With all the special effects and video postprocessing in photos and films today, it's no surprise they look unnatural. I think we're seeing in film and TV the same phenom that's already big in photography and music — digitally filtered and synthesized media feels unnatural. Well duh. It is.
Video and audio are being compressed to exclude noise and 'purify' the primary signal to make the product pop (something that's also making TV ads feel very unnatural today). But this isn't new of course. For decades, postproduction and direction of film and TV has been simplified and its primary signals boosted to make more impact. The cost, IMHO, is that acting has taken a back seat to visuals and background audio, creating the zombified chesspiece actors of today, which are also a big part of this “uncanny valley” of all forms of video. The result is expressive subtleties present in our remaining great actors (who are now age 60+) like Judy Dench or Daniel Day-Lewis are absent in nearly all actors under age 40, unless they got their start in stage or outside American media, where the practice of overproduction has not been as rampant.
I think what we're seeing is simply the viral spread of special effects, digitization, and overproduction into all of media, with video simply suffering its effects last.
Video and audio are being compressed to exclude noise and 'purify' the primary signal to make the product pop (something that's also making TV ads feel very unnatural today). But this isn't new of course. For decades, postproduction and direction of film and TV has been simplified and its primary signals boosted to make more impact. The cost, IMHO, is that acting has taken a back seat to visuals and background audio, creating the zombified chesspiece actors of today, which are also a big part of this “uncanny valley” of all forms of video. The result is expressive subtleties present in our remaining great actors (who are now age 60+) like Judy Dench or Daniel Day-Lewis are absent in nearly all actors under age 40, unless they got their start in stage or outside American media, where the practice of overproduction has not been as rampant.
I think what we're seeing is simply the viral spread of special effects, digitization, and overproduction into all of media, with video simply suffering its effects last.