5 annoying trends that make every movie look the same

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5 Annoying Trends That Make EveryMovie Look the Same

Holly wood: the dream factory , the place where joy is made and every body craps rainbows and

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done, or hacks who get their original ideas by ripping off other hacks.

That's why these day s...

Have You Ever Noticed:

There's some unwritten rule that horror movies should be blue:

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#5. Movies are Color-Coded by Genre

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Then there are more subtle ones, for instance movies set in the desert tend to be y ellow. And we don't

mean when they 're out in the sun and sand, either. Even when indoors it'll often look like it was filmed

through a jar of urine:

S mokin' Ace s (Las V egas)

The Hil l s Have Eyes (ru ral N evada)

Movies where reality is off-kilter will be green:

Fight Club

The Matrix fi lms, aka The Greenest Movies Ever Made

Honestly , half the time y ou can guess the genre of the film based on one still from the trailer.

What's Going On?

It's called digital color correction. Back in the day , if y ou wanted y our movie to have an artistic,

sty lish color palette, y ou had to go through the pain in the ass process of using filters on y our lights

and camera, or get the footage exposed just the right way . It was expensive, it was difficult and it was

limited to people who really knew what they were doing. So if someone took the trouble, it meant they

had a good reason, dammit.

Now? If y ou're a Holly wood director, with a few clicks of the mouse y ou can immediately look sty lish



and artsy by making the audience feel like they 're watching y our movie through a pair of novelty

sunglasses. Hell, if y ou've got a Mac and a thousand bucks, y ou can get a color-correction program

and give y our home movie of a toddler farting on a cat an otherworldly green tint.

The Coen brothers didn't invent it, but Oh Brother, Where Art Thou was the first movie to heav ily use

digital color correction, to the point that every frame was digitally colored to give it that old-timey

sepia tone.

But where the Coen Brothers were creating a unique and distinct look, other directors have realized

these colors are a no-cost way to create atmosphere without, y ou know, hav ing to write a good script

or hire competent actors. These colors are a v isual shorthand for various emotions and ideas (y ellows

seem hotter, blue makes a scene seem lit by spooky moonlight, washed-out gray s are depressing). In

other words: It's just laziness.

And while we're on color...


Just like an early 90s parachute pants designer, movies lately have decided the only two colors they

need are teal and orange. As some very sharp-ey ed bloggers have pointed out, it's usually unnaturally

orange-tinted skin tones against blue skies:

#4. Everything Else is Teal and Orange



Or against dimly -lit rooms with the bluish tint:

Or whatever orange special effect they can splash against a teal or blue background:

As others have noted, y ou don't even need to look bey ond the posters:

What's Going On?

Not every body wants to get fancy with that their digital coloring. But every body wants to get lazy .



This is a color wheel:

Y ou've almost certainly seen one before. Open up y our image editing program, it'll have a version of

it. It has all of the colors based on how close they are to each other in hue. Now the goal, if y ou're

try ing to shoot a nice-looking scene, is to get a good contrast with the colors. Since most movies are

about humans, y ou simply find the closest thing to a human's skin tone on the wheel (somewhere on

the upper right) and then make every thing else the opposite, most contrasting color (that is, the color

on the opposite side of the wheel, or lower left). Teal and orange.

From the beginning of color film, movies have been try ing to set up shots to take advantage of this

color combination whenever possible. But here in the era of easy digital color correction, they 've

taken this so far that y ou get that ridiculous two-color sy stem, where every room is bathed in blue

and every human looks like he has a bad spray -on douche-tan.

To be fair, it's not necessarily laziness per se. Y our average colorist has to grade about two hours of

movie, frame by frame sometimes, in the space of a couple of weeks. It doesn't take that many glances

at the deadline bearing down on the calendar before y ou throw up y our hands and say , "Fuck it.

Every body likes teal and orange!"


Modern action movies can't just show y ou the hero landing the final blow. Oh, no. They just have to

sloooow it down and make really , really sure y ou understand that, y es, that is a punch to the face.

In Troy, we have to slow down Brad Pitt's fly ing dagger attack while he's in mid-air, as if he can stop

time like the freaking Prince of Persia:

#3. Ramping (aka, Everything Slows Down Then Speeds Up)



In Watchmen, we have to bring the action to a v irtual dead stop when a fist meets flesh (or any thing

else significant happens in the fight), to freeze the moment in time to make absolutely extra sure that

the audience saw it.

Or there's the 300 method, where the action slows waaaaay down right as the hero is about to do

something badass...

...and then SPEED IT UP REALLY FAST WHEN HE STRIKES THE BLOW!

WHA P!

The new Sherlock Holmes movie actually turns this into a plot dev ice, slowing down fight scenes to

simulate how lightning-fast Holmes thinks on his feet.

What's Going On?



The film suddenly slowing down is done by a process called "ramping." Instead of film being shot at the

normal 24 frames-per-second, it'll be shot at 48, or 7 2, or 96. The more frames per second, the slower

the action.

Now, we've had slow motion since the beginning of film (if y ou wanted a slower shot back then, y ou

just cranked the handle on the camera faster) but today 's digital cameras just make what was already a

simple process even easier. So where before y ou would have an entire shot in slow-motion, aka the

bad guy slowly falling to the ground...

...now they can't get through one shot without building slow and fast motion into the same action. The

hero draws back the sword at 96 frames-per-second, and drives it into the bad guy 's ey e at 24. They 'll

do it 10 times in the course of one action scene, as if it's suddenly boring to watch a couple of guy s

doing kung fu at normal kung fu speed.

We can lay the blame on two movies: The Matrix obv iously play ed a part with bullet time (which

proved y ou could move the camera around AND have slo-mo at the same time), and 300, which at

normal speed is roughly 15 minutes long. Once again, a technique progresses from "innovative" to

"standard procedure" to "OK, please stop doing that."

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1113 Comments Recent Votes Y ou | Show Profanity

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I mean I can understand say ing that the light flaring is wrong when its unintentional, but if y ou

watch one of the special features for Star Trek JJ Abrams say s it was intentional and that they

had crew on the side of shots with high powered lights aimed at the camera. Also, the show that

during the final scene when the Enterprise is fly ing away it was intentional because it looked

"too computer generated" and y ou could tell it looked better when they showed the side by side

of the two shots.

Jwall013 06 /2 5 /1 2 03 :5 4 PM -1 0 1

Reply

This is why I love cracked articles, they are hy sterical and more often than not, dead on.

IGP 06 /2 5 /1 2 1 1 :3 8 A M +4 4 0

Reply

#6 for this list should be how 3d filming ruins movies by making scenes the are made just to

appeal to s****y 3d effects in theaters that when seen at home its just a s****y slow motion

scene that is coming at y ou.

Mr.brightside 06 /2 5 /1 2 1 0:1 5 A M 0 0

ReplyHide AllSee All 5 Replies

Good list. There should be a list about annoy ing trends in film. Stuff like "It is time!" or "Y ou have

to go without me!" or "Don't give up on me! Y ou can't die y ou bastard!" or "Why are y ou doing

this to us!".

casualtea 06 /2 5 /1 2 1 0:1 5 A M +6 6 0

I meant trends in film dialogue. Alway s helps to proof read before posting.

casualtea 06 /2 5 /1 2 1 0:1 6 A M +1 1 0

That's a good idea. I can't count how many times I've finished a character's

sentence when watching a film for the first time.

Katy326 06 /2 5 /1 2 1 1 :4 2 A M +1 1 0

Reply

Less its a film like Avatar or Tron, I will never see films in 3d again, thank god The Dark Knight

Rises is not 3D.

Mr.brightside 06 /2 5 /1 2 1 0:1 4 A M 0 0

Reply

has any body else noticed that in hd some tv shows look really fake.(watch the walking dead in

hd)i think they have to mess around with the colors sometimes cause hd and blu ray make

everthing seem clean....awesome article btw really got me thinking.

die!sinnerdie! 06 /2 5 /1 2 08 :4 6 A M 0 0



Reply

i wish ppl in the industry could see this and see how annoy ing it is....if y ou have never seen

hay wire there actions scenes are awesome no slomo and and the hits look y ear

die!sinnerdie! 06 /2 5 /1 2 08 :3 4 A M +1 1 0

I watched Hay wire the other week, was skeptical but was proven wrong and was

surprised how good it was, and y es no slow motion crap.

Mr.brightside 06 /2 5 /1 2 1 0:1 7 A M 0 0

Reply

Opting for CGI when animatronics and f*****g artistic hardwork was way better to cut labor

cost and still flushed out money from dumb people, the last TMNT movie was good but the real

TMNT animatronic mix with human was better. Haters can do a bend over with themselves.

doodzki 06 /2 5 /1 2 07 :3 7 A M +1 2 1

Reply

I blame James Cameron for tinted films. He was making every thing blue Y EARS before any one

else.

Derek73 06 /2 5 /1 2 07 :1 5 A M +3 3 0

James Cameron: Blue Hipster.

Fortinbuff 06 /2 5 /1 2 02 :06 PM +1 1 0

Reply

All of these "techniques" are done to try and distract people from the fact they 're watching

absolute s**t and, sadly , the box office numbers show that it works almost every time.

artyfarty 06 /2 5 /1 2 06 :5 7 A M +4 4 0

Reply

The last air bender was a murky mess to begin with.

XxmadixX 06 /2 5 /1 2 02 :5 7 A M +5 5 0

Reply

The teal/orange thing is an artistic technique. It's a part of the color theory , where y ou use

contrasting colors. Y ou see it in a lot of movies, but blue and orange are particularly attractive.

It's about appearances.

haylyn73096 05 /1 2 /1 2 09 :3 1 PM -10 2 12

Isnt that....kinda what they said...in the article?

HawtChawklet 06 /2 5 /1 2 09 :4 0 A M +5 5 0

That is exactly what the author said about it. What the author was also try ing to

get across, is that it's gotten to a point where almost EVERY movie does it. Once

it's been done a thousand times, it's annoy ing, not artisitc.

Katy326 06 /2 5 /1 2 1 1 :4 6 A M +2 2 0

Reply

I barely notice the 3-D half the time.

ANoelle 04 /3 0/1 2 04 :4 8 A M +1 1 0

0 0



Reply

How about since Blade every action hero lands their jumps in the exact same pose? Head down,

one knee on the ground, etc...

Gnaglor 04 /2 6 /1 2 1 1 :2 2 A M

Y eah but that's from comics. Comics have been doing that since the late eighties

mid nineties. In fact comics now have a new "favorite pose" that movies have y et

to catch up on, the legs spread apart, three-quarters angle, no-knee on the ground

one that every one from Spidey to Iron Man is doing.

Incidentally , Blade was originally a comic.

Fortinbuff 06 /2 5 /1 2 02 :08 PM +2 2 0

Reply

CGI Animated films have no excuse to have poor 3D, since all it takes is rendering the scene

with the "camera" at a slightly different angle, pretty much a few clicks and a press of a button at

no extra cost with no conversion process. Of course Pixar's movies look fantastic in 3D.

SeanPedum 04 /1 8 /1 2 01 :06 A M 0 0

This is true in the same sense that CGI animated films have no excuse to have poor

lighting, since all it takes is adding in another light with a few clicks and a press of a

button - simply not true. There is a technology to proper 3D, just like there is a

technology for proper lighting. Most of it focuses around the "zero point" which,

from the audience perspective, is where the screen is phy sically located in 3D

space. Things in "negative space" are coming out of the screen, things in "positive

space" are going into the screen. If y ou don't set that zero point exactly correct

(and there are dozens of way s to do it incorrectly ) the shot won't have any thing

noticeably wrong with it but it will cause problems all the way through post

production, and is a major reason for audience members getting headaches when

they watch some 3D movies but not others.

Fortinbuff 06 /2 5 /1 2 02 :1 2 PM 0 0

Reply

I think apocaly ptic movies should have a lifeless color to it. It would be weird if it was all

brightly colored when the world is supposed to be full of waste and destruction.

AsianPersuasion 04 /1 2 /1 2 05 :5 9 PM +12 12 0

Reply

I agree that most of these movie trends are annoy ing, but trends change. Both ramping and

bullet-time were well used in 300 and The Matrix . It got annoy ing when every subsequent

action film used them, but now when was the last time y ou heard any one rave about bullet

time?

Thanks to Jonathon Demme, every drama for y ears after Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia

had close-ups of actors staring directly into the camera for every revelation.

Trends change...

BattleTurkey 04 /05 /1 2 09 :1 2 A M +1 1 0

Reply

Before this article I thought I was the only one that find Zach Sny der and J. J. Abrams

incredibly annoy ing directors because of all the slow motion and lens flare.

Thand 04 /03 /1 2 09 :5 7 PM +2 3 1

jj abrams ruins every thing

die!sinnerdie! 06 /2 5 /1 2 08 :3 6 A M 0 1 1



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Fortinbuff 06 /2 5 /1 2 02 :1 3 PM -2 0 2

Reply

With #1, I think that movies SPECIFICALLY made for 3D look, well good in 3D. Every thing else

looks like cardboard cut-outs.

SpyKoopa 04 /03 /1 2 09 :5 3 A M +2 2 0

Like looking at a Viewmaster.

Jim King 06 /2 1 /1 2 1 1 :04 A M +4 4 0

Reply

Then there's the movies ( or tv shows ) with the clumsy fall followed by , " I'm o.k. " Although it's

not a "technique" it gives a certain "sameness" to many .

debbers57 04 /03 /1 2 08 :5 0 A M 0 0

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5 annoying trends that make every movie look the same

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