AMC: The film look needs to go

[RoseVioletDaisy]

As long as it doesn't look as bad as GL, you're doing okay.

[Jonathan]

Yeah I think they pretty much ditched it a while back. David Canary's clips had the film look because back then that's how the show was shot. Now, it's back to videotape without the filter. The opening with Cameron and Sherri did not have the film look.

[Darcy]

LeClerc I'm going to agree with you. I think the live look suits AMC and soaps much better. Tape feels more real to me and makes me more involved in the story. I hate the stories AND the look of AMC so much right now that I have given up on it, but changing back to the live or tape look vs. the film look would IMO make it easier to become involved and swept up in the drama. Of course they need to get much better written stories to show real improvement, but even if they do improve and I actually started to pay attention again I would not be as involved or emotionally drawn to it with this look.

[TC]

Point taken.

[Darn]

I thought it looked spectacular and really fit the story when that root disease/Angie & Jesse return story was going on.

[R Sinclair]

I think it also has to do with High Definition, too. But what do I know? I also loved the "shakey cam" as everybody was calling it when they were bitching about that.

[Steve]

I'm surprised so many people can't tell the difference.

Yes, they are still using the film look and I agree with LeClerc & Darcy that soaps look better without it. There is a more of an intimacy with videotape that imo suits soaps better than film.

[Jonathan]

If the film looks is there, then it's very subtle. It might be my tv too; I have an HDTV and everything looks great.

[All My Shadows]

I agree with the intimacy thing. That's one reason why I feel a thousand times closer to daytime characters than I ever could to primetime characters.

[Jack]

It has nothing to do with HD, the only soap being shot in HD is Y&R. With the dwindling budgets in Daytime I doubt that most of the soaps will switch to HD, I base this off the fact that GL just switched their entire method of filming but still stayed with SD equipment.

As for AMC, they seem to have started using a film style in recent weeks. This is where they drop something like every other frame. Its supposed to provide a better look and add to the dramatic feel, I believe it just looks sloppy.

As for others who stated AMC stopped this a while ago, that was the steady-cam technique they switched too at the ConFusion launch. A steady-cam is essentially a camera mounted on a harness that a person wears. It's very rare that you find someone that is skilled enough to operate a steady-cam flawlessly. I think this is why AMC had such a problem with it and why theirs was so shaky but towards the end it seems the camera men got better at it and it was less shaky.

[R Sinclair]

I meant HD televisions. We have an HD flat screen we bought a year ago that I can barely notice the filmlook on... but if I watch the show on my 1991 Magnavox TV in my bedroom, it's obvious.

[Cheap21]

There have been so many problems with AMC that I think the last thing to worry about is the film quality. Theres bigger fish to fry

[Desertrose]

I'm not much for the film look but am ever so grateful the shaky cam...I mean steady cam, has drastically improved. I had to stop watching AMC during that timeframe.

Thank god it's not shot like GL....super close ups from the most unflattering angle to the actors (you know nostril shots are NEVER a good look) to pan outs and then suddenly you get that shot framed through the (choose one) bushes, window, flower arrangement,car window,trees etc, etc ...I call it the stalker or peeping tom shot.

Just really really horrible.....poor poor GL.

[MarkH]

I have mentioned in some other threads that I'm reading Worlds Without End, the book to accompany the 1998 Museum of Radio and Television History exhibit on the soaps.

Anyway, they talk about the early days of TV soaps, marking the transition from radio. The budgets were low (few props, simple sets, picture frames hanging on wires from the rafters), and the sets were small. So, how did they compensate? Extreme closeups...very tight shots.

Now, I'm sure those were studio mounted cameras, but still, I think this is very much of a "back to the future" on GL. Production values for soaps increased, esp. in the 80s and 90s. Now that the budgets are shrinking back, Wheeler is in some ways returning to the production values of earlier and less well funded times. For viewers, it has been hard to accept the apparent loss of resources...but this really is in some ways about the soaps returning to what they once were...cheaply made things.

The book is helpful to me, because it makes me think we may have been "spoiled" in the 80s and 90s by sumptuous production values...and maybe even lost sight of what soaps are. Now, we're heading back to "economy mode'. Maybe some soaps can flourish as we go back to that.

[All My Shadows]

I think there's a difference, though, between now and then. "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" came out in the mid 1970s and it utilized the extreme close-ups well, but the difference between MHMH doing it (and the traditional soaps of the 1950s-1970s doing it) is that for the most part, that was character-driven stuff and the storylines were mostly good. Those extreme close-ups opened dimensions for the character. I could see just how agonized Mary Hartman was about her marriage. I could see how much Loretta Haggers wanted to make her country-western demo tape. On GL, I don't see anything in the close-ups at all unless it's one of the show's more capable actors, who are still able to pull off those emotions (Zimmer, Deas, and Newman are three off the top of my head). With most of the rest, all I'm seeing is what they have up their nose and the bags under their eyes.