If you're too much of a hipster for Letterboxd, or just like physical notebooks like I do, then you might like the "Flight Log" available now for preorder:
A kinda brilliant move in The Curse: they shot the main story in 1080p at high ISO and upscaled it to 4K. Most of it looks all nasty and noisy, but then the fake reality TV portions come on and they're in blindingly crisp 4K in comparison to the rest of the show.
I think we're in the "Metamodern Era" of film. Movies like Nope, Babylon, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, The French Dispatch, and many more, have a distinct feeling that I think is an evolution from Postmodern filmmaking to Metamodern filmmaking.
Did I say modern acting is better than classical acting? Absolutely not.
I don't feel the need to defend myself, since I think my video speaks for itself if you actually watch (and comprehend it), but this is an interesting case study in how nuance gets lost:
Great example of how what looks traditionally "bad" can be perfect within the established visual grammar of a show or depending on what a piece of media is trying to communicate.
The camera test for The Curse! I tried to trick
@maceobishop
with my movements on a 2000 mm lens! The proof of concept for what I’ll call realism candid camera: HD at 3200 iso in the world of 4K!! Crazy we did this on a weekend while I was shooting Oppenheimer! EP 3 OUT NOW!!!!!!
@catpoopburglar
@candon_sean
I definitely wish I could rewrite that line, it's obviously not communicating what I intended to most people the key words being "big expectation" - I'm implying it was at least partially an expectation! Just that not as much emphasis was placed on those qualities as today.
I think we're in the "Metamodern Era" of film. Movies like Nope, Babylon, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, The French Dispatch, and many more, have a distinct feeling that I think is an evolution from Postmodern filmmaking to Metamodern filmmaking.
One of the biggest questions is "Is Metamodernism just Postmodernism?" -My video will tackle this in more detail, but in short Metamodern works *look* very Postmodern, but they also engage in genuinely sincere modernist styling or optimism in a way postmodern works don't.
I think we're in the "Metamodern Era" of film. Movies like Nope, Babylon, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, The French Dispatch, and many more, have a distinct feeling that I think is an evolution from Postmodern filmmaking to Metamodern filmmaking.
I attempt to explain Metamodernism and chart what I see as the movies' evolution from Modernism to Metamodernism in my latest video which is out now on Nebula and for Patrons, coming to YouTube next week!
This post wildly misrepresent the view I present in the video. Seán says I "suggest that bogart's the shit one" when literally seconds later in the video I say this:
@catpoopburglar
@candon_sean
This video is also not about how "naturalism" is better than "theatricality" - it's just a discussion of why I think that shift happened, based on about 10 months of research. My sources are cited in the video. Bibliography in the description.
"Show Don't Tell" is often misunderstood when applied to film and TV. Exposition, done well, can be a powerful tool in the writer's toolbox. My latest video examines how:
New video out tomorrow talking about The Grand Budapest Hotel, Idealism, Storytelling, Beauty, Loss, and Metamodernism.
You can watch it now with a bonus deleted scene on Nebula:
@catpoopburglar
@candon_sean
To all the people showing the exceptions to this, performances pre-1950 that did have a lot of depth and emotional authenticity, yes, those are great performances, I agree. I didn't focus on those because the video is about broader shifts in the styling of acting.
@patrickhwillems
At this point if people don't like his thing I feel like it's on them for continuing to even care or pay attention to what he's doing.
This video was the conclusion of about 10 months of ongoing research, which is cited in the video and the included bibliography. If you disagree or think I got something wrong that's fine. But it's pretty frustrating to see one line misrepresented out of context.
This shift is well documented part of film history. It's not something I just came up with for a video. Expectations about what acting should be have changed dramatically over the centuries.
1. The key words here are "big expectations." Nowhere do I say these old performances don't have depth or emotional authenticity. Obviously there are great performances in the 50s and before with depth and emotional authenticity (including from Bogart)!
The main issue seems to be the line "for much of film history depth and emotional authenticity were not big expectations."
Seán misunderstands this line and runs with it:
@catpoopburglar
@candon_sean
My particular claim that's being criticized here is backed up by Issac Butler's research in "The Method" (pp. 280-281) a source I cite moments after this statement in the video.
I think there's something larger to be said here about how some folks seems to read any comparison as inherently competitive and qualitative.
Yes I show Scarlett Johansson and Bogart in comparison, nowhere do I say one is better than the other. They're just different.
Is Maverick actually Metamodern? It's worth considering.
I think: It is modernist in structure and filmmaking, and philosophically blends modern and traditional values, but perhaps (as I think Damien argues) its context means the audience engages with it in a metamodern way.
I didn't just pull this claim out of my ass, my research (which I happen to cite in the video) backs it up. Check out Butler, Issac. The Method p. 280-281
The video is about how broader expectations for what constitutes "quality" in performance have shifted over time, and what caused that shift. I never claim things are better now.
If you're watching the new season of The Bear and thinking the editing is stunning, check out this video I made where I spoke with the show's editors to look at how they do it.
In which
@thomasflight
breaks down why The Bear works so freakin’ well. This vid includes interviews with editors of the show who discuss which shots to use in an edit, pacing, sound design, and more. Really terrific analysis of a show I absolutely adore.
If you've been noticing how a lot of film and TV seems to have developed a new vibe in the last decade, I think Metamodernism helps us understand what that new vibe is.
AI image synthesis tools are redundancy processing machines: they feed on repeating patterns in their training data, digest them, compress them, & spit them out again, sometimes in strangely distorted ways. This is particularly apparent in Midjourney's new »Zoom Out« feature
1/7
(For the record, I love ScarJo's Marriage Story performance but most days I'd choose to rewatch a Bogart film instead. Bogart is one of my all-time favs).
Wes Anderson has been a key figure in the development of Metamodernism in film, and my video on his style is a good prerequisite for this video:
(I don't mention metamod in the video but I see "New Sincerity" as a type of Metamodernism)
First with 'Some Kind of Heaven' and now with 'Ren Faire' Lance Oppenheim is absolutely cooking with this hyperstylized documentary approach. One of the most interesting new documentary directors working right now.