard on these shows before the final product comes out.
Im being pedantic, but wouldn’t being contrasty mean there is more contrast between colors?
To me contrasty means black/whites. In this case, blacks and grays. On my screen it looked pixelated as fuck.
Seriously! I just finished through season 3 of The Witcher and TONS of scenes were just impossible to see no matter my screen's brightness.
Not being able to see or hear season three of The Witcher would be an improvement, though.
Oof. I’ve not been in any hurry to watch season three and this doesn’t make me want to try much harder.
The only guy in the production that cared about the source material quit, lol.
In this case they were doing us a favor.
The contrast with Army of Darkness was STARK. Those scenes are definitely night scenes, we as the audience get that, but you can still see spectacular detail on all the skeletons and the trees.... Literally the only "excuse" I let the GOT episodes get away with is that the "darkness as the enemy" theme of those episodes is supposed to be there. The idea that the army of the dead is unseen and terrifying in the darkness, I get that. There's thematic reasons you'd have a scene be actual, literal darkness. That should not apply to scenes of two characters talking in a fucking castle, but I get what they were going for at least.
Dark scenes I can tolerate. ^But ^why ^is ^everyone ^always ^whispering ^in ^shows ^and ^movies ^now?
i know a bunch of sound engineers. they all work from home and mix on headphones. then producers view the end product in amazing dolby soundproof rooms with thousands of dollars worth of high end amplifiers and reference speakers that cost more than most cars. if no one runs through a regular old TV that's what you get. adjusting sound for televisions is a process in itself - i used to work at a sound house that almost exclusively brought commercials up to broadcast standard. i don't think they do that for streaming. last thing - if you expect your phone, tablet or laptop to deliver good sound it just isn't going to happen. what you run through actually matters.
So the lesson of the day is to bar your engineers and editors from using expensive equipment if you want to get the high-quality work you're paying for.
Any good editor/engineer knows to reference on shit systems. It’s why the laptop test is tried and true. Sounds like they know and don’t care which is even worse.
I think you’ve missed the point in what I was trying to say. But I also didn’t explain it very well so maybe that’s my fault. Movies today have people whispering all the time for dramatic effect I suppose. But it can make everything very difficult to hear and it seems super unnecessary. It’s hard to explain but it’s almost always a gruff, low volume, exaggerated whisper -like dialogue.
The same reason you have to keep adjusting the volume of your TV - studios aren’t optimising for home viewing.
Reminds me of how some producers take a master and listen to it in an average car: if it still sounds good therein, then it’s a sonic yes.
Why would Home Box Office not optimize for home viewing??
It’s colour grading. The process has become such an essential (and expensive) part of post production that it’s managed to breed this bizarre group of weirdos that seem to think it’s a dark art only a select few can do - so producers see something that’s premium and specialist, and give them too much creative freedom. That also means the guys who actually do the colour grading are rarely questioned because “they know best”. Not to mention that they do the job in a dark room on really premium HDR monitors, so what they see is very rarely what’s being broadcast to people’s consumer TVs.
Pretentious directors who think low light cinematography for TV is art and an intentional creative decision. From my point of view: someone who doesn’t understand the audience the medium is intended for. I can’t see shit, boss.
It's a plot to sell high contrast TV's.
Reminds me of music that doesn't sound like the producer heard because you don't have $1200 headphones and an Amp.
Byproduct of streaming services supporting HDR content. I imagine there's some top down pressure to show off what HDR can do which might also be related to industry pressure to get people to buy tvs
Too bad my big TV is used to watch youtube by kids while I'm watching shows on a tablet or a 28" TV from 2012 in my bedroom.
Most directors are hubris filled trash cans that think they are the second coming of Scorsese
Wait, when did Scorsese go?
And yes, you we're talking about you Snyder, you fucking hack.
Some of this is one of my least favorite modern filming approaches: the aggressive, lazy use of filters. The filters diminish the vibrancy of natural light causing the scenes to wash out, and, in general, contribute to the film makers not making an effort to block and frame scenes, think about the time of day they film in, think about lighting, or just think about anything other than “we’ll fix it in post”. The result, among other things, are drab, lifeless looking frames.
Filters are not being used. This is color grading. Unfortunately, studios and streaming services are pushing colorists to make use of HDR tech, that will make a scene like this look like a realistic night shot. The problem is, the TV's that can take advantage of this cost an absurd amount of money. There are barely any of them on the market for consumers.
There are no TVs on the market that use HDR tech? What.
That's not what I said. I said the current HDR TV's are extremely limited. The ones that can make use of a scene like this are beyond unaffordable.
How are they extremely limited?
What powers the ability of a TV to make use of HDR is the amount of light it can emit. That's measured in "nits". Streaming services are releasing shows right now with HDR capabilities of upwards of around 1000 nits. Consumer TV's are pushing around 300 nits or so, they don't even advertise nits levels because, most people aren't even interested in it. They just see HDR on the box, and don't really even know what that means. A true, 1000-nit capable UHD HDR television that's only 40 inches in size costs around $30,000 at the moment. Streaming services are future-proofing their shows for when the cost for these TV's come down in the future. There will be a TV arms race some day in the future, as HDR can do a whole lot more than just 1000 nits. Right now, the only real consumer HDR experiences are in movie theaters.
But most of the newer OLEDs do reach 1000 nits..? My S90C is said to reach 1000 nits and it costed me like a $1000 bucks. Are you saying that's not "real" 1000 nits or what?
They don't cover the color gamut, they can handle 1000-nit "whites". They aren't true 1000 nits.
>A true, 1000-nit capable UHD HDR television that's only 40 inches in size costs around $30,000 at the moment. Lol wat
You're 100% free to not like the fact of the matter.
ND filters accomplish this without post grading or a combination of the two.
There's no way that video thumbnail is accurate.
I assure you it is
My TV wasn't nice enough. We stopped watching the series because fuck that.
I truly hate the awful idea that filming a night scene in the day and just putting a blue hue over it, or dimming it into oblivion ever came up and then actually stuck around. Used to be a thing made-for-tv movies did like the sci-fi channel etc... low budget on display but this is premium "fuck it, I don't feel like filming at night and having to deal with poor lighting even though it looks 100x's better" levels of fuckery
That fight scene in the last season of game of thrones when it was all pitch black omg that was so terrible. They completely dropped the ball on that, what a total shit show
I’m not interested in analysing why they do it I just want them to stop. The same with shocking sound mixing. I don’t care what great reason they had for making bad television. They just need to make better television.
Isn't a reason of it due to trying to hide bad fight scene choreography?
Nah, that's the reason they do shaky, frantic cutting during a fight scene. This was a thing before the Bourne movies, in Walter Murch's book In The Blink Of An Eye about film editing, he mentions that fight scenes should be edited in this way. I disagree, I think fight scenes should be good enough that smooth, wide shots of the action look just as good as the rest of the movie. This is why even though everyone else hates it, I think the fight scenes in The Matrix sequels (Not the 4th one) are fantastically shot even if the CGI isn't up to snuff. I want more fight scenes like that, not fast editing where you can't tell what the hell is going on so they can hide the fact that it doesn't look like a real fight.
I'm pretty sure this is the whole reason Keanu adores the John Wick movies so much. His personal protest against trash fight choreography.
I don't know how popular Every Frame A Painting is (he obviously has lots of views), but he breaks down how Jackie Chan fights work and how showing the whole impact and follow through emphasize the impact and result better than clipping everything. I think I've found the main point of the video where he talks about it, but I didn't rewatch the whole thing just now, so there could be more about it. I think it's more a feature of all Kung Fu to show the whole fight - which might be another one of this guy's videos, actually. [https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM\_GQ?si=Z61ydwPWV-0RhzxH&t=254](https://youtu.be/Z1PCtIaM_GQ?si=Z61ydwPWV-0RhzxH&t=254)
Man, I wish they would come back and make more videos. Good Chinese "kung-fu" movies do come to mind for great fight choreography and cinematography that compliments how good it is. We do see that influence sometimes in American cinema, such as John Wick, even if it gets more ridiculous in every sequel.
And sometimes Liam Neeson just doesn't wanna jump over a fence!
Man, I can just imagine between takes like two PAs hoisting Neeson higher and higher over the fence, moving out of the way for a two second shot, then they come back and hoist him more.
Wave of the future method: PAs wearing greenscreen outfits and stick with Neeson through the whole movie, "invisibly" helping him do everything!
Generally darkness is actually used to hide bad CGI. CGI is much easier to make look believable in night scenes. It’s why so much of Venom was during the night
when filming "day for night," a scene will be underexposed in-camera and darkened during post, often with a blue tint added, to lend the take the illusion that it was done at night. i also hate interior shots in thrillers.
Those scenes looked dreadful in HOTD.
Similar to the audio mixing, it’s like whoever is producing these forgot the home part of home theater. It was impossible to watch some of HOD in the day time and had to wait for night with all lights off.
New fad of shooting night scenes during the day and fixing it in post. They call it “day for night”. [Here’s a video with more info.](https://youtu.be/1ctQIIl1PxY?si=u5_Rg9KK6-wrQmuw)
That is not a new trend whatsoever.
It's not new at all.
Is that new? James Bond films from the 1960s used to do that.
Didn’t say new technique.
It was pretty implied, but it's also not a new "fad" either.
I always thought it was so they could go cheaper on the set dressing of location shoots. If you can’t see the background, the production doesn’t need to spend money making every detail look authentic.
Because the world is so dark now
Because the first thing that starts to go on your tv is the back lighting. It's called sods law.
This isn't known by many people, but modern televisions have options that enable the adjustment of brightness, contrast and many other technical aspects that allow for a much clearer picture. Said enhancements allow the viewer a much better viewing experience. I got your back, man.
I feel like its a way to combat piracy. Like viewing this through any dubious means would cause the picture to degrade. Its like when starting up a game and they tell you to have the symbol just visible. I never do that my eyes suck
TLDR? And should we adjust our TVs somehow?
I didn’t watch the video but basically It’s to hide details and save on production costs. Upping shadows means you need more details. Lower shadows means less. They go as low as they think they can get away with
Set your tv to dynamic mode.
This is not the answer. It might "work" for some, but it's not a reasonable thing to ask of viewers.
now. lol There've always been dark and disturbing movies. Nosferautu, anyone
Adjust your settings
To cover up for the crappy special effects
Easier to hide CGI id imagine
To incentivize consumerism. Buy this brand new hdr+ capable TV or you won't be able to enjoy content anymore.
I watched Dune and couldn't see shit, first time I genuinely thought something was fucked up with my display settings
To hide Starbucks cups of course.
Having subtitles on made the dark scenes nearly impossible to watch on my TV. The white produced by the subtitles simply drowned out everything else, especially if watched in darkness. What made it even worse is the fact the TV would try to compensate for overblown whites suddenly showing up and would make the entire scene darker.
One of the episodes was just an absolute write off because it was dark and it was just long white hair talking in hushed whispers so it was hard to sometimes tell which one was talking
I’ve complained about this to my peers and they all think I’m imagining it. I found Loki season 1 very dim and unpleasant to watch.
Try "Unforgiven" for an older dark movie. ... TIL, I needs a new tv
I don't know if he mentions this in the video, but it's too long for me to scrub through. Apart from the obvious physical hardware limitations of some displays. I've noticed compression noise making overly dark scenes impossible to watch when streaming. Some shows and movies seem to be so dark that the algorithm they are using considers the image to be the same shade and compresses it into oblivion. It's mostly noticeable on my PC through a browser where the streamers limit the quality of the image we are allowed to receive. It was pretty annoying in recent movies like The Killer.
At 10:25, I discuss the bitrate and codec issues at play here.
I am limited as to which movie theaters I can go to in my area because some of them don't project bright enough to see what's going on in today's movies. I had to see "Dune" a second time because, surprisingly, a movie that takes place mostly in the desert was too dark at my closest theater.
To lower the budget for CGI! The ultra dark science covers up the cheap CGI! I really hate this tbh.
This reminds me of one game where developers redone all the sound design. They hired pro studio, recorded everything top-notch quality and all. People hated it. Turns out if you mix your sound for a top-notch studio sound equipment - it doesn't sound well on consumer level. They remixed it for mid-range audio devices and everyone liked it again. Except movie production doesn't care, they would be glad to forbid any kind of movie watching outside of theaters.
Unpopular opinion but I think it’s because people watch TV with the blinds open and/or a bunch of lights on.
I wish we could do some reshade on some movies and shows because it's so bad like the example OP posted.
There are all sorts of auto level approaches that can help here, but realistically, it will never look that good compared to a proper color grade.
Keeps cost down so they every detail in the background is drowned out by the darkness. Good ole bait and switch.
Because dark and muddy graphics make it easy to hide the crust of CGI similar to how old video games looked very dirty and musty to hide inconsistencies in UV mapping and stuff like that
Because it’s night, and directors/cinematographers want it to look like night. We are use to the 1980’s blue light way of shooting night scenes
This paired with the horrible audio problems is so infuriating. And the video where editors acknowledge the audio problem but blame the consumer is outrageous. Film makers are out of touch.
It's especially bad when streaming compression technology absolutely chokes on and mangles dark scenes. Tom Scott has a video on it: https://youtu.be/h9j89L8eQQk?si=ir4beUhTSTY-Fm6A
Actually, depending on how far back you compare, there’s a good reason for this. Back in the 80s and 90s, the silver-based film they used allowed for very high capture quality, but it required very high ambient light levels. So sets were lit extremely aggressively. This was unpleasant for the actors who often had to be powdered regularly to keep from appearing shiny in the hot, blinding studio lights. As technology progressed, low-light capture was much simpler and much higher quality, so directors used this new avenue of filmmaking to their creative advantage. Thus, you see many more examples of low-light cinematography (television or otherwise) as the years go by; and that’s why by comparison shows from the 80s and 90s appear very bright and daylight-tinged.
^(and the dialog is like this, especially when it's something incredibly important, but you can't hear properly because) **THE MUSIC IS LIKE THIS ALL THE TIME WHILE THEY'RE TALKING**
How American is it to have massively invested in bandwidth only use it on the proliferated quantity of crap content instead of make the truly good content even better?
[The darkness is a metaphor, FOR DARKNESS](https://www.reddit.com/r/BoJackHorseman/s/6CDspZXArh)
maybe answers here - but it's pretty hard to great for all different screens out there - at people are watching in more and more diverse setting, in the sun etc etc....
Because of HDR
What a lot of people don’t realise is that they are answering their own question when wondering why visuals and sound don’t looks like they used to, when in reality that’s the entire point. We are in the current trend of more “naturalistic” dark visuals and muffled sound. This might be considered a bad trend, but something worse than following a bad trend in following an old out of date trend. This is why filmmakers avoid the blue-ish sci-fi lighting of the 80s, the music video aesthetic of the 90’s, and the filtered instagram look of the 00’s. Yes, Rob Marshall has already directed a mermaid heavy movie in pirates of the Caribbean On Strangers Tide, but he intentionally underlit The Little Mermaid because he doesn’t want his newest film to look like one he did in 2011.