Mainly speaking about ones from the United States.
They all seem to have the same look to them. Very dark, grainy, saturated.
Are they all made by the same studio or something?
The Korean soaps I’ve seen look like regular TV.
It’s because they are lit so that multiple cameras can shoot at once, as opposed to changing the lighting for a single camera angle.
Possibly…
I worked in television for 3 years, mainly filming sporting events, we never really had to worry about lighting on our multi cam shoots
Isn’t film speed a big part of it? Soaps were shot on video tape (because it was cheaper) versus cinema’s 24 frame per sec filming. The visual difference is obvious and we associate the slower frame rate with movies. If you buy a new television, movies and television will often look strange and even “cheap” due to the TV’s high refresh rate unless you hit the “movies” setting and force it to use the slower rate.
When I got my current TV, I watched Saving Private Ryan and it looked like a cheap television show (or soap opera) until I changed it. I’m sure you can eventually get used to it but it’s noticeable.
I thought it was because the soaps were all shot using cheap video cameras.
Oh, video’s a big part of it, too. You can definitely tell which sitcoms were video taped and which were filmed. (For example, look at Newhart season 1 [video] vs the rest of the seasons [film.]) When I was growing up in the 80s, the video taped sitcoms always looked more “real life” to me (maybe I was associating them with camcorder home movies, which I grew up with), while filmed sitcoms (like “Cheers,”) looked more theatrical and cinematic and somehow a step removed from reality. If that’s the sort of look the OP is describing, that’s more video vs film, although lighting has a lot to do with it, as well.
Film gives you a much richer and deeper image, whereas video tape looks flat and lacks depth.
A few years ago we had a Plasma screen tv, it crapped out and we got an LED tv. It took us weeks to get used to the look of it. It was such a clear looking picture compared to the watery look of the old tv. So your tv can make it look strange. My son has one of the curved screen tvs, it is weird to watch.
I may be wrong, but I believe part of what OP identifies as the “soap opera look” isn’t JUST that they’re shot on video, but that they also post-processed the video to look slightly more like film. Contrast boosts and grain and such. So they didn’t have the pure video look of a gameshow or sitcom but also didn’t have the film look of primetime dramas. They occupied a middle ground that was distinct.
They still are?
Do they? I didn’t think that they bothered. When you have to have five hour-long shows a week all season long, you go cheap and fast.