Why movies just don't feel "real" anymore

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45949863

Modern digital cinema cameras can capture dark scenes far better than the film stocks of the 90s and earlier. So set designers don’t need to blast light everywhere to have actors be visible. Now, we even have AI Denoising that can make ISO 12500 look like 800.

Go watch a 90s movie and look at a night or interior scene. You’ll see that everyone is actually lit by blue lights. Not natural darkness. That’s a major change.

This also shows up in porn. A playboy photo was expertly lit and beautifully so, with angles and bounces and shade filters and gobos.

Since the 2000s the market has expected the “DV Cam” which became “Smartphone” recorded look. Which means natural lighting all the time. It’s lost the “glam”.

I don’t watch modern most blockbusters because I don’t enjoy them in general. I watch a few that I know I will likely enjoy.

I think we have some bias too.

We remember better the good experiences. The Netflix catalog is full of not so good movies, and the video rental shops in the 90s were too.

Take a movie like When Harry Met Sally — there are basically four on screen characters, giving more time to build chemistry and relationships