Why don't movies feel "real" anymore? A deep dive into the first principles of movie immersion: on perceptual realism, indexicality, haptic visuality, and cinematic qualia.
0:00 Movies don't feel "real" anymore
1:40 Perceptual Realism
8:40 The "Cinematic Look"
12:50 Indexicality
15:50 Haptic Visuality
23:00 Cinematic Qualia
26:29 Contextual Intentionality
happybadger [he/him] - 4w
There have been two times I've fallen asleep in a cinema. The first was Star Wars: The Last Jedi, then The Hobbit. I can watch a Stanley Kubrick or Sergio Leone film in bed and be engrossed for hours. I've rewatched them 10+ times and always found something new to visually appreciate. Same goes for a Miyazaki or Pixar film where nothing is real and it doesn't pretend to be, replacing my normal perception with a new aesthetic language that I can clearly separate from reality.
Something about heavy CGI has the same white noise effect on my brain as a liminal space like an empty hallway. Everything is unnatural and manicured to the point that it's a movie that fills the time gap between meaningful movies. They aren't doing the artistry of an animated film and they iron out all of the wrinkles that make The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly or Barry Lyndon so compelling. Especially now that it's increasingly done with AI, heavy CGI feels like reading a novel written by ChatGPT. There's fundamentally no sense of place to it even when they're rendering a specific place with so much fidelity that it's a weird uncanny valley. It was neat with The Matrix because I hadn't seen it before, but I don't think I could watch a modern Jurassic Park film where none of the plants are real. The actors aren't interacting with anything and there's nothing to focus on apart from their alienated green screen performance.
happybadger in movies
Why Movies Just Don't Feel "Real" Anymore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvwPKBXEOKEWhy don't movies feel "real" anymore? A deep dive into the first principles of movie immersion: on perceptual realism, indexicality, haptic visuality, and cinematic qualia.
0:00 Movies don't feel "real" anymore
1:40 Perceptual Realism
8:40 The "Cinematic Look"
12:50 Indexicality
15:50 Haptic Visuality
23:00 Cinematic Qualia
26:29 Contextual Intentionality
There have been two times I've fallen asleep in a cinema. The first was Star Wars: The Last Jedi, then The Hobbit. I can watch a Stanley Kubrick or Sergio Leone film in bed and be engrossed for hours. I've rewatched them 10+ times and always found something new to visually appreciate. Same goes for a Miyazaki or Pixar film where nothing is real and it doesn't pretend to be, replacing my normal perception with a new aesthetic language that I can clearly separate from reality.
Something about heavy CGI has the same white noise effect on my brain as a liminal space like an empty hallway. Everything is unnatural and manicured to the point that it's a movie that fills the time gap between meaningful movies. They aren't doing the artistry of an animated film and they iron out all of the wrinkles that make The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly or Barry Lyndon so compelling. Especially now that it's increasingly done with AI, heavy CGI feels like reading a novel written by ChatGPT. There's fundamentally no sense of place to it even when they're rendering a specific place with so much fidelity that it's a weird uncanny valley. It was neat with The Matrix because I hadn't seen it before, but I don't think I could watch a modern Jurassic Park film where none of the plants are real. The actors aren't interacting with anything and there's nothing to focus on apart from their alienated green screen performance.
edit: That paper on indexicality the host cites by David Davies is also really good- https://journals.openedition.org/estetica/1655 . It's very Simulacra and Simulation.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: