Anyone else tired the Scrubs revival series' new cinematography?

I work for a camera lens company and when we advertise to cinematographers (which mind you is not the type of lenses we typically make) we talk about how shallow depth of field makes encoding easier, so streamers use less bandwidth. I have no idea how much that actually impacts lens selection, but it seems like some people at Netflix actually influence cinematography choices based on that.      It's anti-creative bullshit from marketing people which is why I believe executives genuinely care

You're making some valid points, but a few things worth noting: first, multi-camera setups don't make for easier editing, they optimize time spent on principal photography by shooting multiple useable performances in a single take. The editor still has to mix-and-match the best performances from different takes, they still have to deal with continuity problems from that, they still have to sculpt time, remove dialogue as needed, etc. (EDIT: But you are absolutely correct that this enormously affects the lighting, and it takes a very skilled cinematographer to make it work) Second, Gladiator 2 was shot by the same cinematographer from the first Gladiator: John Mathieson. Which may actually have been the problem: Scott hadn't worked with Mathieson in almost two decades. His cinematographer of choice has been Dariusz Wolski, who is in my opinion one of the best in his field (Mathieson is certainly skilled, but not on the same level). So it's possible that Gladiator 2 looks worse than Gladiator 1 because Scott grew used to certain working habits that Mathieson couldn't quite adapt to. If that was the case, it would have made far more sense to have Wolski shoot the film. Granted, considering the script for Gladiator 2, it would have made more sense not to make it at all, but I digress. Third: let's not pretend the early-2000s was some golden age of cinematography that we should all be mourning the loss of. It was the age of shakycam, poorly-shot action and excessive cuts, and the first Gladiator was one of the movies that most contributed to that trend. Everyone was trying to emulate Saving Private Ryan without putting even a fraction of the thought and care that Spielberg and Kamiński had put into the Omaha Beach sequence. I certainly agree that the first Gladiator has better lighting and a better use of color, but it had its fair share of bad shots, especially during action scenes. Mathieson can shoot action quite well these days (in Logan, for example) but he and Scott were awful at it in their collaborations.

This became more prominent around 2008 when full frame DSLR cameras started to record video with good quality (like the Canon EOS 5D Mark II). They were "c****" and many filmmakers started using them.

This is over done to death in One Piece live action as well. And I hate it.

I've heard it's also because people watch things on their phones and need help focusing on what they're "supposed to" be looking at.

reading this as i’m watching the latest episode of daredevil and the current scene has so much bokeh haha

I don't understand how Netflix plays a role in this

The way so many modern productions use digital lighting as a way to be lazy rather than using it to enhance the shot is annoying

I think you nailed it though with the mention of wanting maximum flexibility in the edit. It reminds me a bit of something I was thinking about earlier when I saw a post about some social media advertising company during their copywriters in favor of AI and the way Facebook ads now encourage you to use AI variants of whatever you upload. Everyone is sooo focused on ensuring monetary return they've given up agency over directorial intent. It's just throw as much against the wall to hope something sticks. Why come up with a very specific vision, when you could A/B test everything?

To be fair, Ridley didn’t light the set at all. That would be cinematographer John Mathieson, the same guy who shot the first film. 

> The set is washed with sitcom lighting Am I crazy or is Scrubs not a sitcom?

bokeh focus? you mean depth of field due to a ~~closed down~~ wide open apature?

A sitcom with sitcom lighting? Holy shit, alert the press.

I did a big rewatch of Lost a few years ago and it's astounding how much it looks like a movie. It's just plain beautiful to look at. But I always think of shows like ER when people tell me it's impossible to make full 22-24 episode seasons and also put out a quality program. Granted, I know that Lost and ER were stand-outs rather than the norm, but overall, I agree that producers are getting away with so much less these days simply because they can.

ER was _groundbreaking_ in how it was shot. Like, try watch the pilor again it feels more modern than stuff filmed 2 decades later.

I mean, there’s still brilliantly shot shows, it’s sitcoms that have taken the biggest shift. And part of that is just smaller budgets compared to major network shows of 20 years ago.

a lot of shows now look similar to high budget youtubers. Very even bright lighting, sharp image, fast lens, shallow dof etc. some artistry has been lost. it makes sense for youtube tech reviewers or whatever but less so for a show

The way TV productions chase cinematography trends without consideration for their actual usefulness or artistic value is just pathetic. Bokeh, Deakinizer effect, focus falloff, shaky cam... All of these things get used with the subtlety of a kick in the crotch. At this point I almost expect to see a new TV show shot in vertical cell phone format video with TikTok style captions slamming across the screen. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest

Whereas most of the new sci-fi shows look 1000% better than they used to, with stunning compositions and fantastic use of light and shadow - most of the new shows look so damn lush. Foundation, new Treks, Severance, etc

Watch any episode of Tales From The Crypt in 480p and it'll look like a masterclass compared to anything coming out on TV today. But granted, Tales had a lot of good filmmakers working on it.

Yeah it's this, there's a video on YouTube of zac going around the set, and he describes exactly this. It's to try and give the illusion of a long hallway when they don't have one. Not because they're just 'lazy' or 'optomising for phones'. Just that recreating s full building in a single warehouse is a little hard

Pretty sure they could do that without blurring the background of every single shot. There’s plenty of shots where there’s no hallways to blur out and they still do it.

Honestly they should've just filmed at a different hospital and called it a renovation.

I think because it's a separate series I don't notice it as much because the visual language of Scrubs was so different pre-2026, so you expect it to look a certain way.

I think shrinking is one of the best looking series, it look so bright and crips and colorfull. Makes me wants to live there. I works for a sitcom but I understand for other stuff it’s not the best.

Shrinking looks like they’re in front of a green screen every time they’re outside, I hate it.

Shrinking looks shockingly bad. There was one episode from this newest season where it was shot normally and then they went back to the shallow weirdness.

Rooster features it prominently too

There are bad shots in Shrinking but also a lot of amazing ones. Like the last scene from this last episode

How is it comparable to previous seasons?

Ozark?

I've read a bunch about a similar problem in movies, where everything is so rushed that they're not sure what they want on film day, so they light everything flat and shoot narrow with the intention of making the shot they actually want in post. It look bad and feels bad, and all the photographers are screaming to not do it. On a show like Scrubs, which was meticulously rehearsed with physical fantasies, you simply *can't do that.* You actually need to set that nurse on fire. So they may be at an impasse between artistic decisions and producer crunch, and this is the awkward middle ground.

I think it's because the whole revival was basically a test balloon. Can we get a show running, can we spin up a writer's room, can we rebuild sets to look like the original, will we get enough old cast members back, will fans even want it, will people watch? Show hasn't actually been renewed for another season. I think the shallow depth was probably a way to shoot a lot of coverage to save time, make sure people who were on other shows could shoot for a day and then leave. So it probably has to do with time and cost.

>I do not understand how they could think that looked good it's all optimized for phones. both for you scrolling on your phone and still being able to follow along, as well as being able to look good in some tiktok compilation.

It makes every show look like it takes place in the afterlife, especially hospital shows.

Always Sunny is so frustrating. I don't expect them to shoot in 4:3 SD in 2026 but there's no reason they couldn't dim the lights a little bit to stay true to the original look. The weird thing is that Charlie is the only one who seems to care about this.

Scrubs always shot with 16x9 framing, they just reframed and broadcast in 4x3.

Weird, I actually thought AKOTSK was a lot better in that regard after HOTD and the later seasons of GOT had horrible nighttime visuals (which look especially ass when you’re streaming a show instead of watching on blu-ray because dark visuals get hit the hardest by compression artifacts like banding)

I thought it was a green screen with b-roll playing behind them in a lot of scenes

Correct, no bearing on file size.

Especially in today’s episode >!where they had the flashbacks of Matt in church as a kid. The difference in cinematography was so obvious.!< Not sure why they need to have it be so foggy and grey.

Yeah, I watched that video a while back. Thanks for the share.

I believe it’s a side-effect of modern production schedules and optimisation for streaming bandwidth. Blurred backgrounds don’t take up as much data.

Honestly I don’t think it’s that, it’s that productions are trying to save money so they shoot for “coverage” which means that the lighting is more balanced, and cinematographers don’t have time to shoot for a particular type of lighting for a scene. So that’s why a lot of productions these days have that flat look.

They have the ability to adjust the lighting and camera equipment to achieve the focus they want, this is a professional television production with full technical crew, not a lone photographer snapping shots with his Nikon in the woods. It’s a stylistic choice.

It's just noticeable in this case since the original Scrubs actually had great cinematography for a series of that style. They shot it with film cameras and lighting, and did multiple takes for the various camera angles like they were doing a movie. Except of course the one episode they shot like a sitcom for comedic effect.

> that's just how cameras work if you have enough light to need to close down the apature That's how amateur photographers work that don't really understand their equipment.

r/confidentlyincorrect Closing down the aperture makes the background have more in focus, not less. 

That's the worst part though, it isn't. I watched a whole behind the scenes thing where they showed how they put all this work into perfectly recreating all the old sets for the revival. Whatever dumb blurry thing they're doing just makes it all look like a fake green screen...

People are allowed to criticise things you like. Just because you have deeper nostalgia for the show doesn’t mean that it’s devoid of any flaws. It’s the new look of the show people have an issue with, not the show itself.