The Serious Cinematography of "The Naked Gun"

PLUS: Invasion of the Sad AI Babies

Author

Steve
August 05, 2025

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The Serious Cinematography of The Naked Gun

I saw the new Naked Gun over the weekend and it was very funny! The theater I saw it in even applauded at the end.

I won’t do any spoilers here, but something that intrigued me was the look of the movie; it wasn’t an evenly-lit medium shot-style comedy but instead worked very hard to emulate the films it was parodying. I did some extensive research (a Google search) and found a very illuminating interview from Filmmaker Magazine with the film’s director Akiva Schaffer that digs deep into the whys and hows of the film’s visuals.

We have this PDF that has the Tony Scott [images] of that era—True Romance, Beverly Hills Cop II, Top Gun. It also has some James Bond that I’ve talked about, like Tomorrow Never Dies, which I really thought split the difference between modern and nostalgia. There’s Casino Royale, and Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Then a bunch of other just random images; there’s one frame from Boogie Nights. Brandon Trost, who already did MacGruber and Popstar[: Never Stop Never Stopping] for us, we have a shared love of that genre.

We knew we weren’t gonna be allowed to shoot on film. I asked. So, then it’s, what kind of Alexa has given people the closest to that filmic look? We ended up with the LF, the large-format Alexa, but we almost went with the newer one. I’m forgetting what it’s called, then I was like, “Let’s just go with that LF,” because he had shot one of Marielle Heller’s movies, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, that I thought looked really excellent, on that camera. I believe Dune had shot on that camera. No one would accuse Dune of not looking cinematic. Then we got Panavision lenses that are either from the ’90s or identical to the ones from the ’90s, the ones that I believe they shot Beverly Hills Cop II on.

This and having an actual plot that drives the film’s action is part of what makes the film’s comedy work so well.

Just in general I really resonated with this observation from Schaffer that I think has general applications far beyond The Naked Gun:

When you just go a little bit further back before they could do color correction in computers, there’s a little bit of a lifted feeling to them slightly. They’re still gorgeous, but it’s really comforting when you watch it…

When you watch this, [I] want it to remind you, somewhere deep in your subconscious, of movies from the older era, while also being totally 2025. To me, that’s the sweet spot aesthetically for every movie. When you turn on a really old movie, sometimes they look “plain” by today’s standards, especially comedies that were very lit. There’s this sweet spot somewhere in the late ’90s when movies became what we consider “modern” movies but still had an analog texture.

To some extent we’ve swung back to “plain” again, due in part to the requirements of streaming as well as the increasing use of greenscreen and virtual production environments which require less stylized lighting. How much does this “flattening” of the look of film and TV impact the way they are perceived and valued by audiences? A question of import far beyond The Naked Gun!

Invasion of the Sad AI Babies

Over at Ryan Broderick’s excellent newsletter Garbage Day, Adam Bumas has written a piece on a giant YouTube channel and its strange content:

According to data from Playboard, the second-most subscribed channel on Tuesday is still breaking all the rules YouTube is now supposed to be enforcing. In the past week, it’s uploaded nearly-identical variations of the exact same “AI baby in danger” video to YouTube Shorts seven times, including twice since the new regulations were supposed to start. And for the cherry on top, it’s not even an original disturbing AI short — it’s so obviously stolen from another account they left in the watermark!

The full piece is about the problems YouTube is facing with this type of content, which often violate their own content policies yet they seem reluctant to fully police.

For me what’s fascinating is why this stuff is everywhere. For a while on TikTok my FYP (for you page) was showing me video after video of AI-generated sick or injured babies singing songs with Jesus. Here’s an example:

@cstealygqgc

#God #lucky #jesus #jesuslovesyou #singing #cute #cutebaby

Now this obviously raises many questions: How does this young baby know how to sing and operate a microphone? Why is there a second microphone? Why does the baby have a robot leg? Why doesn’t Jesus heal the baby’s leg? Why is Jesus only mouthing the words instead of singing them?

Some of you may be asking “TikTok is algorithmically-driven, why are you getting so many of these videos?” Well, it’s either because I’m a Facebook grandma or because I’m constantly sending these to my friends and family because they don’t believe they exist!

If you’re a connoisseur of weird Internet stuff, you may remember the years-ago saga of Elsagate, another collection of bizarre YouTube videos either featuring or intended for children. It was always my theory that these were in some cases the products of early AI, the animated ones particularly.

In unrelated news, I hope all of my newsletter subscribers also join my new YouTube channel: “Terminally Ill Babies Rap Battle Superheroes & Religious Figures.” Excited about this new venture!

Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:

Disney gets iffy on AI. (link)

Netflix attempts to fight off YouTube by embracing live TV. (link)

Fantastic Four hits a slump at the box office. (link)