Whatever the reasons, surely filmmakers should take the (sad) realities of the home viewing into account. Much like I've read about record producers who test their mixes on shitty car stereos etc, to make sure it works in every form

@DonkeyPopsicle

Ай бұрын

not sure we want the visual equivalent of the loudness wars

@johndoderino2609

Ай бұрын

@@DonkeyPopsicle oh god no. Maybe a better example of a compromise would be Kubrick shooting open matte because he hated pan and scan/letterboxing

great as always! I think it's fair that some filmmakers are averse to the giant-random-barely-offscreen source/unmotivated/borderline corny look of the traditional night scene. The response to that, IMO, is to explore new techniques like those used on NOPE, and not to just darken everything overall and hope everyone has their OLED tvs in the windowless basement

Great info, Devan! Really liked how you put this together 👌

Amazing insights and a nice video companion to your original article. Great work!

Love that your form is part of the text, here. On brand. Also love your moments of "film look" where you using approaches your learned from The Holdovers?

I hope these become a regular thing, great stuff as always as a fan of your written work

@DevanAGScott

2 ай бұрын

Thanks; I'm aiming to do one per month for a year, at least!

Keep up with the videos man. I'm an aspiring filmmaker and you're helping a lot

Fantastic video - loved the real time demonstrations of how color grading and exposure can affect an image, as well as your comparison between film and digital workflows. You're really able to cover nearly every aspect of this issue in a way that's understandable to a layperson. Would love a more in-depth explanation on how exactly lighting conditions can work to create a dark-looking image, though that's probably outside the scope of this video. I'm also curious, you mention IRE as a measurement of brightness, but also talk about the image being under/over-exposed by a couple stops. I've heard these terms before, but never been completely sure on how they relate. Is it essentially a different metric for the same measurement?

@DevanAGScott

2 ай бұрын

The relationship between IRE and "Exposure" is indeed nonlinear, and depends on how one measures both. On-set, exposure is measured exponentially, but IRE levels, in the sense that I'm using them at least, are not - so, for example, a doubling of exposure does not lead to a doubling of IRE levels. If I was working in a linear colour encoding, that relationship would be more of a 1:1 one. If all this seems confusing (which it is), it's because the luminance characteristics of an image as it reaches your screen is the result of a complex series of operations. Fun times! Might make a good video one day.

6:21 Love this video, which is why this shot should have been held 10x as long. PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW 🙌🔥 This filmmaker knows- awesome stuff. Keep it up.

Good video, great article.

Great work as always!

@DevanAGScott

2 ай бұрын

Thanks so much!

Great explanation 👏👏👏🙌🙌🙏🏻

Wonderful video essay and article! Thanks for the hard work. Hopefully the film industry can settle on some delivery and TV standards so everything looks and sounds like it's supposed to for the masses. Higher bitrates for all!

6:21 obviously having a lower data rate will lead to lower picture quality, but i wonder if the 4k streams of that GoT episode would have less (but still noticeable) banding by virtue of the higher quality version using a more efficient codec than the 1080p streams. IDK for certain, and i bet even if they did use hevc for hd streams, they would just use the opportunity to lower the bitrate for similar quality. after all the economics of streaming just encourage that sort of race to the bottom. If only there was a way to distribute video over the internet that doesn't require the user to download the video in real time as they watch it, thus potentially allowing for less bandwidth constraints during delivery and higher quality... but that could never happen!

Thank you!

Great video, and love your Twitter account ❤ But if I may comment a little bit, you sound a little too robotic at times 😅

wonderful video (and article!!)

Great video. Todd Vaziri told me to come and watch it so that's pretty cool

Wow, great video. I would really like to see how you color graded the video!

That's what i call movie magic 💪

Just anecdotal but I did find certain House of Dragon scenes way worse on the eyes (though not as illegible as others saw, in part perhaps because of a dark viewing enviornment + customized display settings) than streaming The Batman at home. I'm curious if that's just my own perception or if there's a quantitiative difference in how they are "dark"

@DevanAGScott

2 ай бұрын

It was outside the scope of this particular video, but I think what a lot of people are responding to when they claim things are "unwatchably dark" is actually a combo of darkness and poor shot design. The Batman, while often dark, is very consistent in drawing your eye to the subject of each frame. Even if it's a small part of the frame, the compositionally relevant elements are always well-defined.

Dammit, Batman!

dimness is also more realistic and naturalistic as a lot of situations in real life would not look as bright as they would if an older film depicted it. its kinda like how film audio means an actor doesn’t need to project their voice to be heard in a theater as they would on stage but rather speak quietly when appropriate, modern filmmaking technology allows scenes to appear dimmer when appropriate. however imo but whispery dialogue and dim scenes have been taken too far lately and are employed whether they are appropriate or not

@morenol1990

2 ай бұрын

They definitely take it way too far and sometimes exaggerate how dark something should look. Even if, in some circumstances, a dark scene is more realistic, I'd much rather they be less realistic and allow me to see what is actually happening

@42crazyguy

2 ай бұрын

What use is showing things as dim as they would actually be? Who cares? Not one time have I ever watched a movie with easily visible night scenes and been annoyed at how they were portrayed. I only notice it when things start too get way too dark. Especially the darkness of modern digital movies which end up looking like they are just dimming the image to hide their poor cgi. Even in comedy films or adventure films I will often find the image to be painfully dark. Who is that for?

@sumbohdee2luv

2 ай бұрын

@@42crazyguy i mean i bring up the parallel with acting because would you say “what use is a naturalistic performance, i don’t mind an actor yelling every line so i can hear it in the back of the stage theater?” it’s subjective, some people find naturalism more immersive and if you don’t that’s also fine

If you are making a movie or TV show, you should not make it for the best screen you should be making for the average screen. Both audio and visual Should be legible play. Your “dark” Scenes in this video are still easy to read. I know which way you’re facing, where you are and what’s going on? That is not always true in major productions with dark scenes.

But Gordon Willis's shots look 100x better than any of the modern shots you used. Whites should be white and blacks should be black, this low contrast bullshit hurts my eyes. Digital was a mistake. Also LOG footage makes everything super washed out and no amount of color grading can make it look natural again. No one cares anymore. Take a look at the new Criterion transfers of Wong Kar-wai's films, particularly Chungking Express, and compare it to the original DVDs; they look like green and yellow piss. Maybe he finally took off his sunglasses and was confused why everything wasn't dim and told them to stop it down and tint it.

Coz it'S CINEMATIC 😅

cause it makes cinema look gooder!

4:30 - "trendy" amongst DI nerds... not for normal people who just want to watch a film and see whats going on. See also sound levels.

@OlegUstimenko

2 ай бұрын

have you considered becoming a dop out of spite with the intention of showing the world that you can do better and thus creating the visual trends of the future?

@RT-qi7rn

2 ай бұрын

@@OlegUstimenko It's very hard these days because crews are entrenched in digital filmmaking processes, no one allows experimentation or new ideas (or old ideas for that matter). You'll use the digital camera with rolling shutter and you'll say it looks as good as film or so help you

@m0nk3yl0v3r

2 ай бұрын

@@OlegUstimenko I dont have to be a chef to know my burger taste like shit.

@42crazyguy

2 ай бұрын

​@@m0nk3yl0v3rpreach

@OlegUstimenko

2 ай бұрын

@@m0nk3yl0v3r but have you considered it?

Have u seen GODZILLA 2014😂