I’ve been perpetually frustrated with the latest season of Stranger Things.
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I’ve been perpetually frustrated with the latest season of Stranger Things. I have some thoughts, and they’re not good… however, it is a rare specimen that deserves to be studied!
They had this huge budget and comparatively near unlimited resources and spent it all ensuring that they had all of the period accurate props and wardrobe, and then making everything as bad as humanly possible.
Starting from the first scene, CGI where there didn’t need to be any, green screen compositing when straight filming would have been easier (and look better), some of the laziest colour grading I’ve ever clapped eyes on (in lieu of correct lighting in many cases), cheap muzzle flares added in post, badly lit CG models, with low accuracy motion vectors.
And that’s just visually, it’s sonically poor, too. Flat dynamic range, poor stereo separation, dubs lack believable spatial qualities, foley seems to be sourced on Temu.
And then in terms of actual production, the acting is largely fine, but more than one major cast member seems to have forgotten how to act (or got worse in one case). The dialogue is poorly written, lacks emotion, and the pacing is terrible. Eyelines are off, multi-cam shots lack continuity, and it just feels amateurish. Even the plot holes have plot holes, and the consequential story beats get forgotten as quickly as they were made up on the spot.
It’s easy to pick holes in the things we watch, but rarely do we see such so many errors or lack of polish or effort in one place. Truly a thing to behold.
I started to lose interest when S3 started, but the idea was still fun. So much lost potential.
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I’ve been perpetually frustrated with the latest season of Stranger Things. I have some thoughts, and they’re not good… however, it is a rare specimen that deserves to be studied!
They had this huge budget and comparatively near unlimited resources and spent it all ensuring that they had all of the period accurate props and wardrobe, and then making everything as bad as humanly possible.
Starting from the first scene, CGI where there didn’t need to be any, green screen compositing when straight filming would have been easier (and look better), some of the laziest colour grading I’ve ever clapped eyes on (in lieu of correct lighting in many cases), cheap muzzle flares added in post, badly lit CG models, with low accuracy motion vectors.
And that’s just visually, it’s sonically poor, too. Flat dynamic range, poor stereo separation, dubs lack believable spatial qualities, foley seems to be sourced on Temu.
And then in terms of actual production, the acting is largely fine, but more than one major cast member seems to have forgotten how to act (or got worse in one case). The dialogue is poorly written, lacks emotion, and the pacing is terrible. Eyelines are off, multi-cam shots lack continuity, and it just feels amateurish. Even the plot holes have plot holes, and the consequential story beats get forgotten as quickly as they were made up on the spot.
It’s easy to pick holes in the things we watch, but rarely do we see such so many errors or lack of polish or effort in one place. Truly a thing to behold.
I started to lose interest when S3 started, but the idea was still fun. So much lost potential.
@SecurityWriter yeah, I was pretty much immediately thinking, "so, Stranger Things is just really bad now, huh?" Even the charming characters are annoying this season. Jonathan was always a whiny little bitch that I never wanted to see or hear, but now I don't even really like Steve or Robin, and they're historically a joy on screen.
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@SecurityWriter yeah, I was pretty much immediately thinking, "so, Stranger Things is just really bad now, huh?" Even the charming characters are annoying this season. Jonathan was always a whiny little bitch that I never wanted to see or hear, but now I don't even really like Steve or Robin, and they're historically a joy on screen.
@swelljoe seemed to grow into their angst, not out of it.
Everyone but Mike and Max forgot how to act.
Also *pan to Will’s neck* got old fast.
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@swelljoe seemed to grow into their angst, not out of it.
Everyone but Mike and Max forgot how to act.
Also *pan to Will’s neck* got old fast.
@SecurityWriter the first season took everything good about 80s horror and fantasy and teen movies, and the fifth season seems to be taking everything bad, including 30 year olds playing high schoolers. (This last bit I could forgive if the 30 year olds and the scripts were good, but they aren't, so...)
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Making Glasses That Detect Smartglasses
[NullPxl]’s Ban-Rays concept is a wearable that detects when one is in the presence of camera-bearing smartglasses, such as Meta’s line of Ray-Bans. A project in progress, it’s currently focused on how to reliably perform detection without resorting to using a camera itself. Right now, it plays a well-known audio cue whenever it gets a hit.
Once software is nailed down, the device aims to be small enough to fit into glasses.
Currently, [NullPxl] is exploring two main methods of detection. The first takes advantage of the fact that image sensors in cameras act as tiny reflectors for IR. That means camera-toting smartglasses have an identifying feature, which can be sensed and measured. You can see a sample such reflection in the header image, up above.As mentioned, Ban-Rays eschews the idea of using a camera to perform this. [NullPxl] understandably feels that putting a camera on glasses in order to detect glasses with cameras doesn’t hold much water, conceptually.
The alternate approach is to project IR in a variety of wavelengths while sensing reflections with a photodiode. Initial tests show that scanning a pair of Meta smartglasses in this way does indeed look different from regular eyeglasses, but probably not enough to be conclusive on its own at the moment. That brings us to the second method being used: wireless activity.
Characterizing a device by its wireless activity turned out to be trickier than expected. At first, [NullPxl] aimed to simply watch for BLE (Bluetooth Low-Energy) advertisements coming from smartglasses, but these only seem to happen during pairing and power-up, and sometimes when the glasses are removed from the storage case. Clearly a bit more is going to be needed, but since these devices rely heavily on wireless communications there might yet be some way to actively query or otherwise characterize their activity.
This kind of project is something that is getting some interest. Here’s another smartglasses detector that seems to depend entirely on sniffing OUIs (Organizationally Unique Identifiers); an approach [NullPxl] suspects isn’t scalable due to address randomization in BLE. Clearly, a reliable approach is still in the works.
The increasing numbers of smartglasses raises questions about the impact of normalizing tech companies turning people into always-on recording devices. Of course, the average person is already being subtly recorded by a staggering number of hidden cameras. But at least it’s fairly obvious when an individual is recording you with a personal device like their phone. That may not be the case for much longer.
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@Zambunny ti abbraccio virtualmente, per quel che vale ❤❤❤
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@francina1909 Hey
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In tutto l'ordine degli ingegneri non ne trovano uno che sappia far funzionare la PEC.
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We report: all of the wind of these past few weeks has stripped the trees bare here. The ground is all mulch and rotting wood, and we are bound to get a foot stuck in there at some point tonight. With no leaves on the branches, and barely a breeze, the night is eerily quiet.
