V.
I dreamt I was camped by the ships, waiting to storm Troy. The sky swam with the sea. We had been away from home for ten long years, warring for the stolen goddess Almendra's grace. We had started as a strong army, but then had been whittled down to just five people, or four now. Maine refused to fight, as Alzeki had stolen his captive bride unfairly. This was because we had been hit by a plague, killing some of our last men just before this moment, and Alzeki had been forced to give up his own bride to please Z. I looked at the stolen bride, and her dark face shifted and blurred under black hair. Gray clouds hung overhead, and the beach's sands were dull and limp, weak weeds sticking their heads between the grains. When I looked up it was all a bright off-white, and faint music floated from over the hills:
And when at last, I find you
Your song will fill the air
Sing it loud so I can hear you
Make it easy to be near you
For the things you do endear you to me
Oh, you know, I will
I armed myself with a spear and marched with the others to the center of the plain between us and Troy. A hundred thousand soldiers came out from the city, all dressed in purple robes, faces obscured. We almost came to an agreement with them, but it was ruined when a soldier hurled his spear at Alzeki which lodged itself in his shield. Fighting broke out, and we tore through the robed soldiers with ease, lodging our spears in their bodies and cleaving them in twain with our swords. I looked down and my hands and body were covered in thick red blood. The blood pooled around my knees and crept up my spine and wrapped itself around me, and I was unable to move. Matt and M-Bot tore through the mass of men with ease, and their armor rang rattling round them, and the army ran back to the gates of their city, but soon they brought out their horseman - Bolthro - and sent us running back to our ships. Alzeki ran too slowly, and was slain by a spear thrown through his back, and when I turned to try and retrieve his body for a proper funeral I was chased off again by Bolthro, cackling wickedly. He threatened to burn our ships, but Matt pulled out a new strange weapon I'd never seen and struck him down. We chased them all the way back to the gates of their city, but Cardo himself came to head the army. His face was inscrutable, blocked out by fog. He ran his sword through me, and my body laid dying on the torn-up blood-soaked plain.
I closed my eyes and saw a scene in the heavens. The great goddess Almendra sat on a pillar at the center of Troy and talked to the other gods there. A horrid beast roamed the streets - the god Cardo prayed to - and its low growls could be heard even up here. Almendra looked to her side and spoke with Z, or Omega, the god of death. She asked, 'Why must I give up the life of this follower?' and Z spoke, 'It is just fate. You have no choice here.' Almendra was unsatisfied and spoke, 'Your threads of fate hold for now, but when I am free, they shall burn.' Z replied, 'I wish you luck.' The mental vision blurred and I saw two figures at its edges, speaking among themselves and commentating on events:
CHORUS 1
Her dreams are a lot more interesting than Maine's. Much less one-note, wouldn't you say?
CHORUS 2
Oh, yes. When we aren't there, it's just - blood, blood, blood! Don't you think it gets old?
CHORUS 1
Well, that's a bit unfair. Sometimes he dreams of the moon crashing down, too. But there's only so many times you can see that before you start to think, 'why not Mars for a change'?
CHORUS 2
Oh, Mars! I'm sure it would love drinking all the blood here.
Back on the ground, my body was being taken back to our camp. I could feel them pick me up and carry me, see and smell and hear, but I couldn't say or do anything. I could not move my eyes, my lungs could not fill or deflate, and my heart was stopped.
Almendra wailed at the sky, demanding to make a deal. A face peered down from the clouds and asked for her terms. Their speech continued, but the words were too faint and I couldn't hear what they said. At the end of it Almendra turned to me and said, 'I'll be getting out of here today.'
Maine came out of his tent and wept over my death, and the three of them held a long funeral for me, cleaning and burning my body. I was nothing but ash now, but still saw the world from outside my body, floating above the plains and watching as Almendra's soldiers drove the army back to Troy and Maine finally drove an arrow through Cardo's heart. They fought their way into the city, Matt leading them, and burnt it to the ground, cheering as they did so. They looted as much treasure as they could and brought it back to camp, packing it into the ships and partaking in celebratory party games. This was an ill-fated affair, as M-Bot died in an accident during one, a pillar of gold falling atop it and crushing its body. Maine and Matt went on seperate ships after that, Maine's ship containing Almendra - not long after takeoff, his ship was destroyed in a storm, and they were both drowned. Matt was the last survivor of the war, its purpose nullified, and it would take him another decade to return home. I looked from my perch in the sky at the horizon, and saw a horrid sight.
The apocalypse itself was approaching. Pitch-black clouds shot red bolts of lightning and set fire to the countryside, dark gods laughing and hollering as they rode atop them. A slow screeching sound came from them, and I smelt sulfur. I realized that the blanket of clouds which had covered the sky during our war was connected to those clouds, that there was no break in them - the end had already come. I wept, voiceless.
This lasted for a time until my dream switched focus. The clouds faded and parted into mist, I was in generic and faceless rooms, and saw many people with their backs turned to me. For a moment I was back in my room at home, trying to open the door. When I came out I was in a tunnel and looked at a series of photographs taken around town. Then I woke up again in a dark cavern, filled with tall carved stone pillars. I walked around the chamber but could find no exit. At the center was a lamp which strongly illuminated a nearby tablet. I began to read, and it said:
NEW VISUAL LANGUAGE
A strange new visual language has been unearthed in the last few years, appearing most often in the music video but creeping its way into longform cinema as well. This visual language treats the moving picture in the same way as the still picture, applying the logic of photography to cinematography.
As recording equipment became more advanced going into the 21st century, culminating in the switch to digital recording and editing, a certain warmth and human feeling was lost. This was compensated for on one hand by more intimate cinematography, with heavy focus on individual figures and shaky handheld recording, and on the other by more intense editing, with shortening shot lengths and advanced visual effects adding back a sense of energy. This style, building through the 2000s and achieving dominance in the 2010s, is inherently self-contradictory; as the spectacle of action and fidelity are raised to inhuman levels, focus is placed on singular actors and artists to rehumanize the art. The chaos of jump-cuts, shaky-cam, and close-ups additionally emulates in some subliminal way the chaos of nature and life. I will be calling this "Humanized Cinematography".
The 2020s have seen a new visual language which acts in direct opposition to this prior language. Its defining feature is heavy influence from the shot compositions and styles seen in static mediums such as photography and painting. In fact, many shots in these new videos or films are entirely static, and if not are slow-moving and steady. Because photographs are static, a lot of depth must be shown in a single image in order to tell a complete story, and so the surroundings of the main subject must be shown in detail. In this fashion, the shots in this new style are zoomed out, with heavy emphasis often given to detailed environments or complicated choreography, de-emphasizing individual figures. They're also typically straight-on or isometric, giving the shots a striking and angular feel. Use of deep focus gives the shots a flattened feel, and boxy aspect ratios are used in favor of conventionally cinematic widescreen. All of these traits directly contrast Humanized Cinematography, giving the style a flattened and deadened feel which emulate in some subliminal way the controlled feeling of modern life. I will be calling this "Systemized Cinematography", and will explain why later on.
My favorite example of this trend is in the video for Charli XCX's 2024 song "360". After a long opening skit, we see a series of shots featuring Charli at the center of the screen. The camera is generally pulled away to show her full body (with some shots from the shoulders-up mixed in), and the scenes around her are complicated and active. Seen in heavy deep focus, these scenes are often complicated to the point of distracting from Charli despite her position as the literal center of attention. We cut between these scenes quickly, but this isn't to create a sense of fluid motion as in Humanized Cinematography. Charli's position in the shots remains fully static, and the cuts happen on-beat, the first verse in particular keeping them perfectly in rhythm. This controlled quality in the editing, combined with the flat and undynamic cinematography, gives the video a deadpan feeling. It is also, of course, shot in 4:3. The song itself matches the visual - the synths are flat and dry, a complete lack of reverb emphasizing their digitality. It's energetic and wordy but also carefully controlled, almost minimalist.
The lyrics of 360 also give the use of this style an interesting purpose. The song is self-referential, introducing the album more generally as a metatext on popular music and celebrity culture. Systemized Cinematography is used here, then, to undermine the pretend-realism of Humanized Cinematography in favor of a nakedly digital and artificial look. This is especially potent in its use of deep focus, which directly contradicts the way the human eye sees distance by flattening all perspective.
The video for Charli XCX's 2024 song "Von Dutch" additionally serves as a good anti-example to demonstrate the differences between Humanized and Systemized Cinematography. This video is incredibly chaotic and focuses obsessively on Charli, the camera being handheld by an unseen second party, shaky to the point of being almost deliriously physical (though, of course, it is not). Fittingly, the song itself is also much more brash and loud than 360. Watching these two videos back to back will give you a good understanding of what I mean when I talk about these styles, and why I think Systemized Cinematography is so distinct and new.
The most popular example of the style, though, is the video for Kendrick Lamar's 2024 song "Not Like Us". This is a high-energy video, but the compositions are distinctly static, angular, and generally use deep focus, all visible from the very first shot. This mixes with the high-energy editing and some more conventional shots to give it an exciting, but refined feeling. This matches with the song, which discusses systems and histories of racist exploitation in order to turn a bombastic celebrity feud into a deeper political event. Many of Kendrick's other videos from this time period also use the style, most notably 2025's video for "Squabble Up". His 2022 video for "N95" might be the earliest example of the style in its modern form, and his 2018 video for "King's Dead" is a prototypical example with many shared elements. All of these videos were directed or produced by Dave Free, who seems to have pioneered the style.
Many other rappers have also adopted the style, including Tyler, the Creator, Megan thee Stallion, Clipse, fakemink, JPEGMAFIA, and (ironically enough) Drake. Some electronic and pop artists have also adopted the style, but it seems to be most popular in hip-hop, perhaps because its deadpan and blunt feeling often fits the music. The video for Kanye West's 2026 song "Father" is the bluntest possible example of Systemized Cinematography, being a single static, isometric, deep-focus shot of a complicated setting with Kanye himself heavily de-emphasized.
The final music video I want to focus on is for Underscores' 2023 song "Cops and Robbers". This video is not a pure example of the style, but is still quite informative for it! The video is split into shots of Underscores herself and shots of characters from the song (and from the wider album, Wallsocket). The shots of Underscores are fully static, and feature her in visually complicated and cluttered locations. The shots of the in-universe characters almost seem to parody Humanized Cinematography - the field of vision is distorted with the iPhone camera, zoomed out to force into the frame more than could be typically seen, warping the image. This gives close-ups an especially strange, disorienting quality. Some close-ups are also replaced instead with zoomed-in stills, further disorienting the viewer. Combined, they give the impression of Underscores as above and beyond the action of the plot, and of the plot as an absurdist version of reality.
Something else notable is that the ostensible focus of the plot - a banker who starts to steal money from accounts - is de-emphasized in the video. Instead, it focuses mainly on both the affected people around him (family members, others living in their small town) and the physical environments of business and law themselves (as shown in Underscores' shots, which mainly take place in a checkout aisle and a surveillance room).
In film, two notable examples of the new visual language are Alex Garland's 2024 film "Civil War" and Yorgos Lanthimos' 2025 film "Bugonia". In Civil War, this photographic language is justified by the characters themselves being photographers - wartime photographers, specifically, travelling to the White House to interview the president during a second American civil war. Many shots are, in fact, quickly revealed to be photographs taken by the characters. Bugonia has no such justification but still takes the style much further than Civil War, and in fact it was while watching this movie that I realized just how unique the style was as it took the deep-focus and de-emphasized characters to extreme levels. This movie is about two conspiracy theorists who kidnap a politician believing she is an alien, and the cinematography heavily emphasizes the environments these characters are in to further develop them and illustrate their vastly different ways of life. The new visual language has also crept its way into movies like Ari Aster's 2025 film "Eddington" and Curry Barker's 2026 film "Obsession", but Civil War and Bugonia are still the two strongest examples I've personally seen.
One final note here is that, while I have been calling this a new style, there are a small handful of prototypical examples, most notably Sergei Parajanov's 1969 experimental film "The Color of Pomegranates". Other prototypical examples would be Peter Greenaway's 1988 film "Drowning by Numbers" and the 1996 video for Jamiroquai's "Virtual Insanity". The examples of The Color of Pomegranates and Drowning by Numbers are particularly interesting to me because in these cases the style is an integral part of the artpiece's identity, often the first thing people will bring up! With the newer examples, on the other hand, the style seems to be completely invisible, to the point where (as far as I am aware) I am the first person to name or even point out Systemized Cinematography. This suggests to me that, rather than being a concerted artistic effort, the rise of the style is a more unconscious trend brought about by recent material changes in society.
My theory is that the rise of this style has resulted from the increased focus in recent years' political and popular discourse on complex systems, as opposed to individuals as would be more common in the 2000s and 2010s. It may also result from the increasingly alienating, artificial, Internet-focused bend society has taken after the COVID-19 pandemic. This feels especially obvious looking at our examples of how the style has been deployed, with Kendrick Lamar, Charli XCX, Underscores, Alex Garland, Ari Aster, and Yorgos Lanthimos all using the style for artpieces focusing on wide-ranging systems and large-scale events, individual autonomy being de-emphasized. Most of these are earlier examples, and over time it's been adopted for less political projects by artists like Curry Barker, Oliver Tree, and PinkPantheress - however, the style is still indebted to societal changes and reflects the feelings of our current time.
The complicated and refined shot compositions often overwhelm the viewer, but the lack of motion also creates a static and deadened feeling, both reflecting the decade's emotional zeitgeist. The use of older aspect ratios and compositions from photography and high art blend times and mediums, giving the videos and films a recycled metatextual quality reflecting the decade's artistic zeitgeist. Finally, the de-emphasis on individual artists and actors mirror the de-emphasis on analyzing singular individuals in favor of complex systems, reflecting the decade's politicial zeitgeist. This last quality is why I have decided to call this new emerging style "Systemized Cinematography".
At about this point in reading the essay, I woke up. We were camped out on a grassy plain not far from our vehicle, and I was sleeping in the same tent as Maine, both of us in our own sleeping bags. It was July 26th, and today we were scheduled to confront Hetod, the third of the five former hitman. Thinking back on my dream, I was confused. The essay I'd read had been coherent, way more lucid than most dreams, but none of it made any actual sense! How could those videos and movies have been made in the 2020s when that society had collapsed at the end of 1999? Maybe it had been written from one of the bunkers. No, that didn't make sense, they weren't still making new movies by then! I was reading too deeply into it of course, dreams hardly ever make sense anyways. I wiped the gunk from my eyes and shook Maine awake. It was already at mid-morning, and we had to hurry to reach Hetod today. It was time to get going.