Why late-2000s movies look better colour-graded than today

[Ritu]

[Damini]

I really miss those colourful movies, yaar.

[Harini]

https://youtu.be/tvwPKBXEOKE

[Gauri]

You can't really compare a Jeeva masterpiece in cinematography and DI colour grading with the newer ones. That was shot on film. Except for Nolan, everyone's using digital now. It all comes down to lighting, lenses and the cinematographer.

[Chirag]

Jeeva and K.V. Anand were in a different league of cinematography back then. All their movies still look fresh.

[Amit]

The world's slowly losing its colour... everything's just black or white now because they think that's 'aesthetic'.

[Suraj]

It's all thanks to the cinematography by Jeeva ✨.

[Falguni]

Shot on film back then vs digital today.

[Lavanya]

The same thing's happening in gaming - art direction is fading. PS3 and PS4 era games had way better cinematography in their cut-scenes. Nowadays games just have those stiff UE5-style cut-scenes.

[Rupali]

This is true for American productions too. Folks have written a lot about it, but TL;DR: (1) most films are streamed online now, so flattening the colour makes it look consistent across devices; (2) viewers link vivid colours with older movies, so bright grading feels dated; (3) a lot is done in post, so many parts of production are less thoughtful - the attitude is 'we can fix it later'. The shift from film to digital gets blamed, yet many digital movies from the 2000s had great colour grading.

[Keerthi]

Peak Harris Mams - the golden era.