walking_carpet said:

i've been hearing a lot of this teal-orange thing. can someone explain? at first I thought it was too many movies having a blueish tint like Underworld. I saw a link that explained it further, but not sure if I get it.

I'll do my best. When you retime a film, you can choose to push everything to opposite color extremities: green/purple, yellow/blue, etc. Because these colors contrast with each other, they make the picture look more vibrant, have more "pop", jump out at you, etc. Now because Hollywood is Hollywood, most films have an overrepresentation of actors with a skin tone that's pretty close to orange or peach color. The opposite of orange is teal, which sometimes the sky can look like if, you know, you're wearing green sunglasses or there's a tornado nearby. So orange-teal is the preferred pair of colors because it kinda-sorta matches an oversaturated version of what's typically onscreen.

The result is that many films today, and more importantly, many older films being released on Blu Ray, have unrealistic colors in a very consistent way, summed up as Tanning Bed Disasters Versus Tornado Alley Skies. Now, I like when people use color timing alterations to some sort of artistic end: I loved what they did with Amelie and O Brother Where Art Thou? It's a great tool when used properly. But boy am I effing sick of teal and orange.

The blog post that kicked off a lot of people's interest in this is here: http://theabyssgazes.blogspot.com/2010/03/teal-and-orange-hollywood-please-stop.html I don't necessarily agree that every example he gives is egregious and unnatural, but certainly some of them are, and even the ones that aren't unnatural show a complete lack of interest in any other colors by the costume/set designers/CGI artists.

ALSO: Where is the Buckaroo Banzai love in this thread?