FA+
Shop
Once you notice, it's annoying.
a month ago
So I find some videos to watch on Youtube. One looks interesting, and it's about these guys who decide to spend 24 hours on an abandoned lighthouse.
Immediately, the overall tone you might think they would be going for is belied by:
Comedic, over-exaggerated expressions.
Quick camera cuts.
Weird edits from outside entertainment sources.
Sudden tonal shifts, which jars the viewer. 'What? We just were tense for awhile there, now, we're supposed to laugh?'
Another, weird technique that annoys the shit out of me is: fast talking with 'punchy' witty expressions. This is prevalent in a lot of animated shows these days.
All this is done to capture the viewer's attention, because apparently, we can't take the time to actually fucking look at something for more than 2 seconds. It's about as annoying as watching edit cuts of someone's talking head because they haven't figured switching the camera view to something else before cutting the camera back to the commenter's face.
I guarantee if these guys would throw these common tricks out and start following Wernor Herzog's filming techniques, they would make a far more intriguing video.
These strange film techniques are used not just in Youtube videos, but also extensively in animated shows and television comedies.
I'm beginning to understand why Star Trek: The Motion Picture wasn't as appreciated. The film actually MAKES you look at what the camera is showing you. It doesn't want you to miss out on the lovely imagery. I guess people don't like to sit still and let the eyes take it something in for more than a few seconds.
A fellow artist and roommate once described 2001: a space odyssey perfectly: it's like watching a painting. Kubrick made sure the camera lingered long enough to make the viewer take in what was being shown. He also made sure to keep the camera directly on the actor's face long enough to make it unsettling. A good example is the lingering close-up of Alex Delarge's face at the beginning of A Clockwork Orange, or the slow camera zoom in on Jack Torrence's face in The Shining.
Back to Herzog: he uses a similar lingering camera technique with some of his documentaries; he keeps the camera on a person for a long time. He's making sure the viewer is able to take in the moment and get a sense of the emotion the person might be feeling.
I'm not the only one to complain about such techniques being used ad nauseum. The Despot of Antrim discusses many of these examples in some of his videos on Youtube, and once I started noticing the same things, I couldn't unsee them, so now I have to bitch about them. It's called letting off steam. :)
Immediately, the overall tone you might think they would be going for is belied by:
Comedic, over-exaggerated expressions.
Quick camera cuts.
Weird edits from outside entertainment sources.
Sudden tonal shifts, which jars the viewer. 'What? We just were tense for awhile there, now, we're supposed to laugh?'
Another, weird technique that annoys the shit out of me is: fast talking with 'punchy' witty expressions. This is prevalent in a lot of animated shows these days.
All this is done to capture the viewer's attention, because apparently, we can't take the time to actually fucking look at something for more than 2 seconds. It's about as annoying as watching edit cuts of someone's talking head because they haven't figured switching the camera view to something else before cutting the camera back to the commenter's face.
I guarantee if these guys would throw these common tricks out and start following Wernor Herzog's filming techniques, they would make a far more intriguing video.
These strange film techniques are used not just in Youtube videos, but also extensively in animated shows and television comedies.
I'm beginning to understand why Star Trek: The Motion Picture wasn't as appreciated. The film actually MAKES you look at what the camera is showing you. It doesn't want you to miss out on the lovely imagery. I guess people don't like to sit still and let the eyes take it something in for more than a few seconds.
A fellow artist and roommate once described 2001: a space odyssey perfectly: it's like watching a painting. Kubrick made sure the camera lingered long enough to make the viewer take in what was being shown. He also made sure to keep the camera directly on the actor's face long enough to make it unsettling. A good example is the lingering close-up of Alex Delarge's face at the beginning of A Clockwork Orange, or the slow camera zoom in on Jack Torrence's face in The Shining.
Back to Herzog: he uses a similar lingering camera technique with some of his documentaries; he keeps the camera on a person for a long time. He's making sure the viewer is able to take in the moment and get a sense of the emotion the person might be feeling.
I'm not the only one to complain about such techniques being used ad nauseum. The Despot of Antrim discusses many of these examples in some of his videos on Youtube, and once I started noticing the same things, I couldn't unsee them, so now I have to bitch about them. It's called letting off steam. :)
Thankfully it's usually easy to spot and avoid without actually watching it.
A shame, because one could actually learn some things they mentioned in the video, but this flashy editing shit was way too distracting.
That being said, fast-editing and cut-aways CAN work for certain types of media, specifically sketch comedy and YouTube Poops. I mostly do short comedy skits in fursuit and some of those have quick edits, but they're also between 30 seconds to 4 minutes long; the idea length for that kind of video. An hour "documentary" that uses those techniques is just exhausting. Though SOME movies can pull it off, like the Deadpool trilogy.
A lot of times, I feel like some of these editors just want to get shit done quickly and are catering to the lowest common denominator.
One thing I will never, EVER excuse though is A.I. slop. At least with YouTube poops and shitposts there's SOME amount of effort put in, even if relatively small. People shouldn't be allowed to type a few words, click a button and get instantly-generated content that uses REAL content as a base WITHOUT consent and try to pass it off as "LOOK I MAKED DIS!" A.I. has its ethical and responsible uses in science and economics (calculating and problem-solving in ways humans might overlook), but it has NO BUSINESS being anywhere near the arts.
Its uses for the science-based fields I can see, but AI can mimic the sound of someone's voice, and there are videos of what looks to be real people doing stuff they wouldn't do in real life.
That shit scares me more than anything.
That said, some classes in school I could hardly pay attention. :)
At least it's not a complete lost cause, there's still people uploading normal videos who aren't reliant on those annoying keys-jingling-in-your-face tactics.
Overall, it's a chaotic mess compared to the golden age before Google bought out Youtube.
It's a problem, but there's plenty of media that caters to more straightforward content. Plus if you're NOT medicated for ADHD, which isn't uncommon given the state of a lot of healthcare, it genuinely is HARD to focus. I speak from experience.
Just even the media that caters to the most hardcore of kids who have ADHD and cannot sit still or cannot stay focused on anything for more than 2 seconds feels extreme even for me.
I also like art tutorials that are slower paced and put me in a state of zen, know what I mean?
I usually listen to some historical channels like 'Forgotten History' or 'Mad Lads', where you can just listen.
Some of those tutorials do, however, take forever to get the point, so you gotta fast-forward by a few minutes.
Then you have those that go like, "I am so-and-so, and today I'm gonna show you..." And then they get after it, which is awesome. :D
And agreed, but at least the ones that take forever to get to the point are in no hurry nor have those overstimulating quick edits. ZHC is one channel that used to be a good tutorial channel, but now he's an ass-clown. x'D I unsubscribed from him ages ago. Jazza is also annoying these days whereas before he wasn't.
He knows his stuff and goes on, soothingly, for an hour at a time. I use his channel for an educational sleep aid...
Looks like something my old man would watch if he watched Youtube channels.
He was in the Navy himself and loves his WW2 history.
In seriousness I think the biggest push for this frantic noise in media is the congestion of writers. You think back to the 1990s, there's an accumulation of people migrating to Hollywood to "make it big" and none of them will settle for the technical jobs that actually make the movies, because those are trades, and these protagonist-syndrome liberal arts majors would never dirty themselves with trade work in their home state let alone in Hollywood. So what happens when you concentrate a flood of newcomers to film and television to just creative decisions? Writing credits swell on every production. You trip over 3 screenplay writers for every 20 minutes of screentime. Everyone has to get their word into the final product. Along comes Joss Whedon, every word has to drip with snark and wit. When we thought Johnny Test was WORDSWORDSWORDSWORDS, the damage was already done to the industry at large, too many cooks in the kitchen for scripts. This bled everywhere; animation starts with writers in a room, not artists at a storyboard. Wrestlers recite scripts for their promos, instead of speaking unhinged on whatever excitement they have that afternoon. Content creators say in 9 minutes what can be said in 4 minutes. SNL stopped having the repertory players write their own sketches, to just actors living out the writer imaginations.
As to why audiences can't pay attention, it's smart phones at fault. The introduction of the iphone in 2007 allowed everyone access to an instant dopamine box. Social media amplified the social feedback loop of "say things NSA, get rewarded with engagement" when prior decades challenged people to actually choose their words when a response could infact tell the person off with a dose of reality.
Millenials have gotten so out of touch with paying attention that they repurposed the word "vibe" to describe their sustained state of mood brought on by what they experience, because it's that rare moment for them where an idea actually has to dwell on them for more than 10 seconds. This reads strange because you know "vibe" is really just normal reactions to stimuli. Millenials started with 20th century media then overdosed on modern media noises, they are burn-outs.
Zoomers carry less fault about this, they never knew the methodical paces of media. They always live with information hyperspeed, born into it and moulded by it you may say. However we do not know yet what it looks like when they hit their late 30s and fracture into their set ways like all generations do.
When I referred to the 90s earlier, that would be the work of Gen-Xers. That generation fell into its own set ways, and they are remarkably less frantic than millenials. Perhaps once they've spent their energies in creative media, they resigned themselves to a passive state. Alex Kurtzman is a Gen-Xer, but all his Star Trek productions are filled to the brim with Millenial value systems and urgencies. I suspect that Kurtzman aspired to Whedon's methods, but once he's "made it" he trusts the creative work to the Millenials that came to Hollywood with resumes tailored to imitate Whedon. Those writers deliver us messes like ST:D and ST:Picard. They did not actually grow up and internalize the 20th century franchise, they skimmed Wikipedia for a superficial knowledge of Star Trek, then proceeded to construct their experiences to the scripts. Of course, when their experiences consist entirely of academia and longhouse social climbing, lo and behold look what the shows have demonstrated onscreen. If you're a Millenial writer in Hollywood, write what you know and wrap it all up as quippy and quirky as possible, nothing can go wrong. Right?
I would say make the younger generation film students watch films from the start of the 20th Century up until the 90's, and really focus on the 70's as a significant, but necessary change in script writing and acting.
I'm done with Trek, and I'm done with Star Wars.
Don't get me started on Star Trek: Below Decks.
I gave the show a chance. A fellow artist streamed it on his Discord channel. I watched the first couple seasons with him, because let's keep an open mind.
Every single (character, except a couple characters), I wanted to see have a 'The Motion Picture' transporter accident.
I refuse to watch anything Star Trek related after Enterprise. The Abram's films left me with a bad taste in my mouth.
There is nothing past Aliens in the Alien movies. There's a series? Fuck, I ain't watchin' that shit. You said all you needed to say with Alien and Aliens. Leave the rest steeped in mystery.
Superhero movies are done.
The Youtubers who complain and comment STILL about these franchises should move on, because they said all that's needed to be said. I can't agree more than I do with many of their points. They need to find stuff that's out there that's still good, and has seen little light.
No one talks about the movie 'Pig', which stars Nicholas Cage. A great flick. Who the hell's heard of it? A shame. It's not an over-the-top action-packed film with dazzling laser lights and explosions. It's about a former chef who looks for his truffle pig someone stole from him, and the ending is a conclusion which is an unexpected, but very sensical turn.
The Banshees of Inisherin: two very close friends, but one of them decides he doesn't like the other one anymore, and the story goes on from there. It's set in an island off the coast of Ireland during the Irish Revolution. It's not a fantastical fantasy world with aliens or crazy critters, because the place they're on looks magical enough.
Oh, but you DO want science fiction?
Hey, Hollywood, here's an idea: *Throws a copy of 'The Mote in God's Eye' at 'em*
Make a mini-series or multi-film depiction of that book, and make sure to get Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle as consultants when you write the script.
Why is that so fucking hard?
Conclusion: good stuff is still out there, but you have to dig for it a little, but if you want to appeal to the lowest common denominator, then focus on originality and good character development. Project: Hail Mary looks like it may be just that.
you make good points, but it's wrapped in a lot of gruff stuff that won't convince folks