IIRC part of it is that the film moves so fast that a lot of the dust just gets flung off. Almost everything else is caught by the rollers, and if it does stay on the film it'll be small and only on screen for 1/24th of a second.
also the dust=imperfections is part of why we still use film for Imax.
For whatever weird reason imperfections, noise, etc. make a movie more realistic and trick our brains to believe it.
Extremely clean movies just look weird. Maybe that changes as we are the last "we know what a VHS is" generation and in 30 years nobody cares but rn, anything to clean or even just bad artificial noise makes us unbelieve the movie
This is absolutely a film snob take, there is absolutely nothing about a film looking "cleaner" that makes it less believable. If anything, imperfections like film grain literally detracts from the movie itself.
It's not a film snob take; just because there's nothing objectively better about film, doesn't mean that people can't come to prefer the look of film's imperfections simply through repeated exposure and association.
Illogical, subjective, silly, call it what you will but that's just how people are.
It's not really. No-one's immune to this kind of thing in some form or another.
Film grain means something to people who've been exposed to it all their lives. The opening sequence of Casino Royale is grainy (and black and while) because it conveys something to the viewer, even if it's only as a second-hand trope for some of them.
especially implying newer digital movies that don't have film grain are somehow worse.
They can absolutely be subjectively worse in some people's opinions.
Director can add anything to their film, it doesn't mean it actually makes it more believable. I need some peer reviewed research to believe that bullshit.
Certainly there's no crazies out there saying Star Trek (2009) was more believable because of the absurd lens flares in there... right...
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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26
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