(Credits: Far Out / Reddit)
Cinema and technology at large have been advancing at such a rapid rate that there’s barely anything off-limits when it comes to creativity and unfiltered imagination.
Visual effects technology can recreate epic battles from history, pit spaceships against each other in an intergalactic dogfight, and realise far-flung, fantastical realms. They can have superheroes soaring through the sky, all while the unnerving rise of AI and deepfakes has turned digital manipulation into a constant talking point.
And yet, despite all that media is capable of accomplishing at the push of a button, why do family photos in movies and TV shows always look so unconvincingly awful? Sure, they’re often irrelevant to the plot and placed in the background. However, anytime a character picks up a picture to fondly reminisce over or a frame is glimpsed in the background for foreshadowing purposes, it’s almost always laughable.
There are plenty of entirely valid reasons why it’s been an issue for decades. Still, there’s no excuse for it remaining such a terrible staple of film and television today when it only takes a minute or two to knock up something that looks even remotely real. Instead, it continues to be one of the most recurring faults of visual media and a trait that’s being singled out with increasing regularity in the social media age.
Veteran art director Dan Yarhi tried to offer an explanation of sorts to The Guardian, which admittedly came off as more of a ‘who cares?’ than anything else: “I will remind you that the Mona Lisa is famous for her smile, not the soft-focus dodgy background of the painting.” A reasonable opinion when, in many cases, it doesn’t matter in the slightest, but hardly a justification.
Of course, Yarhi made a point of shifting the blame away from cost-cutting, never mind laziness on the production team’s part. “Everyone I’ve ever seen working on these things really cares, they want to do the best they can,” he continued. “When these things happen, it’s either because no one had time or no one had the necessary resources to get it done right, and somebody probably feels bad about it.”
Furthering his belief, Yarhi compared it to “wows per dollar”, with funds better off being allocated elsewhere than trying to have a fake photo – that’s by no means guaranteed to even make it into a single shot – presented with the utmost authenticity. “Please remember that they are called motion pictures and are meant to be viewed on a large screen, not to be stopped and zoomed into,” he added, underlining his opinion that it’s not even supposed to be a big deal.
Based on what industry professionals have to say, the truth behind sketchy family photos exists somewhere between their unimportance relative to the budget of any given production. Their role is little more than set dressing of visual exposition, rendering them as one tiny cog in a massive machine that hardly takes precedence, and eagle-eyed viewers have too much time on their hands to call out the more egregious examples. Still, a little polish wouldn’t go amiss.
