Grayscale: Are Too Many TV Shows and Movies Desaturated?

NAB

Is it true that many movies and TV shows made now look gray, washed out or plain dull? That’s the contention of Vox critic Emily VanDerWerff who undermines her own argument every step of the way.

article here

Her contention is that “many TV shows and movies now have a dull filter applied to every scene, one that cuts away vibrancy and trends toward a boring sameness.”

She agrees with the characterization of this look as ‘intangible sludge’ and relies on comparisons of the show Dexter from Season one in 2006 and the latest Dexter series (2021) to underlines a shift from colorful imagery to “a shadowy blandness [that] coats everything.”

She correctly identifies that the more technical term for the slightly washed-out appearance is “desaturated” and recognizes that this is not in and of itself bad. “It’s a tool that can be used poorly or used well… But why is it everywhere now?” she asks, “What is behind the endless desaturation of Hollywood?”

I don’t know what shows she is watching or quite how a critic can misunderstand the fundamentals of look design within cinematography, production design, costume and color grading but if we take just some of the frontrunners for Best Film this year: Dune, Belfast and The Power of the Dog.

Dune and ‘Dog’ we can agree might fit into the ‘intangible sludge’ syndrome. Dune is colored like the desert and given sombre tones as befitting an epic story about imperial warfare. No-one is complaining. It’s likely to be high up in the craft nominations come Oscar time.

Likewise having eye catching color in Jane Campion’s western would only distract from the core drama, a point emphasized by the film’s DP Ari Wegner [read more at NAB Amplify https://amplify.nabshow.com/articles/savage-beauty-the-visuals-for-the-power-of-the-dog/].

Belfast and Joel Coen’s MacBeth are also getting warm praise. Fair enough, Vox doesn’t seem to lump monochrome aesthetic choices in with its argument although these would fit with its contention that dull colors lends a story a more serious look and feel (she looks back to The Godfather to back this up). Belfast however uses color in an extraordinary way to illuminate the young Kenneth Branagh’s inspiration at the theater and picture house watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Other 2022 hot awards contenders like Licorice Pizza have a Technicolor vibe to ape the early 70s, or in case of Last Night in Soho a hyper vivid fluorescence to convey the swinging sixties and deranged state of mind.

King Richard, the highly entertaining look at the rise of the Williams’ tennis sisters, is definitely not a desaturated film. It has whites and yellows and blues and is filmed in the warmth of the California sun.

There are numerous examples which undercut the Vox thesis. No mention is made of animated features which – like Encanto – positively pop with primary color.

She recognizes this when tracing what she feels to be the consistent layering of dull color back to The Matrix in 1999. She acknowledges that the green computer overlay and monotonous beige color scheme worked for a movie about the internet and digital drudgery but says other movies then followed it without having the same story reasons for doing so.

The Matrix Resurrections may be a disappointing film in many respects but not visually. It is designed to deliberately pop with primary colours in acknowledgement that our experience of the internet has become photoreal.

Vox seems to suggest that it is the fault of the rise of digital moviemaking and by implication a laziness on the part of filmmakers why every movie and TV show – including the Marvel ones, according to them, looks the same.

Yet the same technology (as well as staples like production design, location and costume) enables creatives to apply different looks to better tell the story. If a film’s story isn’t working it won’t just be because the grade is poor – though it won’t help.

One factor missing from the article’s explanations is that of consumer displays and in particular the use of high dynamic range. HDR is not yet mainstream in either home displays (most new TVs do have it but there’s a lot of legacy kit in living rooms) or in postproduction and it can help to ‘lift’ the ‘sludge’ of color and contrast, shadow and highlights.

VanDerWerff seems to recognize, as many DPs do, that digital cameras can lead to a consistent ‘video-style’ image which is why so many of them prefer to add back character in older lenses, or applying grain – or digitally altering the image. Most are skilled enough to create looks that work for the show.