#its in the black and white view of the world

[nova-rogue]

The assumption that all production is a monolith is certainly a choice here. Two major things on cinematography:

Cinematographers are generally good at their job. They know way more than you could ever know about lighting a scene. Someone taking a screenshot and "brightening" it in software like photoshop is NEVER going to prove the point you think you're proving. Because lighting doesn't work that way and you're taking a 2D still of a 3D film that already has processing and compression and using a brightening tool. Like that's not how that works at all. This is a dumb comparison to make. You don't have the original captured image and all of its data. You cannot adjust the brightness with a screenshot: you need to be able to process the full image data.

A big downfall, though: Movies are lit specifically for the best case scenario of lighting and color nuance. Theater screens and projectors are supposed to be kept clean, working, and up to spec, and movies are lit for that purpose. A movie is rarely "too dark" it's just that you're watching it sub-optimally on a computer, phone, or TV, or god forbid on a movie projector that hasn't had its routine maintenance (something that notably got worse because of the pandemic!). This isn't your fault as a consumer btw, it's just a stupid disparity that exists.

Cinematographers light differently than you'd expect. White is meant to be seen as the BRIGHTEST thing on the screen. Every ounce of brightness is lit down based on that. Your computer screen? There are things just as bright as white because of the way brightness is done on computer monitors. Cinematographers use a system called False Color in order to identify and "visualize" brightness levels:

Note that Brightness has to do with literal light output and not hue or saturation. Those are different things.

Cinematographers use False Color overlays when adjusting for lighting on set in order to determine the appropriate levels based around pure white being the brightest thing ever on screen and pure black being the darkest possible thing.

Because of this: compression is a bitch. If you're watching on any at-home device your device is compressing the shit out of the bottom end of the spectrum! You are seeing LESS detail than intended. There will be artifacting there that's typically pretty visible. This doesn't happen with (maintained) projectors.

When you watch on an at-home device you are viewing with less color nuance than is actually captured on camera.

These cinematographers are not "lazy". They're not using "flat lighting" (jesus christ) and they rarely have to "fix things on set" like this post is implying. Their lights and lighting are often just fine. The bigger issue is the technology disparity between what Cinematographers are lighting for--for NUANCE and COLOR RANGE--versus what color range output the average person's device is capable of putting out.

Also, if you're ever watching a pirated movie or show, unfortunately it is highly likely it's in less quality than the original and the compression, artifacting, and overall quality is going to be worse. Not saying you're wrong for doing this (fuck the streaming service hell world), just making mention that pirating does sometimes affect quality.

See Also: VFX is absolutely a bitch too, but we do talk about it wrong. CGI tech is really good now, but I've seen VFX artists on twitter talk about how the biggest issues arise when the production team doesn't have a solid vision for what they want and keep changing their mind or making adjustments to what's needed. Less time to work on the CGI means less quality CGI. Sometimes the lighting and color grading of post-production is affected by this problem as well. If you watched either of Denis Villeneuve's DUNE films, it's worth watching any behind the scenes production stuff you can. You'll note that Villeneuve and Greig Fraser (my favorite cinematographer of all time btw) worked very hard with visual development, story boarding, and pre-production so that they had a clear vision for going into solving cinematography problems in advance, which also makes post-production go smoother. A lot of times it's not even the Director and Cinematographer's fault if they aren't given the time or budget to make things go as smoothly as DUNE.

So yeah, posts like this irritate me because a lot of assumptions are made by people who know very little about how cinematography works. There are little snippets here and there that are correct (like the rushed/lack of vision VFX stuff), but a lot of it gets pinned on either the director or cinematographer, which is often unfair. Someone doesn't get in Greig Fraser's position (or even lower!) by being bad at lighting on set. It's a job with an impossibly high skill ceiling. There is stuff with more mediocre cinematography, but the issues are rarely going to be "lazy lighting". It's usually something else.

OMG. Somebody said it out loud.

Disney is absolutely not the only studio doing this though.

It seems to have become standard practice across movies and series everywhere.

Anything that doesn't do it is like a breath of sunlight and fresh air inside a dank musty cave.

It's part of the 'fix it in post-production' epidemic sweeping through the studios. Fix it in post is often used as a time/money-saving measure - and is absolutely part of the same mess that the WGA is fighting against currently.

Rather than fixing things on-set - audio, lighting, something in-frame that shouldn't be, etc. (which is all handled by unionized crew) - they leave it for the CG folks (not unionized) to edit later.

(on ridiculously tight schedules that leave them scrambling, cutting corners, and working inhumane hours)

See also: that part where scripts aren't finished, because the studio won't fully staff the writers room, and won't pay to have writers on-set for day-of-filming script questions and fixes (which could resolve issues such as 'what kind of lighting do we need here?')

Anyway, all this shit we, as audiences, keep complaining about - bad lighting, bad sound, wonky visual effects, over-usage of not-great CGI, stilted acting on green-screen sets, scripts that seem not-quite-finished, costumes that look like they're cheap and flimsy, terrible hair and makeup, films and series that aren't as polished as they could be...

Plus the complaints we have about streaming services and their shenanigans...

All of that is enmeshed in the extreme capitalism that has taken over everything, including entertainment, to the point that studios are abusing their workforce and churning out material that - at best just doesn't live up to its potential - at worst, is just unwatchable shit.

[bugbuoyx]

I think it's funny when people say trans men don't experience misogyny. I experience it alot as an out and proud and obvious trans person. Most folks are good, they don't blink an eye (even in the rural south) but for some you can see it like a switch. The biggest tell in my experience is they start treating you like the world's biggest idiot. Like you couldn't possibly know more than them about anything. I also tend to get babied, people stop letting me do things I was doing previously such as lifting heavy stuff and outdoorsy type work.

I just think it's ridiculous that the most basic elements of misogyny, elements that have been defined and discussed for years, no longer count as misogyny because it's directed at a trans guy. How do people even claim it's "misdirected" (which is such a bullshit word irt oppression) it's all very clearly directed at me for having formerly been a woman*. And what of my time spent living as a girl? Does all that misogyny mysteriously disappear, all of my former experiences rendered moot by the fact I'm now a guy*.

I haven't even gotten into how cis men can be misogynistic towards each other but rad fems and people who pretend they aren't rad fems but boil misogyny down to "woman only oppression" like to ignore that. What do you call it when a cis guy shames another guy by calling him a pussy? "You hit like a girl" anyone? You can't explain this away as "misdirected" because the intended target is not a girl, is not mistakenly being perceived as a girl, it is a deliberate act of misogyny in order to enforce the patriarchal status quo.

[harbingersecho]

I don't feel pain I never escape I'm under the bed I'm licking the floor

[kindaorangey]

dude assad zaman is a good actor. did u guys know this

[bisexual-problem]

Simone DeBeauvoir said that the biggest struggle towards female liberation is the fact that women do not see their sex before their race AND class AND religion. Wealthy white women will feel more kinship erroneously with their wealthy male counterparts than even poor white women, and two degrees of separation is almost alien, such as a poor black woman. In order for women to succeed with any change, we need go come together on behalf of the oppression our sex experiences despite our differences in how much money we make, where we live, what God we do or don't worship, etc.

It's manipulating our needs for tribalism. Female trump voters probably only have a small world view and a small group of people she has personally deemed "safe" and "trustworthy" and "worthy of being a US citizen". She thinks that regardless of what happens, those close people will love her and that they will be there for her. She's ignorant, selfish, and could be discriminatory or racist or sexist.

I don't blame her, because its normal to want to trust the man in your life, your family, your church. She was just unfortunate with every decision she has made or wasnt even allowed to make to enlighten herself up to this very moment for every woman is my sister.

I came across an interesting quote today. I’ll have to paraphrase it, but it said something to the effect of “white women [who voted for Trump] did not vote against their interests as women, but for their interests as white people.”

It does seem to insinuate that that the primary division of interests between Americans is race instead of sex, which is a more controversial statement to make here.

On first read it sounds accurate to me in terms of the motivations of voters, but I would like to hear y’all’s thoughts.

I’ll add a poll for fun.

[that-binchh]

as much as i love reading cherik fics, i do have to turn off my brain every time because every fic seems to have a line or two about how mutant issues is the most pressing social injustice. and like as a black person, that line is so tone deaf to me because racism in the x-men world is both visible and invisible, which is actually so true to reality that it lowkey makes me sick.

[thornswoggled]

(ch 86, 74, 1, 3)

it took a long time for the manga to finally tell the full story of what happened to chises family, and i think it will take a while longer until we learn the full story of how seth met chise, and what led her to attempt suicide

i wont be "disappointed," per se, if we never see it, because it could come down to yamazaki feeling that the implication is enough, and maybe she just doesnt want to portray it explicitly for any number of reasons. but i think its important that we see her grapple with the memory of it, for the same reasons i rambled on about the dragon curse yesterday

chise is still unwilling to interrogate who she is as a person, for fear that she might not like the answer (see: "i think what i did was cruel, i wonder if im treating these people any differently than i would sheep?") its significant that when we learn of her past, we watch it as a passive observer - her memories are literally presented to her in the form of a tv with a vhs. shes able to watch without participating or being able to change anything. and thats all to be expected - she was a child without autonomy, completely beholden to the actions of adults. but when it comes to her attempt to "fly" - this is something still in fairly recent memory, and a choice she had the means to take. i believe we wont see the immediate events that led to her trafficking until chise reaches a point where she is able to wrestle with her identity and how its been informed by her ptsd. its probably why we also havent seen elias follow up on the above question from 74. if he asks her now, she wont be at a point where shes ready to answer

i think about seth and chises meeting a lot. do you think he followed her for a while before he decided to approach her? what was their brief time together like? its all very compelling to me

[dreamspring]

sigh. people putting oversimplified batman no kill rule discourse on the dash again...

[seariii]

She's showing her determination, she will use it to never let go of my hand <3

(look I'm struggling with this one, read the notes and suffer)

[gilliontidestriderchampionoftheu]

you dont understand everywhere that jayson's outfit is white, lizzies is black. literally black and white.

[chappybird]

anyone else get those rpers who make their character a constant victim, and who try to tell you what to do in the actions? or even folks who dictate traits about your character. woe. i may be desperate for rp a lot, but i am so sick of it.

not an uncommon problem but I would say it's much more common amongst immature rpers with very narrow black and white world views. If their character is a victim then they can't be a perpetrator. The other thing is a sense of entitlement and poor RP skills.

[femmefaggot]

ouhh the hypocrisy i love internet so bad

[mejomonster]

i’m not good with words so i probably won’t describe it right. but the black/white mentality online sometimes of things with any flaws being ‘pure evil/need to be destroyed’ and expecting the alternative to be whatever arbitrary things the person decided are ‘perfectly healthy’... does not do anyone good.

i mean yes, we could go into it being an extension of purity culture, of conservatism mindset etc but like. at an even more basic level, especially because online spaces have a lot of younger people:

its really bad to view YOURSELF that way. and when you’re viewing even things way outside you that way, you might be viewing yourself that way. that relationship in X novel is bad because person 1 didn’t communicate right away, and even if they learn and improve through the novel you’ve already decided they’re “too flawed”, or maybe the person 1 never fully improves since its a novel and ‘awful’ to ‘moderately decent at relationships’ is the arc instead of moderately decent to ‘perfect.’ 

But my point is, about yourself: no one is perfect. You will NEVER be perfect. Please don’t hold yourself to the expectation you MUST BE PERFECT and anything less makes you pure evil/irredeemable/awful and unworthy of being treated fairly. The best anyone can do in this life, is try their best, notice when they do happen to mess up or someone lets them know they have, and practice trying to do better next time. You can improve yourself for a lifetime, for decades go to therapy and do all the right exercises and work on yourself every time you slip up even a little AND give yourself breaks so you don’t work yourself to death being overly critical of yourself nonstop... and still by your death you won’t be perfect. 

When I see people get very intensely angry about fiction being imperfect, about wanting it ‘perfect,’ it makes me worry maybe they can’t take and accept their own imperfections. That they see themselves as pure good or evil too, and either naively think of themselves as “perfect” which leads to ignoring when you do actually harm others or yourself (which will happen sometimes), or think of themselves already as irredeemably bad and never able to fix it (since any imperfection even if working on it is “not good enough” according to such a thought process). And that’s an awful way to live. You need to be able to care for yourself NOW, think you’re worthy of respect and fairness NOW, think others critiques of you can be put to constructive use so you can grow, think of yourself as the sum of all the years of growing and improving you ALREADY DID and how that’s a wonderful amazing thing you’ve accomplished! 

This purity culture idea just seems like its very prone to making the people sucked into it self hate because humans just never can be fully perfect, or sucked into never improving and growing and rejecting times they maybe should for their own wellbeing because admitting they have any flaws makes them forever ‘awful.’ That’s not true. You’re not inherently bad, period. You’re not bad for having flaws, you’re normal and human and alive. It’s okay to have flaws, its okay to gradually work on them because humans can only improve so much at a time, its okay to realize 2 decades later that oh you still have this negative thing you do and then maybe work on it then. The reality is we will never be perfect, we will still find our share of some kinds of flaws when we’re very old and about to die, and we need to be able to accept ourselves and appreciate the progress we constantly make and recognize we are valuable and inherently okay as people even when there are still flaws or new flaws come up. 

[bluinary]

Reblogging this before everyone hops on the "you should've known better" train

I'm convinced I have the worst vibes detector of all time. I used to be a fan of Creepshow Art, iilluminaughtii, and James Somerton- all high-profile creators who got their careers tanked because they're bad people. Given the absolutely huge number of creators I subscribe to it's not surprising that this has happened multiple times, but still.

Then again, when I expressed this sentiment in the past and kicked myself for not being more aware of the red flags, someone told me that means I just want to see the good in people and am more willing to forgive faults than others are. I think that's spot-on tbh; I'm a very naive and forgiving person, which has often been taken advantage of. But it's just my nature, I can't help it.

This will inevitably happen to me again, but I'd rather not beat myself up over not constantly being attuned to every red flag people give off.

[and-this-of-all-my-hopes]

So, I feel like I’m losing my mind. I keep seeing metas about how Aziraphale wants Crowley to return to Heaven and be an angel again because he wants them to be on the same side/be good/change/etc., etc., etc. but I don’t see that at all. I actually see it as the very opposite.

Aziraphale loves Crowley just as he is. But there’s something more. Something huge.

Aziraphale loves Crowley and because he is an angel who is stuck in seeing things as black and white, he constantly praises Crowley for being nice. For being good. For being kind.

Aziraphale has watched Crowley on and off for 6,000 years. He watched him thwart the plans of Heaven and Hell because it was unjust. He spared the lives of innocents. He did small things that made Aziraphale happy just because (like making Hamlet successful and saving valuable books). And because Aziraphale sees things in black and white, he sees all the things Crowley has done as nice, as good, as kind.

Crowley vehemently attests he’s not nice or good or kind.

He’s not exactly wrong nor is he lying when he says this. When Crowley spares goats during a cruel bet over a righteous man and swallowing laudanum to prevent a suicide, when he prevents Armageddon by working with Aziraphale and stopping the Anti-Christ from being the Anti-Christ, he’s not doing the nice/good/kind thing.

He’s doing the right thing.

Crowley chooses to do the right thing without hesitation. He is better than all of Heaven and Hell who have callous and dispassionate view of all existence because he questions, because he makes choices. Crowley sees the world for all its messiness and he sees himself. He sees a place where he fits in. He sees the blurred edges.

And Aziraphale sees that, even if seeing the blurred edges is hard for him.

But here’s the thing that Aziraphale can’t voice.

It’s the reason why he told Crowley about being allowed to return to Heaven and become an angel again. He doesn’t want Crowley to change. He doesn’t think Crowley is flawed. Or not enough.

It’s something that is so monumental that it cannot be put into words. Because to put it into words would be more than blasphemy. It’s down right unthinkable for anyone in Heaven, Hell, or Earth to say what Aziraphale knows deep in his soul.

God was wrong to cast out Crowley.

Aziraphale believes Crowley can/should return to Heaven because he knows that Crowley should never have fallen in the first place. He wants him to be forgiven because when Crowley fell it was unjust. Aziraphale is trying to correct a mistake. He’s trying to do the right thing.

Yes, Crowley would never accept returning to Heaven. And Aziraphale was wrong to even suggest it (although that conversation is another can of worms to unpack).

Aziraphale loves Crowley. He loves him exactly as he is. He doesn’t want him to change. Aziraphale knows that Crowley the best of all of them. He wants to change Heaven because of it. Because God was wrong and Aziraphale knows it.

Aziraphale may have difficulty seeing beyond black and white, but when it comes to Crowley he sees everything crystal clear and in vivid color.

[spittingoutthebloodandscreaming]

People keep trying to rehabilitate radf*m ideology only to trip and fall into rancid ideas as a result, can we just stop trying please. Its not the seventies anymore and there are more than two available forms of feminism