I'm watching Dante's Peak (1997), a volcano flick starring Pierce Brosnan.
The colours are just so wonderful -- it's like being outside in real nature.
Whereas with modern movies things seem really washed out. The filming is crisp, and the composition is usually good, but it feels like you're living in a claustrophobic world. Modern movies feel a lot like living in 1984.
Is this the difference between film/digital? Or are people choosing different colour palates?
The theme of the modern era is "Realism." Not actual reality, but what people think realism looks like. Which means most forms of art/media attempt to have muted and boring colors as that is what is associated with the idea of "realism" in most people's minds.
This also means less fantastical locations, backgrounds, and architecture. Instead everything needs to look assemblable and human, meaning it all has this boring scrap metal feel with space being given the least concern in exchange for a "lived in" decor.
The mid-late 90s was an era of big budget CGI, which meant the opposite. Wild and vibrant madness because they were finally able to have it without needing 10000 hours with mini-sets and practical effects to maybe look passable.
another problem is good cgi looks like good practical effects but it's cheaper(ish), whereas shitty practical effects have a charm that shitty cgi will never have.
...Also, a lot of the films people look at and go "why does the cgi from the nineties look so much better than modern CGI!?!" actually don't look better, you're just confusing a practical effect for cgi, or they actually played to the strengths of cgi when choosing when and where to use it.
The actual cgi effects in, say, jurassic park look pretty awful if you look at them carefully (the stampeding dinosaurs scene, the brontosaurs in the background in the establishing shot for the park, etc.), but you don't really notice it unless you're looking, because they were extremely careful when and where to use CGI instead of, say, animatronics, or guys in rubber suits. You'll also notice they don't linger too long on a digital effects shot for very long, so your eyes never get a chance to notice that the lighting doesn't quite match up properly, or a dino's skin is a little too shiny.
Was watching some stuff about this the other night. And I think I agree. Modern CG got a lot better at things like lighting and texture mapping. But it losing the novelty and becoming overused meant that it wasn't getting the same love and autistic attention to detail in each shot.
If you gave the teams from some of those 90s the tools from today, they'd blow modern stuff out of the water. The limitations made them master the tools and innovate. Now it's just hammer and all of filmmaking looks a nail.
well, a big part of the problem is CGI works better in certain circumstances than it does in others. It's a specialized tool, but filmmakers often treat it like a swiss army knife.
Put it this way; if you wanted to dig a hole in your backyard to plant something, could you use an ax? Absolutely. Would it be easier than doing so by hand? Probably. Would I ever advise you to do so? Hell no, get a shovel and save your back. save the ax for chopping wood.
It's the same with CGI. It's absolutely fantastic under certain circumstances when it's used properly, but there are other circumstances where another tool would work much better. We call most of these other tools practical effects. Make up, prosthetics, animatronics, sugar glass, physical props, lighting, all work better under the right circumstances and are often cheaper than depending on CGI.
That's not to say CGI can't be front-row center under the right conditions, look at avatar, fantastically beautiful movie in no small part due to the CGI, and (even if you hate the story) the Green Lantern movie, where the CGI actually worked for the costumes and effects, but often times, CG just looks out of place, because it's the wrong tool for the job.
also, thank you for attending my Ted Talk, lmao.
Don't confuse what the content creators consider reality with what most people consider reality.
The huge amount of people that praise the graphics in CoD and other AAA titles says that those things are often one and the same.
Reality is Unrealistic X Prefers the Illusion.
The farther away from nature/reality humans get, the more they think their impressions of How Things Should Be seem more real than reality itself.
Color grading and lighting is used to set the "mood" of a scene, and there are all sorts of psychological tricks that they will use to make it effective.
I haven't seen that movie in decades, and I'm far from an expert on film making, but I would guess that the color grading they used fell out of style due to Hollywood's more recent tendency to stick with the copy/paste approach of using what "works" until they beat it to death.
Everything looks orange in south America!
From someone who likes to pick up 4K releases of older pre-digital movies, and who likes photography, well I think you're close to on to something with respect to it being film. More specifically, the level of artistry that existed when held back by the limitations of film.
I don't know the movie well, but the clips I looked at it seems like liked everything intentionally slightly underexposed, but that gives everything bright a bit more of a glow, it has more contrast. They use that a lot, the lights on the wall, the neon signs, the headlights, etc. You can tell the explosions are real too, they just have a different look to them. Compare something like Independence Day movie to modern Marvel drivel, the former is noted for being one of the last movies to use all practical effects.
Most modern "art" doesn't experiment at all. It's regurgitated mass market. Basic lighting, fancy CGI for flashy trailers, throw in a joke not even mature enough for Family Guy, etc. There's no funding for someone who tries outside of a few established directors.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I spend a lot of time in sunlit nature, and it's just so beautiful. But movies usually seem muted -- at least modern movies. The filming is crisp, but the colours don't... really exist, if that makes sense.
Even simple stuff like Magnum PI had pretty vibrant colours that I don't really see these days.
On the other hand, I'm struggling to think of a modern show that deals with normal people in normal environments...
Digital is part of it. It's not strictly a limitation with the technology itself, but the nature of it means it's very easy to fuck something up in the pipeline from the actual light to a viewable video. A lot of it is "styling" too. There's an infamous picture of every frame of the entire Harry Potter franchise averaged out and blended into a line, which shows just how much directors and editors do to the color to set the mood.
Great movie by the way. Lots of practical effects and the last of an era of grounded disaster movies. These days, they can't keep it in their fucking pants. Even action movies try to top 2012 half the time, and 2012 was ridiculous even for its time.
Somewhat. To help you understand the differences, consider this film on the much more extreme usecase of rocket photography.
Film can have a much wider dynamic range than sensors.
Great video! Thanks.
I think a lot of people on this board would love to see it, so I hope someone sees your comment.
It's a choice. You have control over exposure and saturation levels when developing film or processing digital. It's like how every game in the early 2000s was brown, following in the footsteps of quake. Now there's an excess of cartoon rainbow shit due to fortnite.
A lot of the colour grading happens in post production. But more specifically, if you watch a lot of the cinematography and digital editing channels on YouTube, they talk about how it's much easier to blend CGI effects into a scene if the colours are more washed out. It's why usually really dark scenes have the best uses of CGI, and rarely ever does it look good in a bright, well lit setting with vibrant colours, because it's difficult for CGI to match real life in many cases.
You'll note most "good" CGI shots in today's films take place at night, or poorly lit areas. A good example is the smile monster from Smile, or the snappy jaw things from Arcadia. In poorly lit areas with washed out colours you can usually integrate CGI better and fool the viewer into thinking it looks more integrated.
Likewise, for films without a lot of CGI that are just washed out, it fits in with what some of the other comments here mentioned about the directors thinking they're artists and trying to depict what they think is "realistic", or "gritty", when in reality it's just washed out and boring.
Maybe you have a very nice screen?
I have an Acer Aspire 3 -- noted for it's so-so screen quality!