Ridley Scott's New Short-Film, Shot Entirely On The S23, Shows Off The Galaxy's Camera Capabilities
At its Unpacked event earlier this month, Samsung teased a short film shot with the Galaxy S23 Ultra by acclaimed director Sir Ridley Scott. Samsung finally released the film titled "Behold," which tells the story of how "one young man finds that good things and good behavior are a way out of his dark world."
Just shy of the 4-minute runtime mark, it follows a young man as he navigates challenges, including hostile authorities, and lands in an abandoned place where he rescues a horse. The protagonist proceeds to guide the horse into pristine wilderness until it gallops away on its own. The film concludes with a poem recited by Jeremiah 'Sugar J.' Brown, who garnered quite some fame with a composition called " I'm Rooting For Everybody Black" which was written in response to the Hollywood blockbuster "Black Panther."
The film shows the distinctive film-making style of Scott in great detail, but it has clearly been color-graded and was shot using professional gear such as stabilizing mounts. However, Samsung did succeed at showing off the low-light tricks of the Galaxy S23 Ultra, which it hyped up during the launch event.
A director with a legendary Apple deed on his resume
"I think the idea is allegorical. It's a very simple, emotional piece of storytelling," Scott said about the film. According to AdWeek, it was shot in the Kalliste area of Marseille in France. "Behold" was written by Luke Scott, son of Ridley Scott, who assisted his father with the space epic "The Martian." Prior to the Galaxy S23 series, Scott previously made a narrative short called "Princess and Peppernose," which was shot on the Galaxy S21 Ultra and directed by Joe Wright.
The choice of director is interesting. Scott is the genius behind archrival Apple's legendary 1984 ad for the Macintosh. It was the controversial ad that pushed Apple into the mainstream fight against IBM in the personal computing segment. With the Galaxy S23 series, Samsung is looking to steal some thunder from Apple's latest Pro iPhones, which also upped the ante with a 48-megapixel camera and some impressive Pro-grade videography chops.
As for the phone itself, the Galaxy S23 Ultra's imaging hardware includes a 200-megapixel camera, sitting alongside a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera, and a 10-megapixel telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom output. The second telephoto camera relies on the folded lens system and delivers 10x optical, 30x hybrid, and 100x space zoom range. On the motherboard is a custom variant of Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC made especially for Samsung's latest flagship.