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It has long been a thought of mine that the English-speaking world is so fond of Nazi occupation alternate history precisely because it never happened to them (the Channel Islands notwithstanding), and so they can imagine it at a safe remove. For most of Continental Europe, one only needs to open a history book to see how it went down, no flight of fancy required.Take as an example some of the set-pieces found in The Man in the High Castle, many of which are found in immensely popular YouTube Shorts or TikTok videos (and other things The YouthTM watch these days): lovingly-crafted CGI spectacles that see blood-red and void-black Swastika banners unfurled across New York skyscrapers, or Swastika-clad crowds cheering maniacally as the Statue of Liberty is blown up amidst fireworks by victorious Nazi occupiers.
It's a good point about the SS-GB adaptation. It had more glaring issues, and the production wasn't as tone deaf as to cover a real city in Fascist iconography, but it still does sap away the feeling of London being physically and spiritually shattered when reading the book and replaces it with the sort of pulpy noir setting that made Archer famous in-story.
That's true, but I think you're closer to the mark with your comment about keeping up with Amazon. The advent of big-budget international shows has put pressure on smaller production companies to make things look just as good as the perceived competition and that has an impact elsewhere. For example, although not AH when it was made, Threads is one of the darkest, grittiest programmes/films ever broadcast but I can't imagine anything similar being made now - the focus would be too much on getting the special effects right. I hope I'm wrong though and that smaller companies can continue to make realistic, human-based drama.Or it's the whole "history as-lived forgotten" thing again, because Deighton was writing about alternate outcomes of events from a few decades ago and Secret Army was doing a real occupation & RAF bombing raids that older audiences had lived through. It's easier to get it right then.
That's true, but I think you're closer to the mark with your comment about keeping up with Amazon. The advent of big-budget international shows has put pressure on smaller production companies to make things look just as good as the perceived competition
Used to be if you couldn't rely on effects you'd hide it through writing, direction, lighting.And is it just me but half the time it never quite works, there's something - less extras, slightly off CG - that just reminds you the budget is lower?
Sounds eminently qualified to stand for parliament.Used to be if you couldn't rely on effects you'd hide it through writing, direction, lighting.
Now they've tried nothing and they're all out of ideas.
Used to be if you couldn't rely on effects you'd hide it through writing, direction, lighting.
Now they've tried nothing and they're all out of ideas.
I'm convinced A24 is the culprit when it comes to thinking you can get away with natural lighting. It's almost created a dichotomy where the only two looks in film are brightly lit, vibrant coloured, Hollywood popcorn flicks and naturally lit, muted palette, indie pictures.Oh god, lighting, my bugbear with some cheap indie streamers and their trailers (sometimes I view them for sick pleasure) is when the lighting is subpar or entirely natural and the directing is also a bit off, and it turns Epic Viking Stuff into some guys larping in the woods. It looks inferior to the 90s Who video Downtime where fans in UNIT cosplay fight Yetis by some trees because Douglas Camfield was trying for good shots and edited it
I knew it was the art galleries! Even when it was the the edgelord teens, I knew it was them!
Framing this in terms of regimental museums makes a great point in the need to humanise history. And that leads to the difference in storytelling where the stories are told from a human perspective. That perspective is the norm in our vignette contests, and I think there has been a shift in recent years towards that from the fake textbook or especially snarky Wikipedia article style that was dominant earlier. That might have been hand in hand to more works being written online with an end goal of publication as opposed to just consumption by the small fora community.
Not what I said.Thing is, almost all AH works aimed at a large audience are told from a human perspective. They might not be told well, but there's at least a sincere normal human narrative almost all the time. Even Robert Conroy, regarded not unreasonably as one of the worse pop-AH writers, still tried to have varied, human perspectives in his books. Likewise, while they may feature too many infodumps and conference rooms, the average Fuldapocalyptic story (itself a small niche) is not like Hackett.
Then you insult me by assuming I like cricket?It's really just community inside baseball (or should I say cricket because most of us here are British lol) to complain about something that almost all alternate history that "normal" people potentially get has already been doing constantly.
It has long been a thought of mine that the English-speaking world is so fond of Nazi occupation alternate history precisely because it never happened to them (the Channel Islands notwithstanding), and so they can imagine it at a safe remove. For most of Continental Europe, one only needs to open a history book to see how it went down, no flight of fancy required.