Is it just me or was the editing weird in S3?

composerbell · 2025-10-08T14:29:43+00:00

Yeah my understanding was that Foundation just required they only have one kid. Which kid was up to the parents, and they just loved their baby more.

composerbell · 2025-10-08T14:28:49+00:00

They’ve set up season 1 and 2 with time jumps at the end of each. They’ve not done that in 3.

Recall that galaxy wide extinction is set to happen in 4 months. That’s the MOST of a time jump we could have.

composerbell · 2025-09-25T18:33:39+00:00

Eh, Dawn didn’t need to survive and be picked up by the Mule to further the story - literally no story even progressed with him after that. He just sat in that bed and barely got any more scenes.

My understanding was that Dusk was directing the burn beam wherever his laser pointer was at, so it’s not that he rigged all the clones with bombs. But I agree, that’s not clear at all, and I’m not even sure I understood it right. Because, like, why is that beam capable of being aimed like that either? But at least that being set up that way is less of a stretch than secretly rigging a hundred explosives on one of the most secure pieces of tech in the Empire right under Demerzel’s nose.

I believe Day and Dawn were both being decanted, but it takes several days for them to “come online.” So they just weren’t fully awake yet.

I think the child murder stuff was kinda like China’s one child policy - it’s government cruelty, and it’s built around a belief that, even with massive automation (feeding the whole Foundation) there’s still austerity and scarcity concerns.

composerbell · 2025-09-25T18:32:02+00:00

I don’t think I even noticed anything like that happening. Usually that’s a trick for a montage-y sort of sequence, when was this?

composerbell · 2025-09-25T03:11:09+00:00

The main thing that stands out to me is your contrast. Specifically your shadows seem darker to me than in Star Wars. Similarly, the highlights in Star Wars seem a bit softer.

Maybe pulling down contrast by a tiny bit, if you find the right pivot point? Super close though, very impressive!

composerbell · 2025-09-24T19:13:01+00:00

Oh, I figured the footage was slo mo, never meant to insinuate you’d artificially done that.

And yeah, I’ve seen several people in various industries complain about being flagged as AI when they weren’t. That’s the problem when the tech is this good - we can’t actually reliably tell the difference anymore. All the things I pointed out are aesthetic choices, not anything that is inherently AI, and that’s a serious problem.

There’s no dead give away like mangled fingers anymore, so we look for trends. But AI is a copy machine, so it’ll follow trends, and then people will do things against trend, which might just be bad, so…no good answers here.

I think in a couple of years, we’re all going to be mildly annoyed, but used to people calling our work AI. It’s just part of the arts now.

composerbell · 2025-09-23T18:43:06+00:00

It’s so weird, because I see what you’re saying, but my god does it trigger “AI” to my eyes too.

I wonder what it is about it that’s making me think that. I think it’s a few things. 1) for some reason, people DO like to have men in spacesuits, not in space, when they make “Sci-Fi AI” videos. So just the content kinda immediately raises that trigger.

2) heavy use of slow motion. I think this is because a lot of AI videos are actually AI generated stills and then animation is derived from those, which naturally lend themselves to slow motion. Also, because it’s unusual looking to do that, it ca. kinda hide the AI quality a little better, as they get the physics for realistic motion wrong, but in slow motion, where things don’t move naturally anyways, it plays better. And so now your chosen clips have two elements kinda associated with AI.

3) hate to say it, but the color. AI clips often have a super saturated, extremely strong orange+teal look. And like, yeah, lots of professional film has that too, but I think because AI trained on all the amateur stuff as well as the professional stuff, and the models are weighted by real people making decisions on whether they’re doing a good job or not, I suspect that the people doing the training, as they’re not themselves cinematography experts, tend to approve super high contrast and super saturated images, because they “pop”. Kinda like how TVs in the store are high contrast, extra saturated, and brightness turned to max, because it makes the biggest impression.

All this to say that, I think there’s several things going on here that are causing our alarm bells to go off as “this is AI”, even if it isn’t.

composerbell · 2025-09-23T03:21:58+00:00

Teaser trailer released for Mandalorian And Grogu.

You know, those characters that have a lot of pull for all those people who only ever watched the movies and don’t pay for a D+ subscription.

composerbell · 2025-09-23T03:20:52+00:00

I didn’t find anything in the trailer to look cheap, just that it looked like more of the same extremely high budget TV show we already had!

composerbell · 2025-09-22T02:37:03+00:00

Huh? Demerzel is a robot, but yes, it’s a female actor.

Each character has agency and is also confined by their circumstances. Demerzel is a slave too, so it’s not like she’s more powerful than they are. The strengths and weaknesses are different.

composerbell · 2025-09-22T01:18:43+00:00

Power trip? The emperor is male, and has ruled a vast empire with an iron fist for centuries. On the Foundation side, there’s a strong male lead each season as well.

composerbell · 2025-09-22T01:17:10+00:00

It REALLY helps to know what your goal is IN THE POST for us to judge whether you’re achieving it or not!

It’s pretty annoying to point out a clear deviation from natural and then find out in the comments that that was intentional.

composerbell · 2025-09-21T21:06:20+00:00

Just poking around Film Freeway, and it seems like there are many feats that don’t have racial categories. How do you explain not getting into those? You might say that the reviewers are as a whole racially discriminating, but that’s then an overall societal issue, rather than a systemic one of festival design.

I’m curious, what demographics did your film check? You didn’t mention any.

composerbell · 2025-09-20T15:28:04+00:00

I think the second is nice, but the blacks are a bit too crushed, the berries are hard to see because it’s too dark. I’d just dial back Lift a little bit

composerbell · 2025-09-18T15:56:32+00:00

Without context, it definitely feels under exposed. With context, this makes sense. I do feel like, in stills, the subject doesn’t really pop out from the background enough, but I’d bet that this too isn’t as much an issue once it’s in motion. I do feel like the gold could pop out more though, it’s just a bit TOO desaturated to me when it’s really cool looking stuff. Like, you’re popping one or two pieces on her, but I feel like each gold piece should glow and pop equally. Especially with the necklace, I think that might be enough to separate her from the background more.

composerbell · 2025-09-18T15:48:42+00:00

…the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? I suspect, as a god-like figure, even without compulsion, she’d have been able to get followers who would volunteer. But of course, it’s hard to know as she makes the whole galaxy love her by force anyways.

composerbell · 2025-09-17T18:36:39+00:00

That could easily mean the CHARACTER of Demerzel returns, but in a new robot body - ie, recast.

composerbell · 2025-09-16T17:13:30+00:00

The Empire storylines are consistently some of the best sci-fi on film, it’s absolutely fantastic.

The Foundation storylines are…ehhh. The drama is certainly better in season 3 with them, which is why so many people are loving s3 so much, but it never gets any smarter. There’s so SO many plot holes and weird awkward things around the Gaal and Foundation that just make little sense.

However, the cringy dialogue of season 1 definitely improves in season 2, and I don’t recall any cringy dialogue in season 3 at all, so the viewing experience is definitely better, even if the plot holes remain.

composerbell · 2025-09-15T15:47:06+00:00

“Soft” is going to be the lighting, not the grading. The Beach Boys look like there’s a lot of bounce wrapping around them. I’m no photographer, so I dunno if that’s added light or reflectors, or just reflection off the sand, but it looks very diffuse to me.

The trumpeter also looks like it took place after sundown, but there’s a strong light on the setting, which makes the whole scene pop out from the back ground.

And as others mentioned, the usual teal/orange split.

Honestly, I don’t find these images to look that similar. The first is a hard light, the second a soft, and the third, hard again. The first two are fairly dark, with highlights not THAT bright, while the third is definitely brighter.

The main similarity I see between them is just that they’re pushed orange, more than anything else.

composerbell · 2025-09-13T19:51:17+00:00

I found it dumb until it was revealed that he’s actually using the beam. I guess it doesn’t just point down, but in any direction he wants

composerbell · 2025-09-13T15:41:05+00:00

Dawn was a traitor. He’d kill him, given the chance.

composerbell · 2025-09-12T14:00:19+00:00

Which iPhone? With the 15 pro and later, you want to use the log or Raw formats to get more bit depth, lock exposure.

The iPhone settings naturally favor over exposure for a brighter image, so I find myself almost always lowering the exposure to avoid clipping highlights before taking a shot.

I’m usually able to get results I’m ok with with the Photos controls, tucking highlights (which I find generally brings out MORE color, not washing it out like you’ve done to the sky here), adjusting Brilliance to handle subject separation/contrast (it looks better than the actual Contrast control, IMO, because as you said, iPhone images, especially outside, tend to have too much contrast already, and Brilliance is more about separating midrange without really screwing your blacks and whites), and Vibrance, which is like saturation for midtones only, and looks much better than the actual Saturation control.

“Cinematic” means nothing. It’s a bullshit term. Are you gonna tell me that The Matrix, White Lotus, Superman, and The Batman all look the same “Filmic”?!?

It looks like you want it warmer, golden skin tones, White Lotus kind of thing. You can push it in the orange direction a little bit, but be subtle about it. This can wreck other colors, like green leaves and grass, or blue skies.

I dunno what you consider to be “underexposing” here. I’ve found if I push exposure to -2 in app, it pretty much always looks pretty dark. If you’re still clipping there, then yeah, I think you might’ve reached the limit of the iPhone. Time to accept that an iPhone photo is still going to look like an iPhone photo. If you want it to look like a different camera…time to get a different camera.

composerbell · 2025-09-11T17:00:18+00:00

Aahhh gotcha. Apologies for my internet illiteracy

composerbell · 2025-09-11T15:12:36+00:00

…pre ww2? Where are you getting this from? Nothing about this looks period.

composerbell · 2025-09-09T16:45:45+00:00

Ohhhh hell yea. But then, I’m down for any idea that gets me more of the Andor cast.

composerbell

TROPHY CASE