[quuxplusone]

Not scaffolding in the same way, but, two examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations" are

- the fashion for unpainted marble statues and architecture

- the aesthetic of running film slightly too fast in the projector (or slightly too slow in the camera) for an old-timey effect

[MBCook]

Isn’t the frame rate of film something like that?

The industry decided on 24 FPS as something of an average of the multiple existing company standards and it was fast enough to provide smooth motion, avoid flicker, and not use too much film ($$$).

Overtime it became “the film look”. One hundred-ish years later we still record TV shows and movies in it that we want to look “good” as opposed to “fake” like a soap opera.

And it’s all happenstance. The movie industry could’ve moved to something higher at any point other than inertia. With TV being 60i it would have made plenty of sense to go to 30p for film to allow them to show it on TV better once that became a thing.

But by then it was enshrined.

[the_af]

Another example: pixel art in games.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of pixel art and retro games.

But this reminds me of when people complained that the latest Monkey Island didn't use pixel art, and Ron Gilbert had to explain the original "The Curse of Monkey Island" wasn't "a pixel art game" either, it was a "state of the art game (for that time)", and it was never his intention to make retro games.

Many classic games had pixel art by accident; it was the most feasible technology at the time.

[avadodin]

I don't think anyone would have complained if the art had been more detailed but in the same style as the original or even using real digitized actors.

Monkey Island II's art was slightly more comic-like than say The Last Crusade but still with realistic proportions and movements so that was the expectation before CoMI.

The art style changing to silly-comic is what got people riled up.

[the_af]

Hard disagree.

(Also a correction: by original I meant "Secret of" but mistyped "Curse of").

I meant Return to Monkey Island (2022), which was no more abrupt a change than say, "The Curse of Monkey Island" (1997).

Monkey Island was always "silly comic", it's its sine qua non.

People whined because they wanted a retro game, they wanted "the same style" (pixels) as the original "Secret", but Ron Gilbert was pretty explicit about this: "Secret" looked what it looked like due to limitations of the time, he wasn't "going for that style", it was just the style that they managed with pixel art. Monkey Island was a state-of-the-art game for its time.

So my example is fully within the terms of the concept we're describing: people growing attached to technical limitations, or in the original words:

> [...] examples of "fetishizing accidental properties of physical artworks that the original artists might have considered undesirable degradations"

[tsunamifury]

Motion blur. 24fps. Grain. Practically everything we call cinematic

[the_af]

I wouldn't call it "fetishizing" though; not all of them anyway.

Motion blur happens with real vision, so anything without blur would look odd. There's cinematic exaggeration, of course.

24 FPS is indeed entirely artificial, but I wouldn't call it a fetish: if you've grown with 24 FPS movies, a higher frame rate will paradoxically look artificial! It's not a snobby thing, maybe it's an "uncanny valley" thing? To me higher frame rates (as in how The Hobbit was released) make the actors look fake, almost like automatons or puppets. I know it makes no objective sense, but at the same time it's not a fetishization. I also cannot get used to it, it doesn't go away as I get immersed in the movie (it doesn't help that The Hobbit is trash, of course, but that's a tangent).

Grain, I'd argue, is the true fetish. There's no grain in real life (unless you have a visual impairment). You forget fast about the lack of grain if you're immersed in the movie. I like grain, but it's 100% an esthetic preference, i.e. a fetish.

[mrob]

>Motion blur happens with real vision, so anything without blur would look odd.

You watch the video with your eyes so it's not possible to get "odd"-looking lack of blur. There's no need to add extra motion blur on top of the naturally occurring blur.

[erincandescent]

On the contrary, an object moving across your field of vision will produce a level of motion blur in your eyes. The same object recorded at 24fps and then projected or displayed in front of your eyes will produce a different level of motion blur, because the object is no longer moving continuously across your vision but instead moving in discrete steps. The exact character of this motion blur can be influenced by controlling what fraction of that 1/24th of a second the image is exposed for (vs. having the screen black)

The most natural level of motion blur for a moving picture to exhibit is not that traditionally exhibited by 24fps film, but it is equally not none (unless your motion picture is recorded at such high frame rate that it substantially exceeds the reaction time of your eyes, which is rather infeasible)

[the_af]

In principle, I agree.

In practice, I think the kind of blur that happens when you're looking at a physical object vs an object projected on a crisp, lit screen, with postprocessing/color grading/light meant for the screen, is different. I'm also not sure whatever is captured by a camera looks the same in motion than what you see with your eyes; in effect even the best camera is always introducing a distortion, so it has to be corrected somehow. The camera is "faking" movement, it's just that it's more convincing than a simple cartoon as a sequence of static drawings. (Note I'm speaking from intuition, I'm not making a formal claim!).

That's why (IMO) you don't need "motion blur" effects for live theater, but you do for cinema and TV shows: real physical objects and people vs whatever exists on a flat surface that emits light.

[estebank]

You're forgetting about the shutter angle. A large shutter angle will have a lot of motion blur and feel fluid even at a low frame rate, while a small shutter angle will make movement feel stilted but every frame will be fully legible, very useful for caothic scenes. Saving private Ryan, for example, used a small shutter angle. And until digital, you were restricted to a shutter angle of 180, which meant that very fast moving elements would still jump from frame to frame in between exposures.

[BeFlatXIII]

I suspect 24fps is popular because it forces the videography to be more intentional with motion. Too blurry, and it becomes incomprehensible. That, and everything staying sharp at 60fps makes it look like TikTok slop.

[phantasmish]

24fps looks a little different on a real film projector than on nearly all home screens, too. There's a little time between each frame when a full-frame black is projected (the light is blocked, that is) as the film advances (else you'd get a horrid and probably nausea-inducing smear as the film moved). This (oddly enough!) has the effect of apparently smoothing motion—though "motion smoothing" settings on e.g. modern TVs don't match that effect, unfortunately, but looks like something else entirely (which one may or may not find intolerably awful).

Some of your fancier, brighter (because you lose some apparent brightness by cutting the light for fractions of a second) home digital projectors can convincingly mimic the effect, but otherwise, you'll never quite get things like 24fps panning judder down to imperceptible levels, like a real film projector can.

[BeFlatXIII]

Reminds me of how pixel-perfect emulation of pixel art on a modern screen is often ugly, compared to the game played on a CRT.

[the_af]

> (which one may or may not find intolerably awful).

"Motion smoothing" on TVs is the first thing I disable, I really hate it.

[phantasmish]

Me at every AirBnB: turn on TV "OH MY GOD WTF MY EYES ARE BLEEDING where is the settings button?" go turn off noise reduction, upscaling, motion smoothing.

I think I've seen like one out of a couple dozen where the motion smoothing was already off.

[jmb99]

I think the "real" problem is not matching shutter speed to frame rate. With 24fps you have to make a strong choice - either the shutter speed is 1/24s or 1/48s, or any panning movement is going to look like absolute garbage. But, with 60+fps, even if your shutter speed is incredible fast, motion will still look decent, because there's enough frames being shown that the motion isn't jerky - it looks unnatural, just harder to put your finger on why (whereas 24fps at 1/1000s looks unnatural for obvious reasons - the entire picture jerks when you're panning).

The solution is 60fps at 1/60s. Panning looks pretty natural again, as does most other motion, and you get clarity for fast-moving objects. You can play around with different framerates, but imo anything more than 1/120s (180 degree shutter in film speak) will start severely degrading the watch experience.

I've been doing a good bit of filming of cars at autocross and road course circuits the past two years, and I've received a number of compliments on the smoothness and clarity of the footage - "how does that video out of your dslr [note: it's a Lumix G9 mirrorless] look so good" is a common one. The answer is 60fps, 1/60s shutter, and lots of in-body and in-lens stabilization so my by-hand tracking shots aren't wildly swinging around. At 24/25/30fps everything either degrades into a blurry mess, or is too choppy to be enjoyable, but at 60fps and 1/500s or 1/1000s, it looks like a (crappy) video game.

[phantasmish]

Is getting something like this wrong why e.g. The Hobbit looked so damn weird? I didn't have a strong opinion on higher FPS films, and was even kinda excited about it, until I watched that in theaters. Not only did it have (to me, just a tiny bit of) the oft-complained-about "soap opera" effect due to the association of higher frame rates with cheap shot-on-video content—the main problem was that any time a character was moving it felt wrong, like a manually-cranked silent film playing back at inconsistent speeds. Often it looked like characters were moving at speed-walking rates when their affect and gait were calm and casual. Totally bizarre and ruined any amount of enjoyment I may have gotten out of it (other quality issues aside). That's not something I've noticed in other higher FPS content (the "soap opera" effect, yes; things looking subtly sped-up or slowed-down, no).

[EDIT] I mean, IIRC that was 48fps, not 60, so you'd think they'd get the shutter timing right, but man, something was wrong with it.

[chrisweekly]

Great examples. My mind jumps straight to audio:

- the pops and hiss of analog vinyl records, deliberately added by digital hip-hop artists

- electric guitar distortion pedals designed to mimic the sound of overheated tube amps or speaker cones torn from being blown out

[robotresearcher]

- Audio compression was/is necessary to get good SNR on mag tape.

[chrisweekly]

true - but are you implying audio engineers are now leaning into heavy compression for artistic reasons?

[robotresearcher]

Not necessarily heavy (except sometimes as an effect), but some compression almost all the time for artistic reasons, yes.

Most people would barely notice it as it's waaaay more subtle than your distorted guitar example. But it's there.

Part of the likeable sound of albums made on tape is the particular combination of old-time compressors used to make sure enough level gets to the tape, plus the way tape compresses the signal again on recording by it's nature.