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What happened to look of movies


fatih yıkar

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......in my opinion the style of our decade is lens flares, vintage lenses and trying to make the movies shot digitally look as if its shot on Kodak stock (film)!!!! I think our decade has deduced the film look is THE look but for their own reasons they don't shoot on film....maybe they shoot digitally to ensure everyone on set can see through monitors making sure they get their 'two cents' accounted for.....but what do i know.....

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At the time Donner's "Superman" was made, there were no "similar" films, no one had spent a lot of money making a serious adaption of a comic book before so it was new territory. What made it work was that Donner took it seriously.

 

The use of fog filters is somewhat of its time though, it was more common then to shoot whole movies with diffusion on the lens. I think it had the benefit of taking some of the candy-color gloss off of the red and blue costume without desaturating it as far as "Superman Returns" and "Man of Steel" did with the costume in order to get away from those aggressive comic book colors. The fog filters certainly worked well in the Krypton scenes to make them more otherworldly and dreamlike and in the case of the Smallville scenes, more nostalgic.

 

Yeah, and I think that's the difference between the action genre pre 2000s or pre 90s verse what's on the screen these days. The last superhero film I saw was Guardians of the Galaxy, and where I knew I was not the target demographic going in, I had heard a lot about it, and the thing that struck me about the film and a couple of other superhero films, was that it wasn't serious in the least. To me that comes across in the shooting style.

 

I don't think that makes all films look worse, as per the OPs opening post.

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For me the last 50 years of 'film' has been one of shooting more in more realistic lighting conditions for some types of genres. One still has the big block buster films, with massive sets (just watched the 4 Pirates of the Caribbean films in prep to watch the newest installment, and of course the lighting on such films is almost anything by realistic... except for clear 'day shots'...)

 

But a lot of human interest drama is shot 'naturally' for some definition of that word.

 

On the other hand there is a lot of work done where color casts are part of the look, whether an overall 'green/cyan' twinge... 'warm yellow/orange/red', etc. or used in certain scenes for some effect.

 

In terms of B&W 'classic hollywood', there was dramatic lighting, perhaps sets that had shadows painted so that the lighting on the talent could be 'lower', but still give the visual effect of 'drama'. There was also the use of global soft focus filtering, or 'region specific' filtering, especially on women.

 

But B&W did have the limitation of lack of 'color'... enter in Technicolor, and the style changed to show saturated, almost hyperreal color...

 

As mentioned the 1960s ushered in a more 'you are there' look, and the gritty film stile of locations, low light, pushed film stock, etc. gave a sense of 'realism' that a film on a sound stage did not yield.

 

Styles and tastes change, as does the technology. The Digital era has had a certain amount of experimentation using most of the history of visual presentation.

 

I personally don't have some fond nostalgic view of Film Film presentations, as most of my experiences of 'movies' as a youth were at cheap theaters where the films were shown had been 'on the circuit' for perhaps years, and showed it. (back before the block buster era, films would travel around the country, first to premiere theaters in big cities, and finally perhaps a year or so later, end up in Bugtussel for a showing in front a bunch of farmers, who may get into a fight during the show, or at a 25 cent theater, and anyone knows would could happen in the back areas of the theater...)

 

And of course there was late night TV... B&W TV... so, for many 1950s/1960s films my earliest recollection of these films was in B&W, having seen them on some movie night or late night movie fodder.

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I'm sorry it's not easy to find similiar environments like interior bright dark all time :)

Mission impossible

 

1996-EXR 500T 2006-Vision2 100T,500T D.I

2000-EXR 100T - Vision 500T 2011-Vision3 200T,500T D.I

2015-Vision3 200T,500T D.I

post-69480-0-19276100-1495641418_thumb.jpg

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Well, the OP brings up "Scream", and shows screen captures of that film.

 

A little known film, which I think is much funnier than Scream, is a little gem from the 80s called "Student Bodies". Where "Student Bodies" has more subtle humor, is a bit more intelligent and witty than "Scream" could ever hope to be, "Scream" is the better looking film.

 

Just an FYI.

 

*EDIT*

I'm referring to the 81 "Student Bodies" film, not the more contemporary one.

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Well, the OP brings up "Scream", and shows screen captures of that film.

 

A little known film, which I think is much funnier than Scream, is a little gem from the 80s called "Student Bodies". Where "Student Bodies" has more subtle humor, is a bit more intelligent and witty than "Scream" could ever hope to be, "Scream" is the better looking film.

 

Just an FYI.

 

*EDIT*

I'm referring to the 81 "Student Bodies" film, not the more contemporary one.

Thanks for recommend i'm going to watch in a little while...

 

Speaking of scream looking better, i like the trilogy looks but first scream truly looking different than scream 2 and 3 i always wonder why?

Some people called 'washed out look' a little bit 'bright' and ''whitish'' which i like because its make it scream unique.

Mark Irwin make it for consciously for sure but They do this through ''filter' ,'lab processing' 'color grading' or they use low contrast stock ''Vision 320T'' 2 and 3 looks more sharp higher contrast more saturated but stock and movie came out same year... I couldn't figure out

post-69480-0-87501100-1496093595_thumb.jpg

in a little whi. look
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I've always been interested in film stock evolution. For me, time periods are defined by how they look on film. Film stocks have been changing since the beginning of film. "The Sound of Music" was filmed on 50ASA tungsten film with far less latitude than today. Now 500T is the industry work horse, often pushed to 1000ASA with a lot of latatude. So modern films are a lot more revealing, less moody or mysterious. I do like the look of modern film stocks in the smaller guages but my favorite looks are the technicolor from about 66 to about 72. I also like the next generation of films from 74 to about 82.

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So modern films are a lot more revealing, less moody or mysterious.

 

I doubt that or put another way, if they are revealing more of something, then it’s the lack of work, I dare hardly to say the lazyness or bluntness of our time. Moody or mysterious pictures as you say can’t be filmed with a documentary attitude, they must be created. Watching older movies one sees the work put into them. Or not

 

Jean Renoir made films that at time sparkle with light. It takes a contact print off the OCN, of course. He had the courage to let the camera(man) stay calm before the miracles of the world and just roll. One can say that many old films are nothing than cinematographed theatre but they still bear something distinct within, something that isn’t theatre and plain documented action, either. As I can describe it, it’s respect of everything else besides oneself, it’s mutuality between the cinematographer and the scene.

 

Quentin Tarantino just misses this. He can shoot on 16 or on 65, he will never let a story tell itself out of itself. Certainly, somebody invents a story but from one point of time on it needs to be left alone to be able to develop its own life. That’s probably the noblest task a producer can take, to care about the happening often against the different directors. We don’t have the strong producers anymore or too few. That is the reason for our over technical and over computerized and so obvious movies. To say nothing of the ever repeating formula cinema that bores me to stone. The good, the bad, and the ugly; sex and crime; man over woman; last minute rescue; us and them.

 

There is not only a look to movies, to talk about looks alone is like discussing make-up. Facial expression is the important thing. How many times have we seen great actors with stone faces? Robert De Niro needs his ass kicked from time to time, else he acts nothing better than a stand-in. Naturally, if the story is nil, no director can squeeze anything out of the script. Casablanca has a number of impossible tweaks and facts to it, yet it revolves around the human condition. With the Hateful Eight I don’t have the chance to look into each character’s soul. Since I’m at it: exactly why Woody Allen makes the dullest movies. Despite the intellectual wit he exhibits his films don’t touch. Ben Turpin is a dramatic actor, they had let him be himself. W. C. Fields was, too. For me, classic cinema died in 1958 or so. What is classic cinema? That is what happened when millions of spectators visited film projections, when the public completed happenings. We people of today don’t take that to the movie house anymore. We don’t bring anything to the cinema. Playhouses and cinemas used to reel with laughs and weeping since 1853.

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The television threat is older, Hollywood got first shocked in 1949. CINERAMA was the first answer.

 

No, it was the shift from more than a hundred years of humanity in counterpart life to the next fifty years out in the mass.

I know that it doesn’t belong here but as a good example of how we all go with the Sun and the planets it might be of interest.

Plutonides have returned to the sole section since, in November 2008, when Pluto and Charon reached the farthest point on

their trajectory perpendicular to Earth’s orbit.

 

Cinema is a child of a humanity summer, the times of Plutonides in Taurus (1851–1884), Gemini (1884–1914), Cancer (1914–1939), and Leo (1939–1958). Alexander Parkes synthesized a first plastic, Parkesine, at the beginning of that summer, Louis Le Prince devised the motion-picture camera in 1888, then came sound and colours. TV as part of the electric empire, if I may call it that way, is connected to Sun whose new era began in 1930, sharp, while the passage from Pisces to Aquarius actually lasted from about 1894 to 1967.

Edited by Simon Wyss
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This is a really interesting thread.

 

I'm no expert, and don't have much experience with film but I'm going to mention a couple of factors which I observed that might contribute to the difference in "look":

 

1. when seeing video transfers of older films, you are often (still) seeing a telecine transfer from an original IP , or even duplicate negative. That amplifies any kind of color-crossover issues and inter-layer effects that give that old-school film color palette. A scanned negative of an old film will look a bit more "modern" though, as seen on a lot of bluray "remasters" of old films, scanned in 2k or 2k from original negatives.

 

2. I know you might not want to hear this, but lighting plays a major role too. Hard light was used in old movies, and it brings out that classic "film look" even in more modern emulsions.

 

3. Old emulsions are just more "dirty" in their color rendition. Which is a point similar to my number 1, but relates to the negative itself.

 

4. There is rarely any WHITE in old films. That's for two reasons I think. Older emulsions don't really have clean highlights, and not only do modern emulsions have clean transparent and undistorted highlights, the stylistic choices of modern transfers, and DI , allows for clipped whites. Same thing goes for shadows.

 

"more real" is a matter of perception. I don't think older emulsions made a more realistic image. It's quite the contrary actually. But it does FEEL somehow more organic to me also, yes, which probably has a lot more to do with psychology than with image science.

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"More real" is a totally subjective thing. Often "realism" in movies is conflated with the look of photographic and lighting artifacts in a documentary situation rather than the recreation of human eye-brain perception, but even that is a subjective quality as well. And color reproduction adds another layer of complexity to the issue of realism.

 

In terms of the feeling or intensity of pure black or pure white, that's affected by the contrast range of the display method, and it's intensity.

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In terms of the feeling or intensity of pure black or pure white, that's affected by the contrast range of the display method, and it's intensity.

 

Yes, it's a bit difficult to even discuss this because he is really talking about video/digital transfers of old vs. new films and not prints.

What I was aiming at is white clipping (in some DI work...), not the actual brightness of the projected "white".

And the "whiter whites" that Kodak advertises in their emulsion brochures has nothing to do with maximum density or brightness on screen, but

probably with lack of color distortion and grain in highlights compared to older emulsions.

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"35mm is quickly becoming indistinguishable from something shot digitally"

 

I think that is backwards -- 35mm hasn't really changed in a decade, stock-wise -- it's digital that's becoming indistinguishable from something shot in 35mm. However, that's if you really work at it -- in the case of "Jobs" there was a difference... if there wasn't, then what would have been the point?

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I was just looking at a few clips from Jacob's Ladder (shot by the great Jeffrey L Kimball, ASC) in preparation for a job interview. And it struck me that that 80's and 90's 'Brit revolution' look could probably not be achieved today digitally. Just something with how the low's and darks respond to atmosphere and underexposure. I really miss that smoky 'heightened' naturalism from DP's like Kimball, Biziou, Goldblatt, Seresin, Biddle, Cronenweth.

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Hi all, my purpose to opening this topic actually not making digital vs.film or comparison...

I think film always wins..

 

My problem is i notice that changing look of film in mid 00s . I talk to my cinephiles friends and all of them say same thing ''yeah nowadays every movie look so digital even the shot on film'''

Looking forums and internet there have been similar conversation like

http://www.cinematography.com/index.php?showtopic=2150&hl=

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1194137

http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/why-some-90s-movies-dont-look-dated.341838/

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/2py8z8/why_do_older_movies_look_well_old/

 

When i watch movies from 60s,70s,80s,90s early 00s i say yeah thats absolutely shot on film not because i know there is no digital in that time, i know because they got that look, if i watch them without knowing release date i still could decide...

 

I think digital won the war because film doesn't look like film anymore. If the film look like digital why directors,cinematographers,producers choose to shot on film. Audience doesn't understand ıt was shot on film or digital (as a cinematographer you can say but important side is audience and i saw many times cinematographers also struggle to chooce which one film or digital)

 

 

 

 

 

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'''35mm hasn't really changed in a decade,digital that's becoming indistinguishable from something shot in 35mm''' I dont agree with you David 35mm change a lot and lost the magic this the my problem

 

So many time i watch bad movies or low budget unloved movies and i think even these movies has better look than nowadays best looking cinematography movies (shot on digital or film doesn't make difference)

post-69480-0-77825100-1496797232_thumb.jpg

 

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Have you shot, printed and projected Vision-3 film stock? Do you really think it's that different from Vision-2 or Vision-1? I recently shot a feature all in 35mm film and finished to 35mm print, no D.I. and the look of film stock hasn't changed that much in the past decade.

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Directors like to talk about some distinct "look" of film, which they usually associate with flaws of old color neg emulsions - especially in post-Soviet countries, where classic movies were mostly shot on awfuly bad Svema and Tasma film.

But for camera and post crew (at least for those I work with) the point of film is not getting a "look", it's getting a more natural image. For us film isn't a "different tool" or "brush" or whatever, it's just better, plain and simple.

Sometimes, on a stylized picture, film is chosen for grain and texture (which they easily get on pushed Kodak '19). But many DoPs pursue realism - I don't mean the modern "realism" style created by amateurs, I mean Vadim Yusov's realism - and film allows them to create an image with more veracity, reality to it, because of how it handles color contrasts and saturation. You can't match it on video. Yet you can get a super-clean, similar to video, image with compressed highlights by shooting a very dense negative. Vision3 is just more flexible - to an extent you can get any style of image from it given enough light, at least any style video is capable of. And it still retains the properties of color negative, which you can make more visible if you want.

 

As to pictures of the past looking different, there are many reasons to it, and if we take the last 30-40 years, the film stocks will be one of the least important. First of all, film lighting has changed quite a lot - a very lengthy topic to discuss. Then they lit for proper contrast on print, now they light for a DI grade, I could say.

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Have you shot, printed and projected Vision-3 film stock? Do you really think it's that different from Vision-2 or Vision-1? I recently shot a feature all in 35mm film and finished to 35mm print, no D.I. and the look of film stock hasn't changed that much in the past decade.

No i just shot with digital, i got no experience with film. I'm not cinematographer or expert but i'm a really careful audience and i love the look of 'love witch'....

 

For example; all i'm saying If you compare 'six feet under' 'sopranos' 'Carnivale' with 'breaking bad' 'westworld'

Or for Pta compare (Boogie Nights-Magnolia) with (there Will Be Blood-the master-Inherent vice)

Or look ''Interstellar'' and compare with ''contact'' ''gattaca'' ''Event Horizon''

I don't want to disrespect, difference i saw between them (more depth,more texture,more vibrant natural color,more cinematic feel, more intense looking)

 

 

''film stock hasn't changed that much in the past decade''

As you said I understand this, If you want make a movie like this appearance yes you can,ıt's possible with vision3 stock and without D.I but for artistic,stylist choice director or cinematographers don't do ıt nowadays.
post-69480-0-19314600-1496853784_thumb.jpg
(I chose movies randomly)
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I don't completely disagree with your premise -- every decade of cinema looks different than the surrounding one, and it's always a combination of technique, style, taste, and technology. You can't really put the finger on one thing though of course there have been some bigger leaps in change, it doesn't happen on a smooth gradient over time.

 

I'm as big a sentimentalist for past cinema as the next cinephile but knowing that aspect of my character, I fight against living in the past too much (and that gets harder as I get older and find the past more interesting) -- but conversely, I always have an intellectual reaction against any argument that art was better in the past. Plus I work in the present so if present cinematography isn't good, then what does it say about me?

 

I don't think Kodak is to blame -- if I shot a movie today in 2-perf Vision-3 and pushed everything 1-stop, I think the look would be similar to the older EXR stocks of the 90's. A much bigger issue issue is that modern tastes have changed on so many levels. That's why when I did "The Love Witch" I tried to think like a cinematographer would have in the 1960s, I tried to not have a modern sensibility.

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