Here comes a somewhat off tangent rant, but cinematography is awful these days. The trend is “natural lighting”, meaning they don’t want you to think there are studio lights but only whatever light sources might be in the environment. Problem is, this makes for a flat, muddy, frequently dark picture. Picard Season 3 was just the nadir; it was shockingly bad. It was often a struggle to see who was doing what.
Back in the day, the director of photography could easily do a darker scene but they still had the sense to use the proper lighting to actually LIGHT the actors. Perfect, artful use of chiaroscuro. Generations is an example of how to do this well. P3 is an example of how NOT do anything visually.
Fully agree. Lighting on tv nowadays has basically 2 choices:
1) Flat, full tv lighting. Which, well, looks like tv lighting. A lot of modern police or medical procedurals get away with this. But it still "looks tv". And not "prestige tv", but "network tv".
2). Natural lighting. Natural lighting is hard as fuck to get right. That's why actual movies take a shitload of time to film, and half of them still look bad.
Some "prestige" tv (like house of dragon) still do proper lighting. But that costs a lot per episode, and you need to hire experienced directors.
So most "prestige" shows just do natural lighting on the fly after the 2nd or 3rd episode went over budget, and as a result everything looks too dark and weirdly highlighted.
The solution in my opinion is - ironically - what a Kurtzman show does: "Strange New Worlds" - Use natural lighting, but in a very brightly lit environment.
The new Enterprise is very shiny. Outside is shiny. When they film in the VR Box the environment is usually well lit. And as a result, everything still looks lit somewhat naturally and modern, but you still see the whole thing, and not for example have a bright reflection on Picard's baldness but his face hidden in shadows.
But that's not what the other, also darker in tone, prestige tv shows do, though. Stranger Things' monsters wouldn't really work if everything is brightly lit. And most modern Trek wants to look like the expensive competition.
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