Needs Help: Shot On Shitteo

I like Lo Fi Filming, and I think "lo-fi" is broadly understood. If you wanted to make it clearer, you could call it Low Fidelity Filming.

Are we OK with the definition, as is? Take The Artist. Being silent and being black and white would be covered by Deliberately Monochrome and Silence Is Golden. But what about the 4:3 ratio? Is that covered under this trope?

Do we have consensus that this trope needs a new name? Time for a crowner?

We seem pretty agreed that a rename is required and the description is still somewhat unclear so needs to be reworked a little.

how about Shot With A Potato or Shot On A Potato (or the less ambiguous Filmed On A Potato)? it's a common slang, referring to mobile phone (or just plain crappy) footage.

EDIT: seems to have it's origins on a meme, goddammit.

edited 16th Jan '14 1:57:11 AM by ShanghaiSlave

Somehow that's more obscure than what the current name is.

Filmed With A Cheap Toy then? implies the quality, and no obscure terms.

Seems reasonable, I just want more options so we can start working out what needs fixing because worrying about the name feels secondary if the trope itself doesn't know what it means.

@26: Weren't most movies 4:3 before the 50s or so?

I think the trope here is that the film is shot on lower quality than is standard for the time it was shot.

I think that's pretty clear but it's not that clear in the description.

I'm not sure if choice of ratio or even using color or not counts.

Definitely exists as a trope. In fact, I've seen it in MORE than a few Japanese rock videos - the worst are stuff like the video for D.T.R.'s "Cybernetic Crime" ( http://youtu.be/-6wo7Ug7r04 ) which suffers from this, Conspicuous CGI that makes it look VERY dated, and a combination of Leave the Camera Running and Jitter Cam, though I can't hate on it THAT much knowing the story behind it (the artist who led the band was about to become homeless from alcohol and drug addictions and mentally ill at the time, so he couldn't do proper quality checks on the footage or who recorded it). There's also this ( http://youtu.be/Rh-IPtxL2gU ) low-budget video by Loudness which is a far more famous band but didn't have the $ at the time for better.

On the other hand, Luna Sea's ROUGE is filmed entirely on I Pad, and if you didn't know beforehand, it's nearly impossible to tell.

I think the best name for this trope is Obviously Low Budget Filming, and the best trope definition is something filmed at a standard or in a way that is very much below standard of its time, and/or that was reasonable budget at the time but dated very, very poorly.

I can agree with the first part of your proposed definition (filmed below the standard for the time) but not the second (was at the standard for the time but has dated poorly). Putting in that second part basically means virtually every movie filmed before oh, probably the late 70's, would count, because the film quality increased so dramatically around then.

I brought up 4:3 and The Artist because filming in 4:3 was a deliberate artistic choice that is "less" than the common video standard of the day. If the consensus is that we shouldn't list it that's cool.

As far as what qualifies for Low Fidelity Filming, I concur with the posters above who are saying that standards at the time are the determining factor. This should be about filmmakers shooting on videotape and such in the age of high-definition video, not about how every movie made back in The '30s isn't as high-fidelity as Transformers. We should also draw a distinction between this and No Budget, which would include the people shooting on videotape or whatever because it's all they can afford.

edited 19th Jan '14 7:45:31 PM by jamespolk

I think the point I was trying to make is that if it was shot in 4:3 because that's what the movies it's trying to evoke were shot in, that's a slightly different trope, by the same standard as excluding other choices made for the same reason.

Clock is set.

As much as enjoy the Cinema Snob as a guilty pleasure(because the kind of the stuff he reviews is things I would in no way watch without the commentary framing it) I agree that he's a really obscure source to be using as a Trope Namer because he seems to be obscure even among TGWTG fans and Brad Jones seems to be more well known for his other shows like Brad Tries and DVD-R Hell now.

I don't think is about any kind of intentional thing. It's about things that were just filmed in really shitty quality(and usually with shitty everything-else on top of it).

edited 20th Feb '14 2:41:20 PM by shoboni

Off-topic, and not to defend the name, but...

Being one of only three or four contributors with his own menu under the Videos menu is not "obscure even among TGWTG fans".

Well, I'll say one thing: we definitely don't want to clock a thread about a trope name with an outright obscenity in it.

You must be a minority because I've have NEVER meant another person who knows of him.

No Lewdness, No Prudishness. I doubt that is really a problem.

edited 20th Feb '14 7:56:33 PM by shoboni

Haven't there been trope names changed in the past for that very reason?

Yes, although exempting a thread from clocking is not part of the equation.

Actually, I've never watched him outside of crossovers with other people. I presented objective evidence suggesting he might be, or at least was once, a little more well-known than you think, presumably among people "you've haven't meant".

Again, I'm not trying to defend the name.

edited 21st Feb '14 11:58:26 AM by MorganWick

Not sure if it matters if we've seen him or not, we're trying to presume ignorance of the readers to the site and shouldn't be trying to use references in our trope names.

I have no idea who either That Guy With the Glasses or The Cinema Snob are. No clue, not interested. That said, I don't think obscurity of a trope namer is a reason to rename. Nor is the curse word a reason to rename. The reason to rename this trope is that it's just a bad, non-indicative name. That's the reason why this trope is Not Thriving.

Re: The Artist, I think I was wrong above. That's Retraux, not this trope. Anyway, I think the trope here is valid, but a new name is very much needed.

This is just one data point, but the name definitely doesn't work for me, and that's because I didn't realize that "shitteo" was supposed to be a portmanteau word for "shitty video" until well after I had read the trope description. It actually took some thinking to get it. Perhaps it's because I tend to pronounce the "tt" in "shitteo" in a quite distinct way from the "d" in "video" - I suppose in some dialects the difference is small enough to make the pun obvious.

Technically it is a dialogue trope name so not something we actually want.