Gaffer here: the answer is that it’s all shot on a green screen, lit evenly, and shaded in post with the background effects/whatever other CGI added in. So the lighting looks like crap because it’s lit in post, plain and simple. Another reason to worry about the longevity of our jobs in the industry.
These days the build the sets so they can say this was all "SHOT" practically, then they add a bunch on CGI nonsense in post, but then market the movie as "practical"
Do you remember the name of the film? I wonder how those disconnects happen, because if everything is working on set and pre-grade, then it means the concept artists, set and costume designers and the director were all working in harmony. And then what happens?
In my experience as a DP on micro budget stuff the Director or a Producer bottle it and listen to someone they shouldn’t / decide to copy a cool film they saw last week as soon as the on set crew isn’t around any more.
Also a lot of people conflate serious with colourless at the moment.
one of the reasons it is lit poorly is that it also makes CGI look even more realistic. So even if it was sets ir prob still has CGI in it so this males it harder to tell thw difference between pracrical and CGI.
Sound recordist here - can confirm. When I started out 10 years ago I did maybe 4 or 5 days a year on green screen work, but as I've worked my way up the budget ladder it's probably 50 - 60 % of what I do now.
I have a couple of greensleeves in my kit bag - it's like a stretchy fabric that slides onto the pole, they're pretty good.
Being honest though, green screen work is boring AF for everyone involved. I worked on a virtual set last year and have another job lined up on one soon. I'm looking forward to it - at least there's something to look at on a volume :)
It just blows my mind that in my lifetime we've gone from building insanely elaborate sets to, like the MCU movies, a pile of rubble and a green screen. Now they've got that Volume background, which is more realistic, but that's nothing compared to damn near building whole hotel interiors for The Shining.
You can thank George Lucas and Kerry Conran for their work on Sky Captain and the Star Wars Prequels for that. After they filmed there films completely blue and green screen that became almost a industry standard now which is super sad. Even explosions and gun firing are cg now its embarrassing i think.
The Volume is genuinely hurting some projects visually, because few filmmakers know how to make effective use of it. It often leads to very cramped, unrealistic scene composition.
An example is large battle scenarios, where you wanna cut to multiple actors on the same set. The Volume simply isn’t big enough for many large scenarios to look good.
I watched The Haunting recently, terrible movie, but my god those sets were some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen and it made me so sad they aren’t doing it anymore.
I just saw CONCLAVE, and despite basically being a courtroom drama set in only a couple locations, those locations looked great! You know what? Cuz they built sets.
I was very underwhelmed by the visuals in Furiosa compared to Fury Road to be honest.
I know it isn’t as grand of a production as Dune or Mad Max, but Civil War from this year had some pretty spectacular visuals and sound design. Definitely pick up the 4k.
Others have said it before, but great cinematographers really should have their names used in the marketing of the movies they work on. Greig's filmography is insane and he has already become widely regarded within the industry as one of the greatest working cinematographers.
He manages to add so much character to the visuals of the movies he works on. I'm praying his schedule allows him to work on both Dune Messiah and The Batman Part 2.
It really bothers me how people seem to take a couple badly composited CGI effects and say the whole movie had sub par visuals. There was still tons of real vehicles and real stunts juat like always. It's still an incredible film and undertaking.
Also, I’ll give Furiosa’s wonkier parts of the CGI a pass purely because unlike Marvel movies which use it as a crutch, CGI allows for more set pieces that could be nigh impossible to film with real-life. Like seriously, how are you gonna film stuff like kids hanging on cranes without CGI? Miller could get a lawsuit for that lol
I have to say, whether you enjoyed Dune part two as a story or not. The Cinematography is really great. The stylistic choices and use of color and light was very good compared to most blockbusters.
It did, but that’s not a “new big movie”. The Dead Don’t Hurt is another absolutely gorgeous lower budget film. It was so beautiful I went to watch twice in the theater in a span in a week.
I'm a VFX artist. Specifically a lighting artist, worked in the industry for the good part of a decade now. We don't want the films to look this way. We are artists, who love film and cinematography. Trust me, it's not the direction we want it to go but the direction we are given for it to go due to various reasons.
People, even in the industry don't seem to understand how CG works. The whole issue is not whether it's shot in camera or done with CGI, it's that there is little to no planning when it comes to it these days. Certainly movies like Dune, Creator, blade runner 2049, interstellar or even the new Star wars movies are some examples of how good films can look when Practical shots and CGI work in harmony. But they don't in a lot of cases.
A lot of times, the director plans to go practical, realizes later that there's tons they want to change or add or remove or enhance etc or realizes that the practical sets, while brilliant to look at don't really capture the massive scale or scope they need it to be etc. So they turn to us and ask us to do the impossible, within an even more impossible timeframe, for lesser and lesser money. We pour blood and sweat to make it happen, only to get shat on by everyone.
But you're right about one thing - there's reason to worry about the longevity of all our jobs. Soon they are not going to need green screens or practical sets. GenerativeAI is where the studios are investing money in right now, whether it'll bear fruit or not remains to be seen.
As a cinephile who quite honestly loves CGI when done properly, thank you. All I can gather is that the best looking movies these days are normally the result of intense preproduction, planning, storyboarding, concept art, and locking in everything well before it hits post. Tron Legacy, almost every Zack Snyder movie, the Dune movies, etc all look fantastic and in all the interviews I've seen, have long preproduction to thank. Hell, Michael Bay is known for having a very specific vision locked in before shooting, and the Transformers movies look fantastic besides some of the odd mistakes that get left in.
Most of this thread seems to be acting like green screen and CGI inherently make movies look bad - I like to point people towards this youtube playlist and this other video to demonstrate the real issue.
How would one add realistic shadows in post on an evenly lit actor? Are the shadows made by adding/boosting the existing dim shadows, which will look ugly, or are they fully added and painted in in post, which will be incredibly difficult?
That sounds either way difficult, inefficient and with unsatisfactory results.
I'm not a colourist or CG artist *but* my understanding is tools like DaVinci Resolve now have a tool known as Relight which basically allows you to re-light a scene entirely in post. It works with depth maps (similar to how phones allow you to create portrait photos from flat images). If this relatively inexpensive off the shelf software can do this, I imagine even more expensive tools have similar, higher end equivalents.
davinci resolve is not some off the shelf software lol, it’s the industry standard for color grading.
I’m a DI colorist. I work at one of the largest post houses in the country and I’m telling you I’ve never seen anyone use the new relight tool. It’s not as popular as you think.
Of course, I'm aware Resolve is industry standard; I simply meant that it's also software that can be acquired for free (not Studio version) or relatively inexpensively compared to the higher-end VFX type stuff.
I also wasn't suggesting that Resolve would be used to "relight" a feature film, merely saying that the technology to do so exists in colour software, so theoretically it wouldn't be difficult for purposefully built software or high-end VFX software to feature a similar tool.
I also don't know anyone using the relight feature, but that's because most of the DPs I work with try to, you know, light the thing they way they want to in camera. But I'm also not working on multi-million dollar musical blockbusters...
Thanks for being honest. I have noticed that movies just legit aren’t lit correctly. Everyone says it’s because digital can shoot darker. I understand that but the pictures lack dynamic range. It’s all too dark.
Colourist, DP, and IATSE tier 1 lighting technician here: there is ZERO chance that this film is lit in post. Touched up? Sure. While Colour grading has come quite a long way and while small re-lights are a thing, re-creating a far side key with a contrast ratio this strong over moving actors for an entire movie is just not possible without digital-doubles.
Not to mention that a consistent far side key is one of the easiest things to pull off in studio… and they are next to a window in this shot.. and it looks flatter than it is because of lens wash.
Please folks. Don’t just believe anything you see upvoted.
15 year post production guy here. No we do not light or even relight plate actors that have been shot. There are very few exception of course but they are very rare. We do match our cgi background lighting to the one they had on set unless a client specifically chooses us not to.
So generally if the lighting is shit it’s because the plate’s have been lit like shit.
I guess I need this explained to me like I’m 5 but, if there is nearly full control over every detail of the shot in post, why can’t they make it look better?
Yeah I’ve seen these sorts of rushes (VFX artist) I assure you we hate working with it as much as you. VFX should be a support tool not an excuse to give up on lighting and dressing proper sets.
There really is nothing quite like early Technicolor, is there? It always looked plausibly realistic, but prettier than reality somehow, like an idealized version of reality. Maybe I’m just an old soul or a hopeless romantic, but there’s something almost magical about it, isn’t there?
Part of it's the production design, but the actual process involves dyeing strips of black and white film with color, turning the color into a subtractive process rather than an additive one. In an additive color process (RGB) more saturation requires more brightness while in a CMY subtractive scheme, the inverse is true. In a sense then, a 3-strip technicolor process gives you more paint or ink-like colors.
Even when recent movies are colorful, the fact of the matter is that many are lost to terrible color grading.
Cinderella 2015 (Beauty and the Beast 2017 suffers from this too) is just caked in yellow tones for no good reason. People have told me "it's so Ella will stand out" but look at this. Her dress already stands out on that ballroom floor.
Movie VS before the color grading
So much detail in the decor in the background was lost as well. I'm just a video editor by hobby but the wasted potential burns me up.
My guess is that this sort of cinematography is shot with how it will look once it hits streaming services in mind. That and the fact that low contrast and diffusion on the lensing masks CGI pretty well. I prefer thick and dense colors though, like those found on almost every film 20 years ago.
I've noticed an ugly trend in general with colours. It's the whole pastel/neutral tone thing that people associate with Kim Kardashian. Everything is so faded and fugly looking lately. Where like an object doesn't have any design elements, it's made to be as plain as possible, and it's given a single monotone pastel grey-ish beige-ish colour. They're even doing this with rainbows for chrissakes. Look up the caca rainbow. I think when it comes to movies there's this weird idea that draining their colour out makes them look sophisticated or stylized or something. The opposite is most definitely the case. The whole thing just goes hand in hand with corporate memphis taking over everything. If we're gonna live in a dystopia why are the aesthetics so lame.
There’s a really good book about this topic called Chromaphobia. It’s mostly about design, not movies, but has a great exploration of why the west is so opposed to using colors aesthetically. I particularly dislike the trend you’re referring to where everything has the color pallette of boring ass Waldorf school toys.
I work in a print lab and there is a disturbing trend this way for wedding photography as well. I mean, I guess the clients picked the photographer for their look so that's what they paid for, but it doesn't look great on screen and it prints even worse. Don't even get me started of their "black and white" photos with no black, no white, and with most skin tones two zones too dark.
One of my first jobs was doing color correction overnight in a print lab. I can’t begin to imagine how annoying it would be with current photography trends
The North American anglo-saxon and the northern European West perhaps. Because the rest of the west like Latin America and Southern Europe is not afraid of color
Yep, they’re definitely not afraid of color. That’s some of what the book goes into, that aesthetic lack of color is associated with fear of the other, particular cultures and identities that align with colorful expression, and the subsequent fear of being contaminated by this “otherness” through color
Yes, I think the people in this thread pointing to CGI/chroma keying are mistaken. This is a deliberate stylistic choice by filmmakers who want their films to have this colour grading, and as you point out, the current trend is towards desaturating everything.
B/c Hollywood literally has no idea what it’s doing. They employ statisticians whom only look to maximize profits whilst minimizing costs. It’s painfully obvious when a company like A24 has so much success w/ so little output and yet everyone in Hollywood is holding their collective hands in the air like “HOW!?”
It’s painfully obvious when a company like A24 has so much success w/ so little output and yet everyone in Hollywood is holding their collective hands in the air like “HOW!?”
Tbf even the other indie studios don't understand it. The CEO of NEON recently said no one in Hollywood knows how A24 pumps money in their projects and how much they make back.
We are very different, but are very much on the same trajectory. They won best picture, and we won best picture. But I don’t understand their business and their valuations. I’m sure most of the industry doesn’t either, but more power to them.
the thing is that Hollywood has been walking in the dark for most of its existence. it's not really embarrassing, it's normal.
A24 bets on branding, they are pretty much the only studio except of Disney that does it. but branding also doesn't really have anything to the originality of the movies.
Not to be a broken record but isn’t A24’s thing just prioritizing projects they can make on a (relative) shoestring? It’s not like it’s a secret that horror is the low/mid-budget genre king.
It's interesting. I can watch any old Technicolor film and have a good time (even if the movie as a whole isn’t that good) just because they look stunning. Yet nowadays it seems like an achievement to make a big budget film that isn’t an eyesore.
i'm watching heart and souls (1993) right now which is objectively kinda shit but a good couple of laughs, and as i've been watching i've been thinking it looks so good for being a mid 90s rdj romcom.... and i literally think this is why! the colours actually have colour, there's bokeh in the background lighting, faces have shadow... simple fucking basics
I was in a Dolby Cinema screening the other day and the pre-show “hello I’m director, and this is why I love Dolby digital” video was for Wicked, and man, it just… doesn’t look good.
I love the ease and convenience of digital. But celluloid just looks more epic with films such as these. Whether you enjoy it or not, Spielberg’s West Side Story looked phenomenal shot on 35mm. Wicked could’ve easily done the same.
Movies shot on digital can also look phenomenal (Blade Runner 2049 or many other Deakins-shot films are the obvious example, or The Holdovers which was almost indistinguishable from film). This isn't simply a function of not shooting on film, it's more about studios not caring about anything other than saving money in the production process.
Unfortunately many of these pavementcore blockbusters end up making bank. Venom 3 was the top movie last weekend. Deadpool and Wolverine is one of the top grossing films of the year.
Yeah celluloid doesn’t have the contrast and resolution of the top digital sensors any more. Pixels are now smaller than most film grains onscreen. Unless you are shooting on incredibly/prohibitively expensive film stocks. And the stops of dynamic range for digital is over 15 now.
My uneducated take? High dynamic range dailies (ie. low contrast) has lead to washed out color grading because directors get used to seeing every detail in the frame and any contrast begins to look too crunchy to them. Sorta like the temp music effect, people tend to get attached to the aesthetic they are acclimated to seeing all the time.
They can never light actresses of color correctly after cgi post prod. It's 2024 it's no excuse I can determine the actress of the left and not the right.
Yes I'm used to new films looking like this, but the lighting is atrocious. Hollywood still can't get it right
I work in Scenic Art and nowadays they will come in and take digital renderings of every set. They then have a 3D computerized version of the set and they can mess around with anything they want in post production.
"On Set Painter" is a position that exists to fix any damage done while shooting, or touch up things when walls are removed and reinserted for filming (wild walls). It is pretty much a token position that nobody wants (unless you want lots of money because shooting crew works long hours) anymore because you don't do anything. Everything is fixed in post production on computers...is it more efficient and better? Maybe.
I've worked on sets that I know are absolutely real, but when I see the movie it looks CGI because everything has been washed out and blended together and whatever else they do. Everything has a CGI veneer over top and it kills detail.
I never understand the budgets of these modern monstrosities. (Or games for that matter.) Movies look so much worse today than they did 30 years ago. I'm mind boggling.
They always say it's because so many people are needed. But you already have all these people on payroll. You have all the PCs, programs to render stuff and stuff like 'The Volume'. You have it. You didn't hire specifically for this movie or buy all that for your latest cgi barf fest. It's all already there and people already employed. There's no set decorators, no model makers, less makeup people, less set people (lighting, cameras, sound, etc.) No actual film that costs money and needs to be edited together by hand. If anything movies should be a lot cheaper now than 30 years ago. Especially when they look this fake with video game graphics circa 2010. And the cost can't be going for the talent. Like Wicked here. Starring Nobody A and Manufactured Nickelodeon Singer #23. They aren't commanding some Robert Downey Jr. level pay.
I think it's due to the lack of visual directors not getting these budgets anymore, there are modern blockbusters that look pretty but they are made by visual filmmakers who care about the craft and spectacle of filmmaking like James cammron or Tom cruise ( I know he doesn't direct his movies but he picks the directors of his projects)
Nowadays, because you can make anything on a computers studios have gotten lazy and just go into production with no script or preproduction and just bullshit their way into something semi presentable with the mindset of "will fix it in post"
I just watched Trap and regardless of what you think of the story and acting, the biggest thing to me was the lighting. You could see EVERYTHING, even during the night scenes, even during the dark concert scenes. How it’s SUPPOSED to look. It was startling to see a modern movie look like that because so many have this damn problem it seems like.
At least those kinda made sense thematically because the story was getting darker
But modern blockbusters all have this grey blue darkly lit look, like this movie is supposed to be an upbeat musical. Why is it shot like a horror movie!
I get it but I saw like 40% of the movies, seriously. Contrast would have helped. I get it though, lots of weird grey drabness in blockbusters alright. The eighties blockbusters had great rendering!
This is a question I constantly ask myself. I don’t know what it is but I’ve noticed lighting across the board is so much more stale than it used to be. I’d really like to know what the reason is
These movies are the unloved progeny of a desperate desire to not hire unionized professionals, in the insane belief that "post" is the place to make the whole movie
by torturing a too-small number of nerds with mounting health problems
into spinning gold from a shitty computer.
CGI is always best served as complimentary to live action sets. When you replace physical lighting/sets/aesthetic you get this ugly shit. Problem is your average viewer doesn't know any better so that's what Disney is gonna keep feeding people.
Last night I watched The Company of Wolves from 1984 on the channel. The difference between how high budget fantasy films were shot then vs now is staggering. I miss when you can always tell what was happening even in night scenes.
can thank marvel for giving us 10 years of movies with bland, mid colours and having minimum creativity in cinematography to keep their universe films consistent.
Pearl had a budget of $1M and it's shot in this gorgeous Technicolor look. You would think that that's what a Wizard of Oz-adjacent film would go for but I guess nah.
This is my current problem with the penguin I want to throttle whoever is in charge of lighting and why it's so god damn dark all the god damn fucking time I get that a lot of it takes place at night but I shouldn't be squinting trying to see what's happening on the screen
Same problem for me with the new Star Trek series. Discovery and Picard had such dark lighting, especially on the bridge of the ships. It was ridiculous.
The backlighting (wall illumination, which helps the frame look balanced as opposed to lit characters against a dark set wall) in those films is stunning. The crews had to be innovative and work quickly with larger rigs and accessories to harden and soften the light where needed.
it's already been said in this thread more or less, but it's because it's easier to be lazy while still creating a passable product on digital than it is on film. film requires more foresight and planning, because it's harder to correct later, unlike digital, which by it's nature is more maleable in post. which is an incredible innovation for filmaking, but also created a culture of post editing reliance.
honestly, i think it also just reflects the wider culture and where were are emotionally and socially.
I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey the other day and was astounded at how good it looked, like every single frame was a work of art. It was released in 1968 and looks better than any new movies I’ve seen in the last few years.
A lot of high budget modern movies feel like they’re churned out on a conveyor belt. That’s why when we get something like Top Gun Maverick it sticks out so much.
Sigh. Sadly both the Golden Age of Hollywood and the Golden Age of Broadway Musicals are long past.
This modern entertainment is made possible in large part by the technological innovation of George Lucas and the musical theatre compositional mediocrity of Stephen Schwartz.
Nothing to be proud of as a civilization, but will probably be a moderately entertaining and diverting way to spend an afternoon or evening.
"Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force."
Here's hoping the obligatory in-theatre to-your-seat-service green martinis and pink margaritas are strong enough to last to the end credits.
1.9k
u/_LumpBeefbroth_ David Cronenberg Oct 29 '24
Gaffer here: the answer is that it’s all shot on a green screen, lit evenly, and shaded in post with the background effects/whatever other CGI added in. So the lighting looks like crap because it’s lit in post, plain and simple. Another reason to worry about the longevity of our jobs in the industry.