a brief rant

[ratcreature]

The aim to make your tv series appear "dark" or "edgy" or "gritty" or whatever does not mean that the screen has to be literally too dark to make out anything. I get that there are mood lighting choices, and atmosphere through colors and so on, but it completely defeats any kind of purpose if your viewer can't see or follow what's going on. It is not all that sinister if you have to squint and guess what is happening. Seriously, things can be dark and edgy even if there is a lightsource somewhere! (This was brought on by me trying to watch SGU, but really it applies to a lot of series.)

Comments

[lotesse]

THANK.YOU.YES.

[ratcreature]

It shouldn't be hard to grasp that a visual medium just doesn't work if you can't see anything, but apparently it is.

[caiusmajor.livejournal.com]

This goes for comic book colorists, too!

[ratcreature]

Yeah, true. Though I tend to find it worse on tv. At least with good lineart it can work in principle if much of a panel is black (admittedly less with just dark color rather than stark b/w that was intended for that from the beginning).

SGU was really extreme. A lot of the time most of the screen was nearly black with some dimly lit circle where you could barely make out the characters doing something. They really need to learn how to make things threatening or claustrophic or sinister or whatever they are trying to do, without plunging everything into total darkness. It's just full of fail in a visual medium if you can't see anything.

[iamza.livejournal.com]

Heh, I want the crew to make a stopover on a planet with glowy moss, and then watch them try to grow said glowy moss all over the ship.

Then the glowy moss will try to eat them and the ship (cf. the Balrog in one of James Alan Gardner's novels) :-D

I didn't find the darkness quite as irritating as I was anticipating, but yeah, if we spend a lot of this season on the ship, I think that dark and dingy feel is going to get real old, real fast.

[ratcreature]

Glowy moss! yes! That could work. I had really trouble following the action. Part of it was that the story seemed to jump around for no good reason, but part of it was also that in some scenes you only had this dimly lit spot where you could maybe see one and a half characters, barely, instead of seeing the setting and all people.

[iamza.livejournal.com]

It was certainly in marked contrast to Atlantis, where even the dimly lit rooms still allowed for enough light to see everything.

I really do hope the darkness was a deliberate choice for the premiere to help add to the general atmosphere of overwhelming confusion and chaos, and that as the crew get more familiar with their surroundings, we'll start to see the lights get a bit brighter.

I also really hope the flashbacks become less and less frequent as the series progresses. Flashbacks were one of the reasons I ended up giving up on Lost within six or so episodes. As a storytelling gimmick, it doesn't work for me. *shrug*

[droolfangrrl.livejournal.com]

I was seriously turned off by the dull and muddy pallet they had chosen.

[iamza.livejournal.com]

That was one of the reasons I so loved SGA -- all the greens and blues and coppers.

So yeah, I can certainly understand how the gloomy colours on SGU might turn people off.

The glowy moss or other assorted Ancient lightbulbs better appear soon, is all I'm saying...

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying this, I thought I was the only one. And *it can even be sinister if people are wearing colored clothing*.

ok, that may be too much for their minds to grasp.

[ratcreature]

It is such a basic concept that you need to be able to see things in a visual medium for it to work. This shouldn't be such a common problem. I mean, movies used to understand this. I never had trouble to see what's on the screeen in classic noir films for example. Or even in the quintessential "gritty" movies like Blade Runner.

[mecurtin.livejournal.com]

This shouldn't be such a common problem. I mean, movies used to understand this

hm, you know -- this problem has gotten a lot worse as TV screens have gotten larger and higher-def. I think the people making the shows are always watching on very large high-def screens, so they don't realize how it looks on a normal-sized, normal-quality screen.