What makes a film look "cheap?"

I had a conversation with a friend a while back about what makes a film look "cheap." I don't think there can be any confusion or debate about what a "cheap" film looks like. Everyone knows a cheap, cheesy, or low budget looking film when they see it. Lay people might not be able to verbalize or identify exactly what makes it cheap looking but nonetheless, as with a bad smell, we just know - it's a bad smell. We can also think of "cheap" as the opposite of "cinematic," which should just be synonymous with beautiful, or what we've all come to understand as what "a real movie" looks like.

To my mind, there are 7 things that stand out in terms of cinematic technique, and what is lacking in a cinematic approach in a cheap looking film:

1) Deep Focus

Deep focus, as with wide angle lens use can be amazing and cinematic - if - production design is also amazing and cinematic. Of course, cinematic lighting also helps.

However, with an uninteresting or aesthetically dull setting, seeing ALL of it from foreground to background in perfect focus tends to scream "cheap," especially in the case of a small sensor camera whereby everything is normally in focus. And also especially when in-camera sharpening is set too high and highlight clipping is visible. Deep focus in that instance is just drawing attention to even more flaws in the footage, especially with regard to a lack of control over production design.

2) Clipped Highlights

Clipped highlights are overexposed highlights. They're pure white if clipped but even just too close to white (overexposed) looks cheap and indicates a lack of control in recording the footage. And I'm not talking about small pure white highlights as when glinting off a piece of glass, I'm talking about areas of a frame that just should not be overexposed.

It looks cheap and it looks amateur.  Keeping your range of tones within what the camera is capable of recording is what professionals do. Once clipping occurs, any detail or color is lost and all you can do at that point is gray it down in post which looks unnatural.

3) Poor Composition

This is a dead giveaway and I think even lay people can identify poor composition. Again, it often betrays a lack of control as in the case of working in a practical location and not having enough room to get a suitable framing, for example in this 2-shot.

Another awkward framing that could have been improved by repositioning the camera to the right and framing a little more to the left, or just framing more to the left, or backing the camera up and framing more to the left or framing the guy out and following the ladies to the car by panning left and revealing the guy in the bench (see below clip).

4) Shaky Hand Held Footage

Sometimes we need shaky footage as in the case of action scenes, but there's good shaky and there's bad shaky. Shaky all the time, is not good. Jerky/shaky is not good. Micro-jitter shaky is really not good. And even good shaky should be reserved for moments when it will have more of an impact by heightening the emotional effect of what's taking place in the scene. This is an example of the micro-jitter shakiness that comes from hand holding a lightweight camera. Because the camera is so light, it registers every tiny movement of the camera operator.

5) Poor Lighting

This gets down to just basic photographic technique. It's less an aesthetic approach than it is just a poor command of lighting. 

Poor lighting is fairly evident in a number of ways. Frontal broad lighting tends to look "sourcey." Placing the key lights behind camera, in this case also placed at eye level height or lower, cast ugly, unnatural looking shadows. Here, there are two fixtures of the same size placed on either side of camera. You can get a lot of scenes shot using this approach for all your setups with dialogue, but it looks cheap.

"Sourcey" lighting is lighting that looks like it's coming from a source, meaning a photographic fixture, not from some naturally occurring source. It looks unnatural and can be unflattering on people's faces. The goal with lighting should be to achieve a natural look, as if the light is just naturally occurring, OR by cheating and using film lighting as motivated by a nearby fixture that may be visible in a shot. 

An underlit scene is what it is. At the very least, it's preferable to see highlights in the eyes of a character even when they're underlit, especially when they have dialogue. Again, this approach indicates a lack of control and screams "low budget."

One thing I see often are available light setups where talent are placed in shade. Getting an adequate exposure of their faces means having an overexposed background. In most cases like this, a proper exposure would mean the actors would be in silhouette. This dynamic generally betrays a lack of control, meaning the cinematographer was not able to, didn't have time, or didn't know how to light the talent.

6) Over Sharpening

Digital cameras have a sharpness setting generally, and over sharpened footage tends to look very "video." Many drones and action cams tend to have noticeably sharpened footage while also having small sensors and wide angle lenses which give them a unique, very often non cinematic look. I see a fair amount of over sharpened footage in low budget indie films. When combined with highlight clipping, over sharpened footage screams "video."

7) Production Design

Nothing screams "cheap," like a cheap looking apartment, a cheap car, or a cheap wardrobe. "Cheap" in this case can mean messy, sloppy, boring, dull, or just uninspiring. Many indie filmmakers tend to use whatever locations and scenery they have easy access to. This, often times means working with less than ideal settings, visually speaking. 

Smart filmmakers often will avoid wide shots in cases where they just don't have a budget for control of production design, or want to avoid seeing equipment or crew that they don't have time to move. This results in a lot of closeups which can become visually tiresome for a viewer. 

All things being equal, production design is production value.

 ©Chris Santucci 2021