So, each of the following movie videos was created 35 years after the following selection. Tom Hanks in News of The World (2020) Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider (1985) Roy Rogers in North of The Great Divide (1950 Cecil B. DeMille's The Girl of The Golden West (1915) So the dilemma here imho, is that for the better part of a century, each generation that came up watching movies, when they'd watch the older generations' movies, had pronounced & obvious esthetic visual evidence, that indicated like a pictorial timestamp how vintage what they were watching was. However, for the 1st time in the artform's existence, we're now into a generation that is coming up watching 35-40 year old films, that photographically speaking are virtually indistinguishable from ones being made now, as the 1980s was something of a zenith in photographic technology (Unless you're talking about VFX) which finally succeeded in making movies that look fully photorealistic... an accomplishment we have not much improved upon, because there isn't anything to improve when it looks real. Real looking is real looking, no matter the year. The result is that last year Tom Hardy portrayed Al Capone in a movie, & 33 years earlier, Robert Deniro portrayed him, & to someone who knew nothing of either of these actors or films, you essentially couldn't tell which came 1st. This creates a context issue imho. Its much harder to refrain from unduly placing the expectations of modern sensibilities upon a piece of art, when it is comparatively identical in many ways to modern art, & to people who might not be versed in that art's history, the effect might be even more so From hereafter it might always be this way, much longer maybe than it ever had where it wasn't. I feel like I had a luxury of perspective that these newer generations are not going to have with old movies, & it might make movies struggle harder to withstand the test of time, perhaps? For example, a young viewer today might have no context for the social dynamics in a movie like Tom Hank's Philadelphia, & could easily misread quite a lot there, for having no marker that reminds them, THIS IS OLD. I noticed this when watching a young person view Rain Man, & when they remarked "It's almost as if no one even knew what Autism was" & I had to say "Yeah, they kind of didn't", not until this movie put it on the cultural map, which in some ways was a blessing, but in others, kind of put a stigma on the spectrum that made everyone think all autism was like Dustin Hoffman's character. Are we going to have a harder time with context, because the movies are so indistinguishably similar to the older generations now?
I believe the quality of the film stock isn't the only identifier of a movies age. What about the age of the actors? Case in point; the movie Joker is set in the early 1980s but is clearly made in the current decade as De Niro is 30 years older than he was in movies made in the early 1980s where he wasn't wearing makeup to make him look 30 years older. Know what I'm sayin?
^Not to mention that while the quality of 1980s film stock vs. 2020s digital film might look similar, there are changes in how the films are edited, scored, how the sound is mixed... there's lots of factors that can help pinpoint the era when a film was made beyond what you're looking at. Separately, the OP is also touching on the issue of historical context. What's the difference between needing to explain the historical context of Philadelphia or Rain Man and needing to do the same for a novel like Huckleberry Finn?
Certainly an interesting topic, one which I hadn't given much thought. I think that as movies get remastered, the less context we get. For example, I watched Mackenna's Gold today, which must have been remastered, as everything looks quite gorgeous, to the point of looking quite modern. There were points where I couldn't quite believe that this was a movie shot in 1969. The intro made my jaw drop as I wondered how they managed to film all footage from high up and fairly close up, given that they didn't have drones back then. Yeah, I know helicopters would have been used, but all the same, they wouldn't have been able to get as close as a drone would without disturbing the scenery and creating dust clouds. So, what we get (on Netflix at least) are rather sharp HD views of drone-like footage from 1969, which is amazing to me. And looking at the picture quality, one would be hard-pressed to know it's actually a movie from the late 60's. I think one indicator for context would be actors and their ages. You can kind of narrow down the era they'd be filmed in via the age of the actors, but sometimes that information is not available online.
Certainly that's an identifier, among other aspects, but in 50 years, when someone who's never heard of DeNiro, stumbles upon one of his films, that identifier is of minimal service But with the exception of stylistic leanings, which can & often are adopted, are any of those any more pronounced than the slight differences in the video production (which there are some), such that they are obvious to the naked eye/ear? Not everyone knows how to differentiate the specifics of audio or editing design, but they do notice when a whole era has a technological look, just as they would if reading something written in a whole different type of English, like Shakespeare. I mean if you watch Beverly Hills Cop & hear that wacky 80's music, yeah it's obvious, but if you're watching DeNiro & Robin Williams in Awakenings, not so much. I'm more discerning than most, in that, apart from Oldman's performance, I didn't really care for David Fincher's Mank, because it attempts to capture the look of that era's filmmaking, but doesn't quite, because it's shot in a digital medium, but I'd hazard a guess most people would never pick up on that, let alone the even less distinctiveness in things more closely designed in current times That's a fair point, but I'd think there is no doubt when someone picks up Twain, they likely already understand, on some obvious level, that they're dealing with a product of a bygone era We're into an era of filmmaking now where that understanding might not be as obvious. I've felt this way ever since I began noticing TNG catching a bit more flack for not holding up to modern sensibilities as TOS does, & I just have to think that TOS has that obvious vintage look staring you in the face to blatantly timestamp it, but with TNG, apart from the FX, they look much more like any tv show might, even now. It's practically a given imho that it would be harder to recognize it as vintage, & that could lead to less treatment as such
That's some style stuff though. Frankly, I've also noticed a trend in the last couple decades of "realistically" lighting dark/night scenes... So you can barely even make out who or what you're looking at for entire swaths of the film It's theater, people. You light it. I know it's not as real as real dark... but the murder & sex isn't as real as real murder & sex either. That's theater. We're pretending. Geesh.
Depends on the scene. If they're doing astronomy outdoors, you'd want it as dark as possible. When you have white lights lighting up the scene and lighting up faces, it breaks the illusion that they're actually doing any observing, but unfortunately that's what happens all too often. There was one recent movie we watched where they did it correctly, and where they did need to light, they used red lighting as astronomers would use. I was very impressed with that as it was very realistic.
^ I get what you're saying. I wasn't referring to anything as specific as astrological stuff. I mostly meant just nighttime, in a house. They'll even have a light on, in the room, but it's lighting a wall or something, & the actors spend the whole scene virtually obscured. I wish I could think of some examples. I'll have to do some recollecting.
Yeah, like I said, depends on the scene I do know what you mean though and I've been frustrated with that kind of thing too. It gets even worse when they try to be historically accurate and only light the scenes via candlelight or other dim lighting. Done right, it can add to the atmosphere, but if the scene is then made too dark, it can be frustrating.
But that's "style stuff"; apparently the quality of film stock is the only way you can truly tell films apart.
It's fascinating thinking of how directors and cinematographers work together and the problem solving they have to do during principle photography. They can spend months storyboarding but on the day is when they know if it works and there's a difference between the Steadicam where it's moving smoothly and the deliberate jerky movements to mimic hand held amature filming or documentary style footage with a lot of stop/start recording and breaking the fourth wall. There's a lot to be said of long fixed shots like Stanley Kubrick liked. Shots like that can set the scene in a way speech never could but film making seems to becoming more about special effects and rapid fire dialogue.