7/12/12 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same | Cracked.com You Might Be A Zombie! iPad App Horror On Cracked Write For Us Login or Register Articles Videos Columnists Forums Quick Fixes Photoplasty More Categoriies:: Movies & TV Video Games Music Sports Tech History Science Celebrities Weird World Urinal Attacks: The 6 Movies With Political When Movie Montages Next Scary News Trend Agendas You Didn't Get Out of Hand Notice Home Mov ies & TV 5 Annoy ing Trends That Make Ev ery Mov ie Look the Same 20k Trending Now 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every 6 Mind Blowing Special Effects Y ou Won't Like Movie Look the Same Believe Aren't CGI 1,739 The 6 Creepiest Lies the Food Industry is Feeding Y ou By: Dan Seitz August 05, 2010 3,844,222 views 6 Famous Symbols That Don't Mean What Add to Favorites Send Y ou Think 1,133 Tw eet Hollywood: the dream factory, the place where joy is made and everybody craps rainbows and cocaine. But underneath the glitz is a bunch of working stiffs who are either just trying to get the job done, or hacks who get their original ideas by ripping off other hacks. That's why these days... Friends' Recent Activity #5. Movies are Color-Coded by Genre Have You Ever Noticed: There's some unwritten rule that horror movies should be blue: www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html 1/12 7/12/12 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same | Cracked.com 6 Completely Legal Ways The Cops Can Screw Y ou By: Cezary Jan Strusiew icz 3,107,804 view s 9 Houses Y ou Won't Believe People Actually Live In By: Eric Yosomono, Mike Cooney 1,145,303 view s 8 Words Y ou're Confusing With The Ring Other Words By: Christina H 1,048,524 view s Crazy Eight: The Top Crazy Girlfriends in Movie History By: Michael Alarcon 731,278 view s 5 Modern Sports That Started As Excuses for Sex and Violence By: Mark Hill S aw 706,935 view s Cracked Shows The Nightmare on Elm S treet reboot. Meanwhile, apocalyptic movies are gray and washed out: www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html 2/12 7/12/12 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same | Cracked.com Then there are more subtle ones, for instance movies set in the desert tend to be yellow. 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 Most Popular through a jar of urine: 6 Mind Blowing Special Effects Y ou Won't Believe Aren't CGI By: David Christopher Bell 2,358,793 view s The 6 Creepiest Lies the Food Industry is Feeding Y ou By: Pauli Poisuo 1,985,743 view s 6 Famous Symbols That Don't Mean What Y ou Think By: Cezary Jan Strusiew icz 1,854,206 view s S mokin' Aces (Las V egas) 9 Actors Who Do the Exact Same Thing on Every Movie Poster By: Chris Radomile, Kier Harris, Gabriel Oliver 1,811,167 view s 6 Terrible Decisions That Gave Us Great Movie Moments By: Maxw ell Yezpitelok 1,269,487 view s See All The Hills Have Eyes (rural N evada) Movies where reality is off-kilter will be green: 4 Creepy Hidden Truths Behind Popular Scary Stories By: After Hours 3 9 0,3 8 9 v iew s Fight Club The Matrix films, aka The Greenest Movies Ever Made Honestly, half the time you 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 you wanted your movie to have an artistic, stylish color palette, you had to go through the pain in the ass process of using filters on your 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 you're a Hollywood director, with a few clicks of the mouse you can immediately look stylish www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html 3/12 7/12/12 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same | Cracked.com and artsy by making the audience feel like they're watching your movie through a pair of novelty sunglasses. Hell, if you've got a Mac and a thousand bucks, you can get a color-correction program and give your 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 heavily 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, you know, having to write a good script or hire competent actors. These colors are a visual shorthand for various emotions and ideas (yellows seem hotter, blue makes a scene seem lit by spooky moonlight, washed-out grays are depressing). In other words: It's just laziness. And while we're on color... #4. Everything Else is Teal and Orange Have You Ever Noticed: 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-eyed bloggers have pointed out, it's usually unnaturally orange-tinted skin tones against blue skies: www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html 4/12 7/12/12 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same | Cracked.com 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, you don't even need to look beyond the posters: What's Going On? Not everybody wants to get fancy with that their digital coloring. But everybody wants to get lazy. www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html 5/12 7/12/12 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same | Cracked.com This is a color wheel: Y ou've almost certainly seen one before. Open up your 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 you're trying to shoot a nice-looking scene, is to get a good contrast with the colors. Since most movies are about humans, you simply find the closest thing to a human's skin tone on the wheel (somewhere on the upper right) and then make everything 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 trying 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 you get that ridiculous two-color system, 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 you throw up your hands and say, "Fuck it. Everybody likes teal and orange!" #3. Ramping (aka, Everything Slows Down Then Speeds Up) Have You Ever Noticed: Modern action movies can't just show you the hero landing the final blow. Oh, no. They just have to sloooow it down and make really, really sure you understand that, yes, that is a punch to the face. In Troy, we have to slow down Brad Pitt's flying dagger attack while he's in mid-air, as if he can stop time like the freaking Prince of Persia: www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html 6/12 7/12/12 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same | Cracked.com In Watchmen, we have to bring the action to a virtual dead stop when a fist meets flesh (or anything 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! WHAP! The new Sherlock Holmes movie actually turns this into a plot device, slowing down fight scenes to simulate how lightning-fast Holmes thinks on his feet. What's Going On? www.cracked.com/article_18664_5-annoying-trends-that-make-every-movie-look-same.html 7/12 7/12/12 5 Annoying Trends That Make Every Movie Look the Same | Cracked.com 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.