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Why is the world losing color?

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322 points trevin | 5 comments | 02 Apr 25 15:02 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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crazygringo ◴[02 Apr 25 16:38 UTC] No.43558560[source]▶
It's not "losing" color.

At periods when technology resulted in new color possibilities, people went overboard with color. Make all the things colorful!! Think of the technicolor sixties. And we can go back in history and see the same thing with new clothing pigments, new paint pigments.

But when everything is colorful, nothing stands out. Everything being colorful is as monotonous as everything being, well, monotone.

Modern taste is more about more neutral-colored foundations with color accents. Don't paint a whole room green -- have a gorgeous green plant that stands out all the more against its neutral background. Don't paint a whole wall orange -- have a beautiful orange-hued piece of art on the wall. It's just more tasteful to use color as one element, along with size, shape, texture, and so forth. Making it the main element in everything is just overdoing it. It's bad design.

I don't want constant "riotous color", as the article puts it, in my home, or my workplace, or while I'm driving. It's visually exhausting.

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TeMPOraL ◴[02 Apr 25 18:18 UTC] No.43559661[source]▶
> Modern taste is more about more neutral-colored foundations with color accents. Don't paint a whole room green -- have a gorgeous green plant that stands out all the more against its neutral background. Don't paint a whole wall orange -- have a beautiful orange-hued piece of art on the wall. It's just more tasteful to use color as one element, along with size, shape, texture, and so forth.

I don't consider this to be a be-all, end-all of design, but I appreciate that designs following this approach can be stunningly beautiful. That said, this is not the problem. The problem is, what happens these days, someone films your room with that "gorgeous green plant that stands out all the more against its neutral background" and... color grades the shit out of color, making it near pitch-black on non-HDR TVs (and most computer screens) and merely grey with tiny amounts of trace color on HDR TVs.

This is the problem - or at least its TV aspect. That Napoleon example was spot on - most movies these days look like the right half, whereas anything remotely approaching realism would make it look like the left half. And TFA correctly notices the same washing out of colors is happening to products and spaces in general (which means double trouble when that's filmed and then color-graded some more).

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crazygringo ◴[02 Apr 25 18:34 UTC] No.43559849[source]▶
The drained-color thing is exclusive to a certain type of TV/movie drama, and then also a serious technical problem involving HDR device-side (which is a whole other story).

But if you watch any comedy, or reality show, or plenty of "normal" dramas, on a regular TV, the color is normal.

However, yes, there has been a certain trend involving Christopher Nolan, "gritty realism", and legal-political-military-crime themes, to do color grading to massively reduce saturation and aggressively push towards blue. I don't like it much but you can also just not watch that stuff. It's stylistic the same way film noir was. Some people hated that back in the day too, now it's just seen as a style of the time.

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troupo ◴[02 Apr 25 20:22 UTC] No.43561076[source]▶
> The drained-color thing is exclusive to a certain type of TV/movie drama

It's not. There's even a term coined for it, "intangible sludge". https://www.vox.com/culture/22840526/colors-movies-tv-gray-d...

> I don't like it much but you can also just not watch that stuff.

It's now permeated everything, so it's hard to not watch stuff, as it's everywhere, with few exceptions.

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1. crazygringo ◴[02 Apr 25 22:10 UTC] No.43562272{4}[source]▶
> It's not. There's even a term coined for it, "intangible sludge".

It is. The article you link even begins:

> So many TV shows and movies now

That's what I'm taking about. Those "so many" belong mostly to a certain type of drama.

You're not seeing it in comedies. You're not seeing it in reality shows. There are also plenty of dramas that don't have it, possibly a majority but I'm not sure.

It's not everywhere, contrary to what you say. It may, however, seem "everywhere" if you're only watching that type of drama.

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2. troupo ◴[03 Apr 25 09:00 UTC] No.43566862[source]▶
> The article you link even begins: "So many TV shows and movies now"

and from this you somehow deduce "hose "so many" belong mostly to a certain type of drama."

Where "certain type of drama" is anything from procedurals to action, from drama to fantasy.

> It may, however, seem "everywhere" if you're only watching that type of drama.

Where the article uses the following "certain type of drama" examples: Justice League, Dexter. Definitely they both fall into the category of "the same type of drama".

> You're not seeing it in comedies.

As in: modern comedies are washed out and desaturated more often than not. For every Barbie there's a dozen Red Notices

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3. crazygringo ◴[03 Apr 25 12:28 UTC] No.43568654[source]▶
No I'm not deducing anything, I'm speaking from my experience in television.

Yes, the type of drama does include the range you're describing. Movies are mixes of genres, tones, categories.

And no, modern comedies are not desaturated "more often than not". I don't know what comedies you're watching, but it's not the case.

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4. troupo ◴[03 Apr 25 12:56 UTC] No.43568930{3}[source]▶
> Yes, the type of drama does include the range you're describing

When your "certain type of drama" covers every genre under the sun, and you pretend that Dexter and Justice League are somehow the dame type of genre, excuse me for bot taking your words seriously.

> I don't know what comedies you're watching, but it's not the case.

Whatever comes across my radar.

BTW it's also quite telling how in your classification there's "certain type of drama" (90% of genres apparently) that is susceptible to the sludge, and then comedies and reality shows (the only two you could come up with that are not. Even though comedies, especially movies, are often just as drab and gray as every other genre)

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5. crazygringo ◴[03 Apr 25 18:45 UTC] No.43573729{4}[source]▶
I don't know what to tell you. I don't know if you're intentionally trying to misunderstand me or what.

I never said "genre". I said "type of drama". There are probably a hundred subgenres of drama, yes including both Dexter and Justice League. There isn't some clean perfect distinction for which directors choose go use the dark look and which don't. I'm lumping the ones that go dark into a "type". I've got to use some word to group them.

Also, what do you mean "the only two you could come up with that are not"? There are fundamentally three types of entertainment TV: comedy, reality, and drama. Only one of them adopts the dark look commonly, in some of its content.

And you're just flat-out wrong about comedies being "often just as drab and gray as every other genre". That's just... wrong. I don't know what else to tell you.