Law and Order SVU tonight

[Tim O'Connor]

I caught L&O SVU tonight, haven't seen it for a while. I think that it shoots on Alexa now, don't know how long that's been the case. Overall the show looked great but there were some scenes that just looked really...video-y, which is I guess how some shows would be described back in the days when it was so much easier to tell instantly what had or hadn't been shot on film or on video. The scenes that felt this way to me were mostly interiors and it was mostly with faces that I got this feeling, enough to pull me out of the story. There's something about faces on film that is just right and that is now regularly accomplished with video but in this show tonight it seemed often that faces had that smooth, unnatural look that seems kind of like cyborg-plastic skin. I should mention that I watched on an older tv, in SD. Did anybody else watch?

[Vincent Sweeney]

It isn't the kind of thing that I can tolerate watching but I continue to find that video look pretty often with any digital camera and why I still don't trust them for lots of situations. As far as why it happens sometimes and other times not is a mystery that no one has ever answered.

 

I just saw the last Harry Potter tonight at a theater... talk about why film needs to have a LONG life! Amazing looking with perfect color, like usual.

[Tim O'Connor]

It isn't the kind of thing that I can tolerate watching but I continue to find that video look pretty often with any digital camera and why I still don't trust them for lots of situations. As far as why it happens sometimes and other times not is a mystery that no one has ever answered.

 

I just saw the last Harry Potter tonight at a theater... talk about why film needs to have a LONG life! Amazing looking with perfect color, like usual.

 

 

 

Sometimes I would watch a really well-acted show and feel badly for the actors because the production/studio saved on money by shooting in video and yet lost so much in the impact of the show. Have you ever seen behind the scenes footage of a film in production that covers an actual take and frames it really well, and even when it shows only the actors, no light stands, cameras, crew, etc., it just feels fake? Sometimes shows that use that footage as part of interviews with actors will also use the edited scene from the film and, even considering music and grading and different things, there is just something about video that robs actors.

 

If technology had developed differently, and the first movies were shot on handcranked video cameras, and now the industry shift were to the reverse of digital-cinema cameras, to these new film cameras, would anybody be able to say that the film look didn't look like a movie should look?

 

Maybe people now might argue that scenes on film seem believable and video has a harshness that often doesn't work like that, because people have been conditioned to associate the look of film with believability more than with video, but I think that film simply has inherent qualities that soften and smooth out the details of artifice and fiction which when noticeable take a viewer out of the story.

[Shawn Martin]

I don't watch SVU, but I felt the same way about Criminal Intent when it switched to video (the F35 I think); it was one of the reasons I stopped watching. Digital always seems to wreak havoc on skintones and faces - especially women's faces. Everybody looked like they were made out of yellow plastic.

 

It's sad that people actually think looks like this are "good enough".

[Phil Rhodes]

Can someone post screengrabs?

 

P

[Tim O'Connor]

Can someone post screengrabs?

 

P

 

I don't have any but if you picture nice sets and actors who once looked believable in a world that looked believable and then you see them again some time later and they still look pretty believable except for moments when they look artificial in some weird, anti-human way, like they've been replaced by really high quality cyborgs who are just about perfect except for hot plastic patches on their skin, and their world is kind of changed like that too, that's kind of the eerie drift.

[Daniel Jackson]

I don't have any but if you picture nice sets and actors who once looked believable in a world that looked believable and then you see them again some time later and they still look pretty believable except for moments when they look artificial in some weird, anti-human way, like they've been replaced by really high quality cyborgs who are just about perfect except for hot plastic patches on their skin, and their world is kind of changed like that too, that's kind of the eerie drift.

 

 

That is so true, eerily so in fact.

[Markshaw]

I really detest that "Soap opera" feel of many TV shows. It looks so fake.