I'd sum up some of the stylistic changes in the past three decades like this:
1980's: The first decade of true high-speed stock -- but these early stocks were grainier and the diffusion popular in the mid 1970's just didn't work well with them, and people were getting tired of that look for the most part. So less diffusion compared to the 1970's, but more grain and contrast. This was also the decade that HMI lighting became commonplace and reliable, so heavy uncorrected blue become a stylistic thing for night scenes. Smoked sets, which people like Storaro and Unsworth had already been doing, became much more common thanks to commercial directors like Ridley Scott. Besides commercials affecting the look of features, so were music videos.
1990's: 500 ASA stock becomes commonplace for interiors, and by the end of the decade, the stocks became less grainy. The return of 35mm anamorphic in popularity thanks to movies like "Dances with Wolves" (1990) and action films like "Die Hard" (1988). The rise of Super-35 thanks to directors like James Cameron. So 2.40 in general becomes more common again. Some of the excesses of the 1980's like heavy blue moonlight and smoke become moderated, but fads like skip-bleach become more common (silver retention dates back though to the early 1980's with the ENR process used by Storaro on "Reds" and skip-bleach prints made for "1984".) The kind of elegant soft-lit period look using silver retention for prints hits its peak in 1999 with films like "Snow Falling on Cedars" and "Sleepy Hollow" -- I don't think that look has been topped that since then.
2000's: the decade of the D.I. and also movies experimenting with digital cameras, particularly HD. Now the look of film stocks and processing mattered much less since the D.I. process could create even more varieties of looks from a stock. We had the rise of directors who came out of shooting video and the ability to record hours of footage for editing. Shots become shorter and shorter and the end result is that quantity starts to trump quality in terms of shot design and execution. Directors start to brag about how many cameras they were able to roll on a scene. The skip-bleach look still pops up now and then, but now achieved in the D.I. We all become familiar with a host of new types of artifacts: noise, compression, edge enhancement. Everything starts to get dumbed-down to 2K and HD resolution.
On the other hand, the average TV show has better cinematography than ever... And with the collapse by the late 2000's of the indie divisions of the studios and the drop in budgets for indie films, a number of mid-level crew people and DP's move into television.
2010's:
Soft-light is now king, but some movies are so blandly soft-lit from end-to-end that they look like they were shot in a supermarket. Movies are now either nearly grainless, especially the ones shot digitally, or are really grainy as a response against digital. Digital color-correction is better than ever and most D.I.'s are fairly transparent compared to early 2000's, but it hardly matters since a lot of movies are not seen in film prints anymore, and digital projection allows movies to look more pristine than ever, which is great unless you want some grit, dirt, and roughness to the image. And the poor black levels of some digital projectors augment the blandness of overly soft-lit movies.
1980's: The first decade of true high-speed stock -- but these early stocks were grainier and the diffusion popular in the mid 1970's just didn't work well with them, and people were getting tired of that look for the most part. So less diffusion compared to the 1970's, but more grain and contrast. This was also the decade that HMI lighting became commonplace and reliable, so heavy uncorrected blue become a stylistic thing for night scenes. Smoked sets, which people like Storaro and Unsworth had already been doing, became much more common thanks to commercial directors like Ridley Scott. Besides commercials affecting the look of features, so were music videos.
1990's: 500 ASA stock becomes commonplace for interiors, and by the end of the decade, the stocks became less grainy. The return of 35mm anamorphic in popularity thanks to movies like "Dances with Wolves" (1990) and action films like "Die Hard" (1988). The rise of Super-35 thanks to directors like James Cameron. So 2.40 in general becomes more common again. Some of the excesses of the 1980's like heavy blue moonlight and smoke become moderated, but fads like skip-bleach become more common (silver retention dates back though to the early 1980's with the ENR process used by Storaro on "Reds" and skip-bleach prints made for "1984".) The kind of elegant soft-lit period look using silver retention for prints hits its peak in 1999 with films like "Snow Falling on Cedars" and "Sleepy Hollow" -- I don't think that look has been topped that since then.
2000's: the decade of the D.I. and also movies experimenting with digital cameras, particularly HD. Now the look of film stocks and processing mattered much less since the D.I. process could create even more varieties of looks from a stock. We had the rise of directors who came out of shooting video and the ability to record hours of footage for editing. Shots become shorter and shorter and the end result is that quantity starts to trump quality in terms of shot design and execution. Directors start to brag about how many cameras they were able to roll on a scene. The skip-bleach look still pops up now and then, but now achieved in the D.I. We all become familiar with a host of new types of artifacts: noise, compression, edge enhancement. Everything starts to get dumbed-down to 2K and HD resolution.
On the other hand, the average TV show has better cinematography than ever... And with the collapse by the late 2000's of the indie divisions of the studios and the drop in budgets for indie films, a number of mid-level crew people and DP's move into television.
2010's:
Soft-light is now king, but some movies are so blandly soft-lit from end-to-end that they look like they were shot in a supermarket. Movies are now either nearly grainless, especially the ones shot digitally, or are really grainy as a response against digital. Digital color-correction is better than ever and most D.I.'s are fairly transparent compared to early 2000's, but it hardly matters since a lot of movies are not seen in film prints anymore, and digital projection allows movies to look more pristine than ever, which is great unless you want some grit, dirt, and roughness to the image. And the poor black levels of some digital projectors augment the blandness of overly soft-lit movies.
