“Cinematic” is a word I am coming to loathe.
In my mind “cine” is short for cinema, so cinematic implies – like something you might see in the cinema. And for me the cinema has always been a special place, somewhere you go to be entertained. Somewhere you go for a great story, somewhere you go for incredible and memorable images. I’ve always felt very privileged to work in and around the film making industry, it is special.
I asked ChatGPT to describe cinematic to me and this is what it said:
When something is described as cinematic, it typically means that it:
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Visual Grandeur: It has visually striking or grand scenes that are reminiscent of what you might see in a well-crafted film, often with dramatic lighting, composition, and movement.
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Narrative Impact: It involves storytelling that is immersive and emotionally engaging, similar to the way a movie draws viewers into its world and characters.
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Atmosphere and Mood: It creates a specific mood or atmosphere that feels like it could belong in a film, often with a focus on visual style, music, and pacing.
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Scale and Scope: It might suggest a sense of epic scale or ambition, like the sweeping landscapes of a blockbuster film or the intense focus of a character-driven drama.
In a broader sense, “cinematic” can be applied to describe anything—from a video game to a piece of music—that captures the essence of what makes movies so compelling.
OK, that sounds great – epic, sweeping landscapes, story telling, grand scenes and dramatic lighting, I agree with ChatGPT.
But in reality cinematic now seems to means any video shot with a wide field of view, a shallow depth of field and slow motion. So often you come across a video with someone asking you to watch their cinematic film. I watch it in the hope of seeing something stylish, grand and dramatic, perhaps a film short, perhaps something new and interesting, a short story, something like a short version of something I might see in a cinema, something memorable or special.
But instead it’s almost always just a compilation of wide angle, shallow DoF, slow motion shots of “insert location” with a music backing. It’s great that todays cameras can do all of these things and each has a place in story telling or artistic pieces. Combining them can indeed be interesting and creative. But just because you shot your holiday video in wide-shallow-slow-mo, it doesn’t make it like a cinema film, it doesn’t make it epic, grand, dramatic or film-like. The addition of a vignette or brown/green grade doesn’t help either. It remains what it is, a wide-shallow-slo-mo video, little different to the millions of other copycat wide-shallow-slow-mo videos that are out their today (probably also with exactly the same “arri look” lut or grade). It isn’t film-like, film-style or cine like and rarely compelling, it is it’s own genre.
How many movies or feature films are shot almost exclusively with very wide angle lenses, almost every shot a slow motion shot and depth of field so shallow that practically nothing is actually in focus? Where’s the emotion? Where’s the drama or story telling?
Yes, each technique is used, but generally for very specific shots or moments within the film to create a moment of impact or change of pace. But when a video uses all of these techniques, often combined, for just about every shot it gets boring and when every video you watch does exactly the same as every other in the name of being “cinematic” it just starts to say – don’t bother watching this one, it will be just like all the others – yawn.
And it doesn’t stop there. Now we have manufactures selling cinematic filters, cinematic plug-ins, cinematic music, you name it, if you can prefix it with cinematic, manufacturers will making the term ever more meaningless. It no longer means epic, grand, dramatic, emotionally engaging, atmospheric, it is no longer to quote Chat GPT “ the essence of what makes movies so compelling”
