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What are the contemporary cinematography trends/characteristic?


Petr Kvapil

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How does "look" of contemporary movies differ from the previous eras? For example in 80s movies saturated color displaced desaturated. Sharp, clean
images displaced the tendency to graininess or diffusion in 1970s cinema. Steadicam largely replaced handheld camerawork and high-contrast lighting
replaced the low-contrast “natural” look. How would you describe today's era?

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It is always hard to define a trend while it happens.

Low contrast, low saturation, shallow depth of field ? But that may apply more to youtube / corporate / week-end warrior indie filmmaker.

Maybe the increasing number of small displays used for viewing (smartphones) and decreasing budgets both lead to more close-ups ?

Edited by Nicolas POISSON
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Yes, many studio movies look very digital (almost like animated movies). I know there is a lot of CGI/Stagecraft going on, but sometimes it feels like the actors' faces are digitally retouched and the films are digitally lit. I wonder what are all the factors that lead to this.

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I think minimalistic lighting has been a trend for a while. This shows in the movies having a bit "rough" look because the contrast is manipulated a lot in post grading. I don't mean they necessarily leave the scenes unlit, but rather it being so much easier to light with modern fixtures and sensitive high performance cameras that it is "not necessary to finesse everything on set" and it definitely shows. They leave higher contrast variations to the raw materials and they are then later tried to be corrected to the same level in grading which leaves some unavoidable imperfections and characteristic contrast and dynamic range issues smoothed out by heavy grading. The end product is not necessarily super high contrast but the heavy post smoothing of the contrast definitely shows. 

So, one could call it underlit and overgraded I think?   It helps to save the budget and fund the excessive vfx work most shows need so it is understandable. Adding more budget does not necessarily help, they would just use it for buying more and better VFX rather than fix the on-set lighting

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Just now, aapo lettinen said:

So, one could call it underlit and overgraded I think?   It helps to save the budget and fund the excessive vfx work most shows need so it is understandable

this is not the traditional "Fix It In Post" approach, it is rather the "Save It In Post To Make It Somewhat Watchable" method ?

The difference to the older days "heavy post grading" is that the end product does not necessarily have high contrast at all. Just like the Indiana Jones trailer, the contrast is not particularly high in the final product but one can definitely see that it has been heavily corrected from shot to shot for them to be balanced compared to each other. One can see it on the Babylon trailer too.

one possible explanation would be that it is a trend to use heavily motivated "practical sources based" lighting nowadays which leads to higher variations in source footage and thus one needs lots of post grading to make it even somewhat balanced in the end product.  If you compare to the late 90's /early 2000's movies they definitely look like "overlit" compared to anything shot after about 2009 or so. The big soft low angle side light of the 90's/early 2000's is gone and everything went more motivated, higher variance, somewhat underlit and yes, occasionally much lower contrast too. One could see this as the big shows drifting more and more towards low budget indie in terms of time and effort used for each shot and scene. As well it having become a norm to try to hide the fact that you have lit the scene and thus trying to make it look "too natural" and "less cinematic" in a way

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Most cinematographers aim to get it right in camera and dailies, otherwise we’d have to put up with the director, producer, and studio execs complaining about the look being wrong or it not cutting together visually. We can’t wait for final color-correction months later to “get it right” because we’d have probably been fired long before that.

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The more classic look of a well lit set, where you don't have much fall off, is kinda lost unfortunately. Everyone is just barely lighting these days, because it's "realistic" but nobody goes to the movie theater for realism. We go to be whisked away from our problems and modern movies, rarely do that unfortunately. 

I do not much care for the worlds modern studio filmmakers have chosen to make. Where only the actor is real, everything else is fixed in post. 

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With women nowadays eschewing hose, or nylons if you will, for all but the most formal occasions, if then, I think the largest market for the hosiery manufacturers is now cinematographers who use them over their camera lenses. The innovative ones would dare to use white hose in night scenes and dark hose in day scenes. Or is it vice-versa? Or is there a LUT for that now?

 

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