I randomly saw this Twitter thread the other day with a similar idea that modern lighting styles have changed to try and use realistic lighting source instead of fake unrealistic lighting sources.

No, you’re not crazy! Night scenes DO LOOK darker now than they did in the decades prior.

But it’s not because cinematographers refuse to light their scenes (common misconception). It’s because the STYLE of lighting has changed. Let me explain. 🧵 https://t.co/OWOm7IjT9D

— Valentina Vee (@valentinavee) February 6, 2025

He spent a lot of time on camera technology, a lot of which was over my head. So forgive my question:

Is his central premise that overreliance on green screens makes filmmakers lax about lighting and shooting scenes creatively because it's all gonna be tinkered with later? There's nothing really "there" to light because it's all just blank walls??

This video explains it perfectly also.

https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/3479117/replies/68215354

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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This video explains it perfectly also.

https://texags.com/forums/13/topics/3479117/replies/68215354

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I think your video explains it way better.




However, I do not buy the "imperfect lens" part. I think things like lens flares, blood/water/etc. on the lens is really a nostalgia factor. That good movies in the past had those things, but they weren't good BECAUSE of that, they were good despite that.

I especially think that blood/mud/etc. on the lens ruins the immersion. Rather that it feeling like I'm there, it becomes clear that the camera is there. That if when mud splatters on my eye, then it doesn't cover 5% of my pupil, it covers the whole thing. So just have it do that. If you really want to insist on a "dirty lens" then make it through a window or something. That way it doesn't ruin the emersion.


Edit: I also think having impossible camera angles ruin emersion. Like in Masters of the Air when they had the "camera" zooming around bombs that were falling, that made everything look fake. Or that scene in your video where they were walking on that bridge in a Tolkien movie.

Interesting video.

The part in Avatar: Way Of The Water where they basically recreated the scene in Titanic where the gal is trying to escape a sinking ship, that went to 48fps or something and looked nothing like the rest of the movie to me and was distracting.

Wow that was interesting.

Are you saying modern movies suck?












P.S. Interesting video. Thanks for posting.

Blade Runner is the beautifully shot movie of all time and it's 42 years old.

YouBet said:

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The irony of all of this new technology is that we are entering sort of a Dark Ages period of movie making where skill sets honed using analog and early digital tech are being lost to history (to his final point in this video) that were superior to what we have now.

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This is very much happening already in sound, everything seems so sterile and digitized. A buddy od mine sent me some stuff he did for his radio station and conceptually, I love the content. It just didn't hit well with me because the announcer voice (an impersonator doing a pretty damn good job) was overly processed to the point of sounding too clean, if that makes sense. In my opinion, too many sound options (its gotta sound punchy!) in use these days take the warmth and subtlety out of voice work and while I've used some very good AI voice tools, its still eons away from sounding as natural as someone who does voice work for a living, even if said voice is having a bad day or needs to tune in his mic chain more.

Slightly tangential and a little political but I think this could be an interesting addition to this topic. The linked article talks about how culture has somewhat come to a standstill, from music, to fashion and others. The article is about USAID, amongst other things, but I think that it could apply here, in a way. We are stuck in 2000.

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/the-big-thaw-thursday-february-6?r=dzrj0&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

Here is a slight excerpt

"But why? What, or who, is holding the culture back? Global culture has indeed been stalled, a sociological failure, winning only at participation. You might now begin the whataboutism. What about X? What about Venmo? What about AI? What about Elon's rocket ships? Stand by. Those gadgets are either part of the problem or exceptions proving the point.

Our modern world is populated by high revision numbers, stratospheric sequel counts, and recycled, geriatric celebrities. We check our iPhone Sixteen now with three cameras to find out when Need for Speed Ten starts, and then buy tickets online for an octogenarian Rolling Stones concert. In 2022, the hit Netflix show Stranger Things a futuristic sci-fi series set back in the 1980's and in its season four featured Kate Bush's 1985 single Running Up That Hill. The 40-year-old song hit the top 10 in 34 countries.

It's endless recycling. And it's not normal.

There are many examples, but perhaps the most obvious symptom of cultural freeze is stalled fashion. The handful of writers calling out stuck culture focus on how distinct was each decade leading up to the Millennium, right before the Patriot Act passed in 2001. Tracing backwards, the cultural evolution trend holds. But from the 90's forward, zip. Zero. Nada."