Ah, man. What a great post.
*ties ballsack tightly with a hemp rope* TAKE IT FROM HERE DELORES! *Delores the amazon dressed in tight leather puts on a pair of spiked high heels. She starts stomping the sack* Oh! Ow! Oh god! Fuck yeah in the sack! Thats my sack! Oof! Oh! The sack baby, OHH!
yo what the fuck happened to this post
I’m. I’m not the only one seeing this right. Please tell me I’m not the only one seeing this.
Old is good. New is bad. The winning formula for a viral video essay.
I am noticing a lot of these videos popping up in my feed. I guess my complaints about those hard light videos made the algorithm decide I should be inundated with “modern movies suck” content.
They follow the same basic formula of “old = good” and “new = bad.”
And if you watch them with only a surface level understanding of filmmaking and photography and how to author visuals, you will probably go, “Wow, what an amazing video!”
I get why people like these essays. And I understand there are genuine frustrations with how many modern movies are made.
And the video does have some interesting philosophical filmmaking explanations. I really enjoyed those aspects.
But there is something in the very thumbnail of this video that completely invalidates the overall premise.
The Premise: Old movies look more “real” than new movies.
The Evidence: Comparing one of the greatest movies of all time (Jaws), by one of the greatest directors of all time (Spielberg), to a franchise soft reboot cash grab.
Why not compare to Sinners? Why not compare to Weapons? Or Dune? Or The Brutalist?
Also, is realism always the goal?
What about Spider-Verse and KPop Demon Hunters? Does their unreality make them lesser?
This is how they bait you with these videos. They want you to buy into their nostalgic cherry picking. They don’t elevate any modern films that look amazing. They pick their favorite movies from years ago and then compare them to the worst examples in the recent past.
But the thing I dislike the most is that problems are often blamed on artists. If artists were more competent and went back to the old school ways, movies would look better and more real.
Use hard lighting. Use practical effects. Use deep focus. Show and don’t tell.
Individual quick fixes are never going to solve a systemic problem.
I assure you that directors and all of the artists involved in making movies would love to use every tool in the toolbox. They haven’t forgotten these techniques. But most of the time these tools are not compatible with hyper-efficient filmmaking processes.
I liked his explanation of haptic visuals. To create artistic, textural scenes to help the world of the movie feel more lived in and real. That’s a cool concept. But adding a few haptic scenes into Jurassic World isn’t going to fix the story. It isn’t going to improve the weak script. Hard lighting and deep focus aren’t going to fix the systems that produce these risk-averse reboots of profitable IPs. It isn’t going to fix the rushed, fix-it-in-post mentality that doesn’t give CG artists enough time and resources to produce more realistic imagery.
But also, has he seen a Vince Gilligan show?
Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and now Pluribus have some amazing haptic visuals. It seems like he is ignoring more modern examples to sell the story that things were “better” in the distant past.
This hurts the filmmakers who are creating legitimately beautiful work. And it also ignores the fact that bad, ugly movies have always existed.
Only 5 movies from that year stood the test of time. 211 movies are completely ignored when assessing how real and aesthetically pleasing movies used to look.
That is textbook survivorship bias.
Have you seen the classic 1975 cinematic masterpiece… The Happy Hooker?
Let’s compare the visuals of The Happy Hooker to Sinners.
It’s not a fair fight.
But when you compare Jaws to Sinners…
You can see the quality is not dependent on when the movies are made. It is dependent on a director with a strong vision and a large team of artists who are passionate about their craft.
If you have to resort to this level of nostalgic cherry picking to prove your point, I don’t think your argument is very strong.
I don’t think I ever posted my Airfryer Spell here, but here it is, my masterpiece based on the magic system of Witch Hat Atelier! It is a fan made spell that has the objective to create hot rotating air to cook things, just like a real airfryer would do!
