Some one recently mentioned to me that movies taking place in the future always seem to have the future looking very drab. Stills for "I, Robot" so far, and look at other movie that take place in the future like "Minority Report", "Blade Runner", the "Alien" trilogy, and others seem to have color and design get really boring in clothing and general building decorations, etc. There is very often a hospital cleanliness and everything looks new or there's a filter on that takes the contrast in the colors out. Plain but high-tech.
I agree with this to and extent and I can think of a couple of possible reasons for this.
I would think about it in terms of creating a story and the motivations for doing so. These stories are all designed to make the audience fear the future to some degree; it seems that is the feeling that creators want to invoke. It's a cinematic standard to make the imagery mimic the feeling that you want someone to have of something. You have to ask yourself, how many movies portraying the future, have a positive, warm outlook as a philosophy? None that come to mind, for me. These are stories that prey on the fear people have of the unknown and the fear of everything they hold vaulable being taken away from them. Such imagery immediately invokes a feeling of loss in its audience.
Maybe film makers should do this: make movies that would normally take place in the present, but make the setting the future. All the things in the present that invoke a feeling of warmth should do so and everything in the present that invokes an uncomfortable feeling should be the same in the future. Why can't a stereotypical highschool drama take place in the future? Identification? Maybe. But isn't that a philosophy to be expressed in itself?
Of course, there is always the other thing: making your scenery as vague and impersonal as possible gives the art a longer life. An example in literature would be a comparison between George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxely's Brave New World. 1984 has a feeling of being dated where B.N.W can be read at anytime and feel like it is the future. That may be a great driving factor in the set design of films that take place in the future. It would prolong its significance to a certain degree.
But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.
I agree with this to and extent and I can think of a couple of possible reasons for this.
I would think about it in terms of creating a story and the motivations for doing so. These stories are all designed to make the audience fear the future to some degree; it seems that is the feeling that creators want to invoke. It's a cinematic standard to make the imagery mimic the feeling that you want someone to have of something. You have to ask yourself, how many movies portraying the future, have a positive, warm outlook as a philosophy? None that come to mind, for me. These are stories that prey on the fear people have of the unknown and the fear of everything they hold vaulable being taken away from them. Such imagery immediately invokes a feeling of loss in its audience.
Maybe film makers should do this: make movies that would normally take place in the present, but make the setting the future. All the things in the present that invoke a feeling of warmth should do so and everything in the present that invokes an uncomfortable feeling should be the same in the future. Why can't a stereotypical highschool drama take place in the future? Identification? Maybe. But isn't that a philosophy to be expressed in itself?
Of course, there is always the other thing: making your scenery as vague and impersonal as possible gives the art a longer life. An example in literature would be a comparison between George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxely's Brave New World. 1984 has a feeling of being dated where B.N.W can be read at anytime and feel like it is the future. That may be a great driving factor in the set design of films that take place in the future. It would prolong its significance to a certain degree.
But that's just my opinion; I could be wrong.
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