Davide DB

Regarding technique and creativity, has anyone seen Adolescence on Netflix?
Among the most viewed TV series on Netflix is Adolescence, a four-episode British miniseries that is receiving rave reviews from audiences and critics just about everywhere. The praise is partly about the story it tells, and partly about the way the series was written, performed, and, above all, directed: each episode is in fact shot in a single, very long take, that is, all at once, with no cuts between shots and therefore no breaks for the actors and crew, and no editing required.
Adolescence was written by Englishmen Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham. In addition to contributing to the screenplay, the latter also plays Eddie Miller, the protagonist's father and one of the main characters. The director, on the other hand, is compatriot Philip Barantini, who four years ago had directed Graham himself in the film Boiling Point - Disaster is Served, a thriller that was a good success in the United Kingdom and which, just like Adolescence, was shot with a single long take.
Adolescence centers on the story of Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old student who is arrested on charges of committing murder. However, the detective plot is set aside fairly early on because the point of the series is not so much to get to the resolution of a case, but to analyze the motives behind the actions of a teenager in our times, and to place them in the social and cultural context in which he lives.
For me, who has a 13-year-old son, the first two episodes were a punch in the gut. Perhaps the absence of editing also helps to give you no respite and lower you even more into the story. Truly a peculiar product.
Two scenes in particular struck me. For the first, at the beginning of the first episode, I had thought of a crane being moved on a trolley or truck. The second one is even more peculiar because the camera goes through the window and flies high above the houses. Netflix has released a BTS showing both scenes. (Spoiler: they used a drone)
Sorry, I couldn't find a YT link:
https://x.com/NetflixUK/status/1901617851192033326
It was entirely shot on the Ronin 4D:
Spoiler alert:
https://variety.com/2025/artisans/news/adolescence-one-take-episodes-netflix-1236339292/
 

Regarding technique and creativity, has anyone seen Adolescence on Netflix?
Among the most viewed TV series on Netflix is Adolescence, a four-episode British miniseries that is receiving rave reviews from audiences and critics just about everywhere. The praise is partly about the story it tells, and partly about the way the series was written, performed, and, above all, directed: each episode is in fact shot in a single, very long take, that is, all at once, with no cuts between shots and therefore no breaks for the actors and crew, and no editing required.
Adolescence was written by Englishmen Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham. In addition to contributing to the screenplay, the latter also plays Eddie Miller, the protagonist's father and one of the main characters. The director, on the other hand, is compatriot Philip Barantini, who four years ago had directed Graham himself in the film Boiling Point - Disaster is Served, a thriller that was a good success in the United Kingdom and which, just like Adolescence, was shot with a single long take.
Adolescence centers on the story of Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old student who is arrested on charges of committing murder. However, the detective plot is set aside fairly early on because the point of the series is not so much to get to the resolution of a case, but to analyze the motives behind the actions of a teenager in our times, and to place them in the social and cultural context in which he lives.
For me, who has a 13-year-old son, the first two episodes were a punch in the gut. Perhaps the absence of editing also helps to give you no respite and lower you even more into the story. Truly a peculiar product.
Two scenes in particular struck me. For the first, at the beginning of the first episode, I had thought of a crane being moved on a trolley or truck. The second one is even more peculiar because the camera goes through the window and flies high above the houses. Netflix has released a BTS showing both scenes. (Spoiler: they used a drone)
Sorry, I couldn't find a YT link:
https://x.com/NetflixUK/status/1901617851192033326
It was entirely shot on the Ronin 4D:
Spoiler alert:
https://variety.com/2025/artisans/news/adolescence-one-take-episodes-netflix-1236339292/
 

I’m going to check this out. Thanks for sharing this. 

Interesting and will add it to my list.
Thanks 

Regarding technique and creativity, has anyone seen Adolescence on Netflix?
Among the most viewed TV series on Netflix is Adolescence, a four-episode British miniseries that is receiving rave reviews from audiences and critics just about everywhere. The praise is partly about the story it tells, and partly about the way the series was written, performed, and, above all, directed: each episode is in fact shot in a single, very long take, that is, all at once, with no cuts between shots and therefore no breaks for the actors and crew, and no editing required.
Adolescence was written by Englishmen Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham. In addition to contributing to the screenplay, the latter also plays Eddie Miller, the protagonist's father and one of the main characters. The director, on the other hand, is compatriot Philip Barantini, who four years ago had directed Graham himself in the film Boiling Point - Disaster is Served, a thriller that was a good success in the United Kingdom and which, just like Adolescence, was shot with a single long take.
Adolescence centers on the story of Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old student who is arrested on charges of committing murder. However, the detective plot is set aside fairly early on because the point of the series is not so much to get to the resolution of a case, but to analyze the motives behind the actions of a teenager in our times, and to place them in the social and cultural context in which he lives.
For me, who has a 13-year-old son, the first two episodes were a punch in the gut. Perhaps the absence of editing also helps to give you no respite and lower you even more into the story. Truly a peculiar product.
Two scenes in particular struck me. For the first, at the beginning of the first episode, I had thought of a crane being moved on a trolley or truck. The second one is even more peculiar because the camera goes through the window and flies high above the houses. Netflix has released a BTS showing both scenes. (Spoiler: they used a drone)
Sorry, I couldn't find a YT link:
https://x.com/NetflixUK/status/1901617851192033326
It was entirely shot on the Ronin 4D:
Spoiler alert:
https://variety.com/2025/artisans/news/adolescence-one-take-episodes-netflix-1236339292/
 

Regarding technique and creativity, has anyone seen Adolescence on Netflix?
Among the most viewed TV series on Netflix is Adolescence, a four-episode British miniseries that is receiving rave reviews from audiences and critics just about everywhere. The praise is partly about the story it tells, and partly about the way the series was written, performed, and, above all, directed: each episode is in fact shot in a single, very long take, that is, all at once, with no cuts between shots and therefore no breaks for the actors and crew, and no editing required.
Adolescence was written by Englishmen Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham. In addition to contributing to the screenplay, the latter also plays Eddie Miller, the protagonist's father and one of the main characters. The director, on the other hand, is compatriot Philip Barantini, who four years ago had directed Graham himself in the film Boiling Point - Disaster is Served, a thriller that was a good success in the United Kingdom and which, just like Adolescence, was shot with a single long take.
Adolescence centers on the story of Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old student who is arrested on charges of committing murder. However, the detective plot is set aside fairly early on because the point of the series is not so much to get to the resolution of a case, but to analyze the motives behind the actions of a teenager in our times, and to place them in the social and cultural context in which he lives.
For me, who has a 13-year-old son, the first two episodes were a punch in the gut. Perhaps the absence of editing also helps to give you no respite and lower you even more into the story. Truly a peculiar product.
Two scenes in particular struck me. For the first, at the beginning of the first episode, I had thought of a crane being moved on a trolley or truck. The second one is even more peculiar because the camera goes through the window and flies high above the houses. Netflix has released a BTS showing both scenes. (Spoiler: they used a drone)
Sorry, I couldn't find a YT link:
https://x.com/NetflixUK/status/1901617851192033326
It was entirely shot on the Ronin 4D:
Spoiler alert:
https://variety.com/2025/artisans/news/adolescence-one-take-episodes-netflix-1236339292/
 

Exactly.
The viewer does not give a damn how it was made. A film or documentary must move feelings or make people think. If they do, who cares about the technical details? Only the insiders.
 
 

Agree with what everyone has said regarding there being many poor looking film movies that we forgot about, many great looking digital movies, and everything in between.
I believe a better thesis would be, "movies looked better before smartphones were invented"
A big reason that mainstream movies look bland is because they are no longer designed for a giant screen in a dark theater, nor even on a big flatscreen in your living room. They are increasingly consumed on 6" screens in broad daylight (as well as theaters and living rooms).
 
Now to go on a sight tangent, the same can be said of writing. Often when I talk to friends, they'll say, "oh yeah, I saw that movie. It was on netflix in the background while I cleaned my house" To some degree, it's not that writers are worse, it's that modern writing is designed to be consumed at 50% attention with chunks missing. The percent of audience that watches every second at full attention is simply getting smaller.
I don't believe that shift has anything to do with filmmaking technology.

Exactly.
The viewer does not give a damn how it was made. A film or documentary must move feelings or make people think. If they do, who cares about the technical details? Only the insiders.
 
 

While I do like the look of film and enjoy movies from the 90’s, you’re laying it on pretty thick here and a little over dramatic. There have been a lot of beautiful, cinematic films coming out over the years since that weren’t shot on film and I wholeheartedly disagree on your “hot take” on colorists. You have an opinion and that’s great but none of this is fact. Actually it’s rather naive and the Alexa 35 in the right hands might be indistinguishable from film at this point. 
 
1. At the end of the day film is both an art form and a product. If the audience doesn’t mind or can’t tell the difference the cheaper and more efficient format will win out over quality/nostalgia 90% of the time. 
 
2. It might be important to remember that  we all have a perspective based on what we were raised on and what we enjoyed growing up. What looks “good” to us can taint our objectivity and it’s important to separate out nostalgia and familiarity from things like color, latitude and grain.
 
3. For someone raised on the internet and video games at 60p your idea of film being superior is laughable. The new generation is determining things now. Vertical format content delivered in bite sized portions all day long. That’s the norm. Steaming services competing over existing IP that has a built in audience and a race to the bottom. 
 
 

I don't understand whether this is a provocative post or a serious one.
Now, I am also somewhat ignorant of the topic but some of the statements seem 'exaggerated' to me to be good.
In general, digital has greatly democratised cinema and its art. But every art has its era and its crafts and this constant 'it was better before' is largely pissing me off. It describes good old times that never existed. There were horse carriages and the farrier lobby, then came the railway and goodbye farriers. 
The truth is that today any artist can produce a film with cinematic quality at home and at a negligible cost. Unless you regret the old Super 8 home movies.
Anyway, back to the data. It's hard to talk about resolution as we understand it today in the digital world, but I have my doubts that a good film will not solve 8K, quite the contrary.
Here a document for nerds: http://www.tmax100.com/photo/pdf/film.pdf
But here there's a video that explains it more simply.
 
 
Regarding the immediacy of film.... are we talking cinema or home-made Super 8s? Because if you mention Clint Eastwood and Kodak Vision (Vision is cited also in the YT video above) then it's much more complex with intermediate and print stocks:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_stock
Ah and color grading existed on film stock too. It was called color timing:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading
Finally, am I saying that digital is better than film stock? NO, they are two different medium.

I don't understand whether this is a provocative post or a serious one.
Now, I am also somewhat ignorant of the topic but some of the statements seem 'exaggerated' to me to be good.
In general, digital has greatly democratised cinema and its art. But every art has its era and its crafts and this constant 'it was better before' is largely pissing me off. It describes good old times that never existed. There were horse carriages and the farrier lobby, then came the railway and goodbye farriers. 
The truth is that today any artist can produce a film with cinematic quality at home and at a negligible cost. Unless you regret the old Super 8 home movies.
Anyway, back to the data. It's hard to talk about resolution as we understand it today in the digital world, but I have my doubts that a good film will not solve 8K, quite the contrary.
Here a document for nerds: http://www.tmax100.com/photo/pdf/film.pdf
But here there's a video that explains it more simply.
 
 
Regarding the immediacy of film.... are we talking cinema or home-made Super 8s? Because if you mention Clint Eastwood and Kodak Vision (Vision is cited also in the YT video above) then it's much more complex with intermediate and print stocks:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_stock
Ah and color grading existed on film stock too. It was called color timing:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading
Finally, am I saying that digital is better than film stock? NO, they are two different medium.

I kind of agree, but 2 things initially spring to mind.
Thing A, a roll of film would need to revert back to costing 5 dollars instead of whatever it costs to buy & develop these days.
Thing B, good luck trying to get this implemented.
I feel the same about the other side of my own work, ie, in photography. I would LOVE to go back to being a pure film photographer but the single reason why I do not is a simple one and that is financially it would not fly today. Why, because around 75% of my turnover per job would go straight back out of the door and have to go on buying & processing film and at today's rates. I'd be out of business. Or double my rates and also go out of business because no one booked me.
And then 2 other things.
Thing C = not all older movies look great. Some...a lot even, look shit to my eyes.
Thing D = not all modern movies look shit. Some...a lot even, look superb to my eyes.
Summary, I think there is too much rose tinted spectacle nostalgia about 'The Good Old Days' and that everything today is trash. Everything today is not trash, - it's just different times.
I am currently re-watching Ripley on Netflix. To my eyes, it is one of the most superb and cinematic creations ever made.
Arguably it is not a movie per se, but a series, but actually it's a 6 hour movie in 8 parts. Almost every single frame looks superb. It's a modern day film noir that makes most older film noir look incredibly dated.
OK, some of it is actually CGI. The boat scenes with (no spoilers), Tom & Dickie has a huge amount, but that's just a tool available to the modern filmmaker.
Anyway, just my opinion. 
They also make a lot of shit today. Probably 19+ out of every 20 movies released today I would not wish to see, but they do still make some gems when the right people are involved.
 

The notion of "color grading" is largely a commercial-construct designed to create the job of "colorist" and to sell computer hardware and software. Movies made after the 1980s look consistently worse and worse, because the popular concept of "fixing it in post" has led a generation of film-makers to disregard the importance of proper lighting, story, acting, and set design.
Something went very wrong in cinema after the mid-90s. Both socially and artistically. This degradation of quality in film-making coincided with three shifts in film-aesthetics:
1. The move from celluloid to digital.
2. The move from capturing a look based in 'reality', to color-graded footage.
3. An odd obsession with increased resolution.
With increased-resolutions, the decay of cinema became even more profound: When an actor's face is shot in close-up at 8k, we are seeing a level of surface-detail to the human-face that we would NEVER see in reality. So, what is the 8k+ film-maker actually capturing?
Cinema is predicated on our 'suspension of disbelief'. To intentionally shoot a film that cannot be believed, because it does not represent 'reality' in a way that we could possibly see, is anti-cinema.
The Rise of Anti Cinema
Through both malice, and incompetence, cinema has decayed. Before it can be saved, we must acknowledge the extent of this sickness, and then take steps to remedy it. We need to rely less on software, and more on our eyes, on set. We need to embrace imperfection, and return to capturing a plausible reality. We were better off when analog color-timing was the only post-production option for "grading" footage.
Cinema can be fantastical, magical, or extraordinary, but it should never be unbelievable. Let's return to honest, practical effects; proper lighting; and artistry in set-design. It's time to stop color-grading.
25 Years of Madness
Since the launch of the Sony F900, over 25 years ago, camera companies have been promising a digital replacement for analog 35mm film. For 25 years, they have been completely unable to deliver the 35mm analog look. Instead, film-makers have been expected to mess-around in computer software chasing an aesthetic that can rarely be achieved, and that the camera companies should have been providing as a default output.
Why (given the equivalent lighting, set and actors) can no commercially-available digital video camera shoot footage straight-out-of-camera that properly emulates the Kodak 5247 and Kodak 5254 color-negative stocks? These stocks practically defined cinema as we knew it, but they do not exist as digital equivalents.
We got scammed
Why must young film-makers wade about in a swamp of technical-nonsense, graphics cards, manuals, color-grading, and hardware chasing the look that an off-the-shelf roll of 35mm stills-camera film would have delivered instantly, for five-dollars, in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s? Why can't these stocks be delivered straight off-camera?
The camera industry has pushed responsibility for great video-capture onto the "colorist". The colorist is a symptom of decay in the camera and film industry; necessary only because of the technical failings of camera manufacturers, and their inability to simply deliver the replacement for Kodak stocks they promised over 25 years ago. The colorist is also a symptom of the decay in the excellence of artists on set.
The Broken Promise of the Camera Industry
We were promised film in a digital format. But, instead, the camera-industry redefined "film" as a sub-par version of itself. Then all the failings of this new medium were commercialized in a host of hardware and software to "repair" the damage done.
Why is it so difficult for the digital-camera industry to care about creating an accurate version of the very medium that it claimed to be replacing? The digital "Cinema" cameras of today have almost nothing to do with cinema as we knew it. This is nothing short of fraud.
 

Anyone here specialize or enjoy documentaries?  My wife and I made a doc for our small community and were wondering if it had any viability beyond in-town screenings at the local film fest.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/gorqbss1yxq6lufl81x44/HAWK_WATCH_SCREEN_DRAFT.mp4?rlkey=x5d8vcd4igr3bix0cdsgajq0b&st=mt1xzunz&dl=0
The 1st draft here is still loosey-goosey, but if you're so inclined, take a look and see if the story intrigues you enough to say, "Yeah, you might be able to get this out there other places."
We feel it's such niche topic that distribution isn't much of a reality, but maybe being niche is a positive in a certain way --and with a significant cut down it could have opportunities?  Not sure.  As one work on these things one gets rather myopic.  As you might imagine, feedback from folks in our local community is too biased.  They're just happy to see themselves, colleagues, and friends in a film.  
Any advice is welcome if you have time to watch. 

Exactly. 
He has almost 500K followers, he is part of the problem, he helped create it and now he is playing the virgin. It sounds to me like a butcher lecturing on veganism.
This is the second whining he has done in a few months and both times it was because of a Lumix review. At this point I don't think it's a casual thing.
Yet if you read the comments to his whining, everyone agrees with him. Maybe all the loser haters are here.

I don't hate Gerald or think he's a bad person, I'm just bummed at what he has become. He genuinely seems pretty miserable doing this stuff, and the more he shares about himself (the comments about why he doesn't create anything were really illuminating) the more I wonder why he is even into cameras to begin with. If you aren't inspired to actually use these things to create art or entertainment, then what are you even doing?
Those comments in particular brought me back to a comment he made in his previous video last year, where he bragged about being brought on these press trips to exotic places and filming nothing. Say what you want about those trips and whether they are ethical or not, how are you not inspired to photograph or film the sights and sounds of these exotic locations and the elaborate sets these marketing folks have created for you if you're even remotely into cameras?
Surely your interest in cameras has to go beyond what you film in your basement and the tests you run on them... right?

He is starting to behave exactly like his best friend Philip Bloom with the thin skin and obsessing over a few negative comments on social media.
There was a time when you could guarantee Bloom would come flocking to a comment like a moth to a flame, you only had to call him out anywhere on the internet and he'd find it. There's evidence he even resorted to editing his own Wikipedia at one stage. It's fucking pathetic.
It is better to let the ego go when it comes to celebrity.
Focus on the objective stuff, the creative.
If Gerald is genuinely as jaded as he sounds maybe he should have a break from YouTube and see if he does actually enjoy using all this gear.
If he goes and shoots some personal stuff and doesn't enjoy it then he's better off leaving the camera reviews to people who enjoy BOTH the technical and the shooting part.

Exactly. 
He has almost 500K followers, he is part of the problem, he helped create it and now he is playing the virgin. It sounds to me like a butcher lecturing on veganism.
This is the second whining he has done in a few months and both times it was because of a Lumix review. At this point I don't think it's a casual thing.
Yet if you read the comments to his whining, everyone agrees with him. Maybe all the loser haters are here.

Exactly. 
He has almost 500K followers, he is part of the problem, he helped create it and now he is playing the virgin. It sounds to me like a butcher lecturing on veganism.
This is the second whining he has done in a few months and both times it was because of a Lumix review. At this point I don't think it's a casual thing.
Yet if you read the comments to his whining, everyone agrees with him. Maybe all the loser haters are here.

Exactly. 
He has almost 500K followers, he is part of the problem, he helped create it and now he is playing the virgin. It sounds to me like a butcher lecturing on veganism.
This is the second whining he has done in a few months and both times it was because of a Lumix review. At this point I don't think it's a casual thing.
Yet if you read the comments to his whining, everyone agrees with him. Maybe all the loser haters are here.

Exactly. 
He has almost 500K followers, he is part of the problem, he helped create it and now he is playing the virgin. It sounds to me like a butcher lecturing on veganism.
This is the second whining he has done in a few months and both times it was because of a Lumix review. At this point I don't think it's a casual thing.
Yet if you read the comments to his whining, everyone agrees with him. Maybe all the loser haters are here.

Exactly…!!!
Whether he likes it or not, he’s become a YouTube personality everyone trusts and goes to for “scientific results” and there are a lot of people that misconstrue his results. With the S1Rii all he had to do was say something like, “rolling shutter isn’t great, about the same as the other LUMIX cameras, turning DRE off will help a lot. This is a common trait of high res sensors like the A7RV and the SL3 so 8k readout speeds will be slow”
A line like that would have literally saved so many stupid comments and made this thing much less of an issue. He’s trying to blame LUMIX fan boys for people complaining when he really needs to check his ego and learn how to take constructive criticism. 

"Rolling shutter doesn't matter to me"
"Dynamic range doesn't matter to me"
It's like the Pope breaking down and saying Christmas doesn't matter to me!

He could probably save himself all these headaches by giving more context in his videos if he feels that they are being misconstrued or misunderstood.
It's hard to feel too sorry for someone who created the problem he now has. He pigeonholed himself into being THAT guy because it was what got the most views aka generated the most revenue, and now he hates it.
Seems less like "Rise of the salesmen, Death of the artist" and more "Rise of the salesmen, Reaping what you sow."