Movies looked better before "color grading" was invented. Let's return to proper film-making.

[octoplex]

The notion of "color grading" is largely a commercial-construct designed to create the job of "colorist" and to sell computer hardware and software. Movies made after the 1980s look consistently worse and worse, because the popular concept of "fixing it in post" has led a generation of film-makers to disregard the importance of proper lighting, story, acting, and set design.

Something went very wrong in cinema after the mid-90s. Both socially and artistically. This degradation of quality in film-making coincided with three shifts in film-aesthetics:

1. The move from celluloid to digital.
2. The move from capturing a look based in 'reality', to color-graded footage.
3. An odd obsession with increased resolution.

With increased-resolutions, the decay of cinema became even more profound: When an actor's face is shot in close-up at 8k, we are seeing a level of surface-detail to the human-face that we would NEVER see in reality. So, what is the 8k+ film-maker actually capturing?

Cinema is predicated on our 'suspension of disbelief'. To intentionally shoot a film that cannot be believed, because it does not represent 'reality' in a way that we could possibly see, is anti-cinema.

The Rise of Anti Cinema

Through both malice, and incompetence, cinema has decayed. Before it can be saved, we must acknowledge the extent of this sickness, and then take steps to remedy it. We need to rely less on software, and more on our eyes, on set. We need to embrace imperfection, and return to capturing a plausible reality. We were better off when analog color-timing was the only post-production option for "grading" footage.

Cinema can be fantastical, magical, or extraordinary, but it should never be unbelievable. Let's return to honest, practical effects; proper lighting; and artistry in set-design. It's time to stop color-grading.

25 Years of Madness

Since the launch of the Sony F900, over 25 years ago, camera companies have been promising a digital replacement for analog 35mm film. For 25 years, they have been completely unable to deliver the 35mm analog look. Instead, film-makers have been expected to mess-around in computer software chasing an aesthetic that can rarely be achieved, and that the camera companies should have been providing as a default output.

Why (given the equivalent lighting, set and actors) can no commercially-available digital video camera shoot footage straight-out-of-camera that properly emulates the Kodak 5247 and Kodak 5254 color-negative stocks? These stocks practically defined cinema as we knew it, but they do not exist as digital equivalents.

We got scammed

Why must young film-makers wade about in a swamp of technical-nonsense, graphics cards, manuals, color-grading, and hardware chasing the look that an off-the-shelf roll of 35mm stills-camera film would have delivered instantly, for five-dollars, in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s? Why can't these stocks be delivered straight off-camera?

The camera industry has pushed responsibility for great video-capture onto the "colorist". The colorist is a symptom of decay in the camera and film industry; necessary only because of the technical failings of camera manufacturers, and their inability to simply deliver the replacement for Kodak stocks they promised over 25 years ago. The colorist is also a symptom of the decay in the excellence of artists on set.

The Broken Promise of the Camera Industry

We were promised film in a digital format. But, instead, the camera-industry redefined "film" as a sub-par version of itself. Then all the failings of this new medium were commercialized in a host of hardware and software to "repair" the damage done.

Why is it so difficult for the digital-camera industry to care about creating an accurate version of the very medium that it claimed to be replacing? The digital "Cinema" cameras of today have almost nothing to do with cinema as we knew it. This is nothing short of fraud.

 

[Django]

« Color Grading »

[octoplex]

11 minutes ago, Django said:

« Color Grading »

Exactly! All the more significant a response as Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino (2008) was shot on 35mm Kodak Vision3.

Eastwood's masterpiece of protest against decay.

 

[MrSMW]

I kind of agree, but 2 things initially spring to mind.

Thing A, a roll of film would need to revert back to costing 5 dollars instead of whatever it costs to buy & develop these days.

Thing B, good luck trying to get this implemented.

I feel the same about the other side of my own work, ie, in photography. I would LOVE to go back to being a pure film photographer but the single reason why I do not is a simple one and that is financially it would not fly today. Why, because around 75% of my turnover per job would go straight back out of the door and have to go on buying & processing film and at today's rates. I'd be out of business. Or double my rates and also go out of business because no one booked me.

And then 2 other things.

Thing C = not all older movies look great. Some...a lot even, look shit to my eyes.

Thing D = not all modern movies look shit. Some...a lot even, look superb to my eyes.

Summary, I think there is too much rose tinted spectacle nostalgia about 'The Good Old Days' and that everything today is trash. Everything today is not trash, - it's just different times.

I am currently re-watching Ripley on Netflix. To my eyes, it is one of the most superb and cinematic creations ever made.

Arguably it is not a movie per se, but a series, but actually it's a 6 hour movie in 8 parts. Almost every single frame looks superb. It's a modern day film noir that makes most older film noir look incredibly dated.

OK, some of it is actually CGI. The boat scenes with (no spoilers), Tom & Dickie has a huge amount, but that's just a tool available to the modern filmmaker.

Anyway, just my opinion. 

They also make a lot of shit today. Probably 19+ out of every 20 movies released today I would not wish to see, but they do still make some gems when the right people are involved.

 

[fuzzynormal]

Might be a bit of survivor bias here. 

The older movies that were shot on film might seem to be of a nicer IQ standard, but those are the ones that are still acknowledged.

As an dude that went to the local 1$ 'grindhouse' theater rather regularly as a kid, I assure you that the quality of the image for the forgettable films were often nothing remarkable. 

However, I will say that the darker, deeper, contrasty look that was in fashion among better cinematographers back then is something I miss.  Less is more.  Too much detail in a scene can be a detriment at times. All that dynamic range often is not needed. 

Spielberg's West Side Story looked remarkable and like shit simultaneously, imo.

[fuzzynormal]

5 hours ago, MrSMW said:

Ripley on Netflix. To my eyes, it is one of the most superb and cinematic creations ever made.

The shots were so dense I literally couldn't get past it to concentrate on the story. Style over substance. Or, the style was most of the substance. Looked ridiculously good though, didn't it?

[Davide DB]

I don't understand whether this is a provocative post or a serious one.

Now, I am also somewhat ignorant of the topic but some of the statements seem 'exaggerated' to me to be good.

In general, digital has greatly democratised cinema and its art. But every art has its era and its crafts and this constant 'it was better before' is largely pissing me off. It describes good old times that never existed. There were horse carriages and the farrier lobby, then came the railway and goodbye farriers. 

The truth is that today any artist can produce a film with cinematic quality at home and at a negligible cost. Unless you regret the old Super 8 home movies.

Anyway, back to the data. It's hard to talk about resolution as we understand it today in the digital world, but I have my doubts that a good film will not solve 8K, quite the contrary.

Here a document for nerds: http://www.tmax100.com/photo/pdf/film.pdf

But here there's a video that explains it more simply.

 

 

Regarding the immediacy of film.... are we talking cinema or home-made Super 8s? Because if you mention Clint Eastwood and Kodak Vision (Vision is cited also in the YT video above) then it's much more complex with intermediate and print stocks:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_stock

Ah and color grading existed on film stock too. It was called color timing:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading

Finally, am I saying that digital is better than film stock? NO, they are two different medium.

[Ninpo33]

12 hours ago, octoplex said:

The notion of "color grading" is largely a commercial-construct designed to create the job of "colorist" and to sell computer hardware and software. Movies made after the 1980s look consistently worse and worse, because the popular concept of "fixing it in post" has led a generation of film-makers to disregard the importance of proper lighting, story, acting, and set design.

While I do like the look of film and enjoy movies from the 90’s, you’re laying it on pretty thick here and a little over dramatic. There have been a lot of beautiful, cinematic films coming out over the years since that weren’t shot on film and I wholeheartedly disagree on your “hot take” on colorists. You have an opinion and that’s great but none of this is fact. Actually it’s rather naive and the Alexa 35 in the right hands might be indistinguishable from film at this point. 
 

1. At the end of the day film is both an art form and a product. If the audience doesn’t mind or can’t tell the difference the cheaper and more efficient format will win out over quality/nostalgia 90% of the time. 
 

2. It might be important to remember that  we all have a perspective based on what we were raised on and what we enjoyed growing up. What looks “good” to us can taint our objectivity and it’s important to separate out nostalgia and familiarity from things like color, latitude and grain.
 

3. For someone raised on the internet and video games at 60p your idea of film being superior is laughable. The new generation is determining things now. Vertical format content delivered in bite sized portions all day long. That’s the norm. Steaming services competing over existing IP that has a built in audience and a race to the bottom. 
 

 

[newfoundmass]

3 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

As an dude that went to the local 1$ 'grindhouse' theater rather regularly as a kid, I assure you that the quality of the image was often nothing remarkable. 

This. Yeah, we can look back at older films and remark about how nice they look, but I can name you just as many (and, frankly, probably more) that look like absolute dog shit visually. Ironically, some of those are my favorite films! But most of them weren't made to intentionally look that way, they just did because of budget limitations. There is a lot of really bad looking films out there though.

In fact I'd say most films from the film era aren't any more remarkable looking than what is filmed today digitally. There certainly are exceptions, which is why I do agree to a certain extent that it's unfortunate that most everything has moved to digital, but I can't say that every film I watch today would look substantially better if it'd been shot on film, especially lower budget ones. It's really easy to look back with rose tinted glasses and say "everything looked better back when it was shot on film."

I think the bigger issue with the move to digital is how disposable images have become in general. We all shoot thousands of pictures on our phones every year but most we never look at again after taking them. In fact, most of the time we put little thought into taking them. Or at least I am guilty of that. They just sit on our phones, taking up digital space waiting for the day when maybe we remember that we documented this moment or that moment. Whereas with film, or even video tape, aside from the camera itself, you were limited by how many pictures were left on the roll, how many rolls you could afford to buy, and then the cost of developing them. You also didn't get that immediate feedback of looking at a photo you just took to see how it turned out, instead you had to wait until it was developed.

I remember going to sports events as a kid with my camera and only having two rolls of film. That was roughly what, 50-60 pictures total? I had to choose carefully what pictures I took less I run out of film and miss something extraordinary. I couldn't just waste pictures! Now though I'll take 60 pictures in the span of 5 minutes with my phone! Taking photographs or moving images was a much more thoughtful experience in the film days.

Today that doesn't really exist, because content is so disposable. Even if you are fortunate enough to create something that breaks through, something else rapidly comes along to take the viewers attention away. With the rise of TikTok it has gotten even worse than it was during YouTube's peak. 15 seconds and then it's on to the next thing!

Still, that isn't to say it all is bad. But it's not all good either.

[Alt Shoo]

This take is a bit much. Plenty of bad films were shot on film, and plenty of great ones were shot digitally. It’s not the format that makes a movie good or bad it’s how you use it. Preferring film is fine, but saying digital ruined cinema is extreme. 

That said, I’m interested in Fuji’s upcoming Eterna film camera. If it delivers high quality in camera color, it could push DPs to lock in the final look while shooting, which is an interesting approach.

[Davide DB]

17 hours ago, Ninpo33 said:

At the end of the day film is both an art form and a product. If the audience doesn’t mind or can’t tell the difference the cheaper and more efficient format will win out over quality/nostalgia 90% of the time. 

Exactly.

The viewer does not give a damn how it was made. A film or documentary must move feelings or make people think. If they do, who cares about the technical details? Only the insiders.

 

 

[KnightsFan]

Agree with what everyone has said regarding there being many poor looking film movies that we forgot about, many great looking digital movies, and everything in between.

I believe a better thesis would be, "movies looked better before smartphones were invented"

A big reason that mainstream movies look bland is because they are no longer designed for a giant screen in a dark theater, nor even on a big flatscreen in your living room. They are increasingly consumed on 6" screens in broad daylight (as well as theaters and living rooms).

 

Now to go on a sight tangent, the same can be said of writing. Often when I talk to friends, they'll say, "oh yeah, I saw that movie. It was on netflix in the background while I cleaned my house" To some degree, it's not that writers are worse, it's that modern writing is designed to be consumed at 50% attention with chunks missing. The percent of audience that watches every second at full attention is simply getting smaller.

I don't believe that shift has anything to do with filmmaking technology.

[Andrew Reid]

I think overall a fascinating post and goes to the heart of why limitations breed creativity, you can't fix it in post.

[Davide DB]

15 hours ago, KnightsFan said:

Now to go on a sight tangent, the same can be said of writing. Often when I talk to friends, they'll say, "oh yeah, I saw that movie. It was on netflix in the background while I cleaned my house" To some degree, it's not that writers are worse, it's that modern writing is designed to be consumed at 50% attention with chunks missing. The percent of audience that watches every second at full attention is simply getting smaller.

A well known tendency 

https://nofilmschool.com/second-screen

And this in Italian can be easily read via Google translate:

https://www.ilpost.it/2025/02/03/netflix-serie-secondo-schermo/

The dialogues of many Netflix-produced series are often didactic and informative: it frequently happens that a character summarises what has happened so far, or anticipates some future plot development in a more or less arbitrary way. They are written in this way to allow the most inattentive viewers to pick up the thread at any time, without having to go back or interrupt their viewing.

Productions that include dialogues of this kind are usually associated with the expression 'second screen', because they are designed and written in such a way that they can be easily followed even while attention is focused on a 'first screen': that of the smartphone.

[fuzzynormal]

1 hour ago, Davide DB said:

written in such a way that they can be easily followed even while attention is focused on a... smartphone.

Yeah.  Totally not depressing, that.

[PannySVHS]

Filmstock Lynch Dune > digital Villeneuve Dune, Filmstock Bladerunner > digital Bladerunner 2049.

Oh boy, I´m in trouble now.

The original Bladerunner is a stunningly beautiful and groundbreaking scifi neo noir, in which color makes the world materialize like one can touch and breathe it. Bladerunner 2049, though a well designed and high class realization, is rather abstract and reduced in regards to composition, geometry and colour imo. Lighting, though a tour de force of effort and technological prowess, feels streamlined to me. In comparision, light in the original Bladerunner is vivid, lively, wild and untamed, of opulent baroqueness.

2020ies Dune felt hollow to me, when I watched it on Netflix. It looked and felt like a center perspective duotone coloured video game. I just read that it was transferred from digital to analogue and then scanned back to digital. Posh spice! 😊

The 1980ies Dune was fun and a best of 80ies spectacle with a meditative prologue and full of atmosphere, great ambitions and quirky failures, a cult classic with lasting charme and soul.

Though I prefer the analogue filmmaking of masters like Lynch and Scott over filmmaking of current times Villeneuve, I would not say that analogue Roger Deakins is better than digital Deakins.

I imagine there would be more bad analogue movies than good ones and at the same time more digital mediocrity out there than analogue lacklusters in absolute numbers, due to the sheer amount of digital output.

A statement about analogue being better than digital is very general and misses a lot in regards of the beauty and quality of digital filmmaking. The og post is still a good tease for a lively discussion and a well written fun read. It sofore deserves my big like!

I do not a agree on the general premise of the original post but I can share its love for originality and sincerity for cinema, though I found that in digital as well. I love the number of quirky, playful, inventive shorts, semi pro music videos, classic and not so classic indies and labours of love, which have been produced since the rise of 8bit 420 cameras. I love the 8bit 420 gems of old days vimeo as well as full scale digital cinema movies like Lighthouse, oops that one was analogue.;)

I don't care for most of the high scale Hollywood or Netflix Blockbusters but I love tons of other digitally filmed, edited and graded films and videos I got to enjoy.

On a side note, the first Raid movie was an 8bit 422 masterpiece in many regards, the glory of Panasonic AF100 output to an Atomos Ninja. Most of you know that, of course. I still enjoyed mentioning it.:)

[QuickHitRecord]

I kind of agree with the original post in that we have lost something. But I also wonder if that "something" was the innocence of youth. I remember being completely immersed in the blockbusters of the 1990s as a kid. It takes a lot to even approach that feeling decades later. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

I remember watching Phantom Thread (2017) for the first time. I was completely immersed by the understated beauty of the visuals. When I looked to see what camera they had used, it was Kodak Vision3 200T and 500T.

That being said, I've generally been ditching the multi-node grading workflows of Resolve in favor of simple global adjustments in Premiere (my native platform). No windows, which were not readily available in the days of celluloid. The resulting images have an honesty to them and don't seem to by vying for anyone's attention.

[MrSMW]

1 hour ago, QuickHitRecord said:

I remember being completely immersed in the blockbusters of the 1990s as a kid. It takes a lot to even approach that feeling decades later. Nostalgia is a powerful thing.

 

1980’s for me and not necessarily all ‘blockbusters’, in fact most were not but ‘just movies’.

I didn’t give a fig then what they were shot on and still don’t. It was about how they made you feel then and still do now.

Yes, it’s nostalgia now but so many movies back then were just fun without being the utter crap so many are today.

 

[EduPortas]

On 3/15/2025 at 1:12 AM, octoplex said:

The notion of "color grading" is largely a commercial-construct designed to create the job of "colorist" and to sell computer hardware and software. Movies made after the 1980s look consistently worse and worse, because the popular concept of "fixing it in post" has led a generation of film-makers to disregard the importance of proper lighting, story, acting, and set design.

Something went very wrong in cinema after the mid-90s. Both socially and artistically. This degradation of quality in film-making coincided with three shifts in film-aesthetics

Pretty sure Dogma 95 will be right up your ally (Lars Von Trier, Soren Kragh-Jacobsen, et al.)

They proposed the same thing as you: no frills film-making with the story as the most important element.

Enjoy --->

FULL LIST OF DOGME 95 RULES

Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).

The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot).

The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted.

The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

Optical work and filters are forbidden.

The film must not contain superficial action (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur).

Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden (That is to say that the film takes place here and now).

Genre movies are not acceptable.

The film format must be Academy 35 mm.

The director must not be credited.

 

 

[Django]

Rules are meant to be broken and Von Trier & Vinterberg did so by the early 2000's. 

Their first films under Dogme95 were shot using MiniDV and they later quickly embraced RED/ARRI digital cinema.

Breaking the Waves was shot on 35mm but digitally scanned to process it in post and give it an aesthetic. Basically early modern color grading.

All movies shot on film today are scanned digitally and graded. 35mm usually scanned at 4K-6K and 65mm/75mm 8K and beyond. Projection is also digital. Its a fallacy to think film is super soft with lack of detail.

People romanticise old 35mm movies but they were usually scanned at 480p/720p for TV, VHS, DVD.

Most of the time from from second or even third gen prints not even original film negatives or masters.

Maybe you are into soft grainy contrasty Lo-fi analogue aesthetic and that's fine but you can emulate that look pretty well today in Davinci. Personally I embrace digital cinema and how its democratised filmmaking on a lower budget.

And while I do have a deep appreciation for analogue medium in general (especially as a musician, engineer) I recognise it is more about the tactile experience and workflow than sound/image quality which can be closely emulated today in digital.