‘Army of the Dead’ Viewers Question Dead Pixels on Screens

Jazz Tangcay
·4 min read
26

If you happened to watch Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead” this weekend, you might have noticed something was not quite right. You weren’t alone — quite a few Twitter and Reddit users noticed that some scenes appear to have dead pixels, or completely white spaces, on various parts of the screen.

One user wrote, “Army Of The Dead really had me thinking my TV was messed up with 2 broken pixels and turns out it was in the movie.”

Viewers questioned whether the pixel problem with Snyder’s zombie VFX opus was an issue with their TV screens or a Netflix glitch after the film dropped on the streaming platform on May 21. Eagle-eyed audiences instantly noticed the dead pixels and quickly weighed in. A Reddit user wrote, “It is not visible in every scene, as only one of the (I estimate three) cameras has a faulty sensor. For example, you can clearly see it in Dave Batista’s reverse shot when he sits down in the diner at the beginning of the movie.”

As the film goes on, the cluster of dead pixels at one point goes up to three. A few watchers commented on how distracting they found the situation and wondered why the glitch had not been fixed in post-production. A user who goes by Jake commented, “I’m amazed Zack didn’t notice.”

Snyder used RED Monstro digital cameras equipped with vintage Canon lenses to craft the distinctive look of the film, on which he served as director of photography.

A few Twitter users quipped that the film should have been called “Army of the Dead Pixels.”

However, other Reddit users have pointed out that this is not the first time dead pixels have been spotted on the Netflix service. A user points out they were first noticed during last year’s “Extraction,” while another noted it’s becoming more frequent, pointing out the glitch on recent VFX-heavy shows such as “Jupiter’s Legacy” and “Shadow and Bone.”

XEvilrobot wrote, “I’ve been noticing white pixels in lots of recent Netflix content lately, Shadow and Bone for example had several of them – they’d be there for some scenes and then not on others. Came and went, but always back on the same few pixels when it would be there.”

A graphics expert at a top visual effects company that did not work on “Army” said there were several reasons dead pixels could appear onscreen, though it would be “highly unlikely” they would have been missed in post-production. “If auto-processing was not available for the given camera settings or was turned off to keep the workflow as ‘analog’ as possible, it would likely preserve these dead pixels,” the expert said.

Netflix had no comment.

Here’s what viewers were saying about the strange glitch:

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