After I died, they cried in the live studio

Chapter 200 The Capital Red Carpet
On the winter solstice, the dome theater at the Starlight Base hosted its first "Capital and Light" forum. Sang Shuwan stood on the stage, with the flowing light and shadow of fireflies behind her: "Some people ask us, in an era where data reigns supreme, why do we still insist on shooting real tears with film?" She held up her mother's light meter, "Because we believe that when machines can calculate all spectra, the unique tremor in the human eye is the starlight that can never be captured by algorithms."

Zhou Mingchuan, sitting in the audience, suddenly raised his hand: "Can I say something?" He walked onto the stage and took out a worn coin from his pocket. "This is the first money I earned as a script supervisor. Your mother told me back then to exchange it for seeds of light. Now I finally understand that seeds of light are not money, but people who are willing to bend down for the light." As he spoke, he dropped the coin into the "Newcomer Dream Box" in the audience, which was already filled with film reels from all over the world, faded script supervisor sheets, and even "star movie tickets" drawn by kindergarten children.

As the movie ended, the Sang sisters saw Zhou Mingchuan sitting alone on a sand dune, smoking while gazing at the Milky Way. Sang Jiyue wanted to speak, but her older sister stopped her. In the moonlight, the man's shadow gradually overlapped with the boy in their memories—the boy who once helped their mother develop film in the darkroom, finally finding his own starlight in the wrinkles of time.

Further away, the crew of "Stars in the Darkroom" was setting up the scene for their final scene. Ye Xuan, playing a darkroom apprentice, ran with scraps of film in her hand, while Lin Yu, playing a nouveau riche, chased after her. Their shadows overlapped on the sand, forming starlight shapes. Through the viewfinder, Sang Shuwan saw Zhou Mingchuan standing behind the monitor, calibrating the lights with his mother's old light meter, a long-lost, pure smile on his lips.

The wind swept through the reeds, carrying cheers from fans in the distance. The Sang sisters smiled at each other, knowing that a new light in the entertainment industry was quietly taking root and growing in this desert marked by starlight.

On the day filming wrapped on "Starlight in the Darkroom," Dunhuang experienced a rare spring rain. Sang Shuwan stood in front of the monitor, holding an umbrella, watching Ye Xuan, who played the apprentice, shatter the last roll of counterfeit film in the rain. The broken glass mixed with the rainwater refracted into a rainbow in the shot—this was the famous scene of "rebirth of light" in her mother's script, and also the seventh take for the rain scene, which they insisted on filming without special effects.

"Again!" Sang Jiyue shouted through the megaphone, her curly hair plastered to her forehead by raindrops. Ye Xuan wiped her face and suddenly burst out laughing: "Director, I think I've grasped the character's soul! She's not throwing film, she's throwing herself, bound by capital." Sang Shuwan looked at her shining eyes and remembered the words in her mother's diary: "The tears of good actors breathe, because they contain what they truly believe in."

When the film crew moved back to Beijing, they received a notification of being shortlisted for an international film festival. But what surprised them even more was that a challenge called #FindingTrueLight suddenly appeared on a short video platform—countless ordinary people used their phones to film "non-special effects moments" in their lives: the silver starburst bracelet dangling from the wrist of an aunt selling pancakes, half a loaf of bread shared by strangers on the subway during rush hour, the convenience store clerk heating up food for a homeless person late at night... Every video was accompanied by the hashtag #WhatStarburstTaughtMe.

“This is the viral spread of light.” Sang Jiyue looked at the backend data, which showed that the number of views had exceeded one billion in 24 hours. “Netizens said that they were tired of the perfect filters of AI-edited photos and suddenly wanted to see real wrinkles, rain and smiles.” Sang Shuwan scrolled the screen and stopped in front of a pinned video—the picture was shaky, but you could see a traffic policeman carrying an elderly person across the road in the rain, water splashing real mud spots on his trouser legs, with the caption: “This is the ‘highlight moment’ that should be trending on social media.”

The entertainment industry is quietly shifting. Once-flawless celebrities are now posting makeup-free vlogs, investors are proactively reducing AI-generated face-swapping scenes, and some directors have even declared at filming commencements: "We don't want 'data actors,' we want real people who sweat and cry." Invited to an industry summit, the Sang sisters, Sang Shuwan, held up her mother's old clapperboard on stage: "When we treat 'authenticity' as a scarce commodity, we are actually admitting that we have lost our original intentions."

After the summit, they received a special gift—a joint letter from film schools across the country, containing star-shaped bookmarks made by students from discarded film reels. The oldest professor wrote in the letter: "Thank you for letting the children know that the lens should be focused on the wrinkles of life, not the beauty filters of capital." Sang Jiyue touched the raised engravings on the bookmark and suddenly remembered the boy in Dunhuang who proposed with star-shaped engravings made of broken glass. He must be married by now, right?
On the red carpet of the Berlin Film Festival in late autumn, the Sang sisters appeared with their film "Stars in the Darkroom." Ye Xuan wore a plain cheongsam and a necklace made from a real film reel chain, while Lin Yu had ground down his mother's old film canister into a lapel pin. As they stepped onto the red carpet, a group of special "film fans" suddenly followed behind them—including a guesthouse owner from Dunhuang, a veteran film processing shop worker, and even a truck driver who had once worked as an extra on film sets. They held up signs that read "Long Live Reality" and smiled brightly in front of the cameras.

The jury chairman, watching the audience stand up and applaud after the screening, remarked, "This film has no grand special effects, yet it allowed me to see the most genuine brilliance of humanity." What he didn't know was that the climax scene in the film, where the apprentice confronts capital, featured real film industry professionals among all the extras—a lighting technician whose job was taken by AI, a producer who insisted on using film but almost went bankrupt, and their cry of "Give cinema a true starry sky" on camera was a cry that had been hidden in their hearts for many years.

On the eve of the awards ceremony, Sang Shuwan received an anonymous package at her hotel. Inside was an old-fashioned projector, filled with rolls of yellowed film. As the image unfolded on the wall, she covered her mouth—it was her mother's unpublished graduation project, a story about two girls piecing together starlight from scrap film in a darkroom. The end credits read: "To my twin stars, may you always believe in the light." Sang Jiyue entered unnoticed, and the two sisters embraced and wept amidst the flickering light and shadow. It turned out their mother had already foretold their lives through film.

On the day of their return, the airport was packed with fans holding film reels. Someone handed over a script supervisor's sheet covered in writing: "I quit my data optimization job and now I'm a real script supervisor on set"; someone showed off a star tattoo on their arm: "This is the courage that 'Twin Stars' taught me"; what moved them the most was a girl in a wheelchair holding a glass jar full of firefly specimens: "Thank you for letting me know that even sitting in the shadows, I can still be a light for others."

As the first snow fell, the "Time Post Office" at the Starlight Base received its 10th letter. Sang Shuwan opened a letter from a primary school in the mountains. Inside was a crayon drawing of stars. The letter read, "Our teacher used the film you sent to teach us how to photograph stars. We learned that stars can shine on their own without AI." She turned to look out the window. Sang Jiyue was teaching a group of children how to use a mirror to capture sunlight. The dancing spots of light fell on the snow like a handful of unmelting stars.

The "Starlight Reform" in the entertainment industry continues. When the Sang sisters announced that their next project would feature entirely non-professional actors, a wave of applications for "Light of the Amateurs" swept the internet. Some sent photos of street cleaners sweeping the streets at dawn, others shared blood-stained work diaries from ICU nurses, and still others shared videos of their grandmother mending 1930s film. Looking at these materials, Sang Jiyue suddenly said to her sister, "It turns out that light is never in the lens, but in the lives of those who are willing to be seen."

One late night, the developing light in the darkroom was still on. Sang Shuwan hung the last roll of film on the drying line. Moonlight streamed through the blinds, casting star-like shadows on the film. She remembered her mother's words: "Every shot is a firefly of time. As long as you don't extinguish its light, it will keep flying until it meets someone who knows how to catch it."

In the distance, Sang Jiyue was having a script meeting with new directors, their laughter mingling with the clinking of film canisters. Sang Shuwan touched the dried lavender in her pocket and suddenly understood—the so-called light of the entertainment industry is never a particular shining person or event, but countless moments of being willing to bend down for truth, the undiminished passion in your eyes when you look at the world, and the courage to believe that stars will sprout on some roll of film even in a darkroom.

And they were fortunate enough to become messengers of light.

On the day the news of the investors withdrawing their funding from "Amateur Theater" made entertainment headlines, Sang Jiyue was writing back to children in a mountain primary school. Tucked inside was a photo of a wind chime pieced together from scraps of film, signed "The father of an extra whose face was once altered by capital." She pressed the letter against her mother's clapperboard, then looked up to see a message from Ye Xuan: "Top celebrities are showing off their 'real personas' on the trending topics. Should we fight back?"

In the darkroom at three in the morning, Sang Shuwan was suddenly awakened by a phone call from Zhou Mingchuan. He sent her an encrypted video: an underground film festival in 1995, where her mother held up a film reel to confront capitalist representatives who were trying to confiscate her work, with her young father standing behind her—the film processor who appeared in her mother's unfinished documentary. "Back then, they wanted to suppress real images," Zhou Mingchuan's voice was hoarse, "but the capitalists now are smarter; they've learned to use 'reality' to package falsehood."

"Real talent shows" are springing up like mushrooms after rain in the entertainment industry. A certain platform launched "Amateur 101," but the contestants were exposed as "amateur actors" mass-trained by internet celebrity companies, with even the scenes of digging for wild vegetables being scripted. The Sang sisters were invited to serve as judges. Sang Shuwan pointed to the contestants' carefully applied "rough makeup" and said, "Real soil doesn't just stay on mascara." She suddenly held up her mother's old light meter: "This thing can't measure blood flow, but it can measure—" Before she could finish speaking, the stage lights suddenly went out, plunging into a realistic darkness.

Veteran actor Chen Hongsheng's transformative film, *The Film Processor*, began filming amidst controversy. He turned down three AI-generated special effects films and spent three months in the darkroom, his fingers stained purple by the developing solution. "My son said my previous crying scenes looked like AI-generated ones," he said with a wry smile to Lu Jing's camera, "Now I know that real tears get lost in wrinkles." On set, he insisted on not using a stunt double, personally climbing a 20-meter-high film drying rack above a real developing solution tank—just like his mother had done years ago.

The infiltration of capital is subtle yet deadly. When the Sang sisters discovered that the amateur lead actress of "Amateur Theater" was suddenly receiving offers to endorse luxury brands, everything became clear. The girl who once shared her stories as a funeral director on camera now poses skillfully on the red carpet, wearing diamond-encrusted film-shaped earrings. "They say this is 'real traffic-driven'," she cried in a late-night private message, "but now I even think about the camera angle when I'm doing makeup for the deceased."

Zhou Mingchuan's identity has become a Rashomon-like mystery in the entertainment industry. Paparazzi discovered that he had invested in three AI face-swapping companies, but withdrew his investment from all of them after the release of "Starlight in the Darkroom." In a rare interview, he always covered the scar on his sleeve: "I used to be a light meter for capital, helping them calculate how to make 'real' more valuable. Until one day, I saw my reflection in the developing solution—that face was even more fake than the AI-generated one."

The change occurred on a stormy night. When Sang Jiyue was filming her third NG of the "real crying scene" with the top star, the other party finally broke down: "I don't know what real crying is like! I was trained since I was a child to squeeze out tears in front of a mirror, and now I have to think about the camera angle before I even break up with someone!" Sang Jiyue suddenly turned off the camera and handed her an old videotape from her mother—it was a recording of her twin daughters learning to walk for the first time. In the video, they fell on the grass, and their real cries were mixed with the fragrance of grass.

The "de-datafication" movement in the entertainment industry started in the fan community. Lin Yu's fans spontaneously formed a "Real Support Group," refusing to buy any AI-generated merchandise and instead making handicrafts from recycled film. On their idol's birthday, they used 10,000 real Polaroid photos to create a starburst pattern, with each pixel containing a genuine blessing written by a fan: "This photo contains my fingerprints from yesterday when I helped my neighbor's grandma carry vegetables."

The most powerful counterattack came from her mother's legacy. Sang Shuwan found a roll of film labeled "Final Chapter" in her mother's safe. It was her mother's last unfinished work: the camera travels through darkrooms of different eras, from filmmakers in the 1930s to amateur actors in 2025, finally settling on a baby photo of the Sang sisters. Her mother's voiceover says, "When you see this image, you may have already learned that the true light is always where the camera shakes."

The press conference for the reshoots of "Amateur Theater" was held in the Dunhuang desert. When Sang Jiyue announced the use of real amateurs—including the funeral director girl who had been tempted by capital—the audience was suddenly flooded with untold industry professionals: screenwriters replaced by AI, photographers who insisted on shooting on film, and makeup artists who refused data-driven cosmetic surgery. They held up signs that read "Authenticity Doesn't Need Algorithms," the edges of which were inlaid with starlight from real film scraps.

Zhou Mingchuan appeared with a mysterious guest—the very same capitalist representative who had tried to confiscate his mother's film reels years ago, now with a full head of white hair. The old man trembled as he touched the light meter in Sang Shuwan's hand: "Back then, I thought capital was light, but now I realize we were just blocking the light." Behind him, his assistant held an old-fashioned projector, the very one his mother had used at the underground film festival.

As the sandstorm raged again, the Sang sisters watched a new batch of amateur actors run across the dunes. Ye Xuan, playing the director, held a real film camera, the lens panning across Zhou Mingchuan's back as he adjusted the lights for the old man, across Chen Hongsheng's hands as he helped the stagehands move props, and across the profile of the funeral director girl as she carefully touched up the makeup of the extras. The moment the first roll of film plunged into the developing solution, everyone saw it—amidst the swirling chemicals, a truly tangible star-like light emerged.

The trending topics in the entertainment industry are no longer about "perfect personas," but rather "real workplace injuries on set," "amateur actors' insomnia diaries," and "the starry sky within film grains." The Sang sisters' new film project is "A Century of Darkroom," which will focus on the souls struggling for authentic images over the past century. On the day of filming, a master film developer in Dunhuang delivered a special developing solution containing film fragments from 1905 to 2025: "Each grain is a seed of light."

In the dressing room of a popular celebrity, there was a yellowed photocopy on the mirror. It was Sang Shuwan's speech at an industry summit: "When we argue about where the camera should be pointed, we should first ask ourselves - do we dare to let real life be developed in our own pupils?" The celebrity practiced smiling in front of the mirror. This time, he did not calculate the angle, but simply raised the corners of his mouth slightly, like a real person.

At the final of an "AI actor talent show" in the entertainment industry, a holographic virtual idol perfectly performed a scene from "Thunderstorm" on stage, bringing satisfied smiles to the faces of the investors in the audience. Suddenly, the stage lights were cut off, and a group of special performers walked in under the real moonlight—a guesthouse owner in Dunhuang holding his daughter and playing the dombra, a film processing shop worker keeping time with a film canister, and the traffic policeman who once carried an elderly person in a rainstorm, now nervously rubbing the hem of his uniform.

“This is a true improvisational performance.” Sang Shuwan stood on the rising platform, with a large screen behind her playing excerpts from her mother’s unfinished “Centennial of the Darkroom.” “In 1925, the actors in China’s first silent film, ‘Laborer’s Love,’ were all real craftsmen; in 1985, the fifth generation of directors filmed real farmers on the Loess Plateau; today, we should not let algorithms decide who can become the light.”

The most dramatic confrontation took place outside the Berlin Film Festival. The virtual lead actors of *AI Theater* struck perfect poses on the red carpet, only to be doused with developing solution by an amateur film fan who suddenly barged in—the liquid smeared on the holographic projection, revealing the cold metallic sheen of the mechanical support beneath. Meanwhile, the Sang sisters led the real actors of *Amateur Theater* through a side alley; the Dunhuang girl's wheelchair crushed a sycamore leaf, sunlight filtering through the veins falling precisely on the firefly specimen bottle on her chest. Zhou Mingchuan's father finally appeared in the documentary. This retired film processor showed his calloused hands to the camera: "Back then, I secretly preserved directors' film reels in the darkroom, using a tin can I used to make formula for my son." The scene shifted to Zhou Mingchuan as a child, squatting by the developing solution tank, feeding the film reels with a bottle; the small star-shaped marks his mother had carved were faintly visible on the bottom of the can. "He thought he had betrayed reality," the old man wiped away tears, "but actually, his fingerprints were imprinted on real film from birth."

Capital's defenses crumbled at the smallest details. When it was discovered that the lead actor in an AI-generated face-swapping drama always lip-synced to his lines by a mere 0.3 seconds, viewers began scrutinizing him closely: "Real people blink when they say 'I love you,' but AI doesn't." Fan groups that once idolized virtual idols collectively turned to creating "flawed starlight" merchandise using real film reels—deliberately scratched film necklaces, and script diaries with worn edges.

The Sang sisters' new film, *Darkroom Call*, began filming amidst a torrential downpour. Ye Xuan plays a modern director who receives a phone call from her mother in 1995. In their conversation across time, the smell of developing solution mingles with the sweet, pungent scent of rain. When the crew refuses to use weather effects, real lightning streaks across the sky on the day of the final scene. Through the viewfinder, Sang Shuwan sees what appears to be rain or tears clinging to Ye Xuan's eyelashes, while in the distance, Zhou Mingchuan is using his mother's light meter to measure the brightness of the lightning.

"Authentic verification" has become a new trend in the entertainment industry. Actor agencies have launched rankings based on "life experience duration," with popular stars no longer competing on fan numbers, but instead sharing genuine records of their work, such as carrying bricks on construction sites, teaching in rural areas, or working night shifts at hospitals. A top celebrity unexpectedly went viral while livestreaming the sale of fish at a market; netizens noticed the bloodstains on his apron as he cleaned the fish, finding them more compelling than any script.

The mother's film legacy sparked a final storm. When Sang Shuwan uploaded her mother's 1978 documentary about educated youth sent to the countryside to the blockchain, countless historical images altered by AI were exposed in the comparison. The comment section was filled with messages from elderly people with white hair: "This is our youth, with tears, mud, and real starlight." The investors attempted to sue for infringement, but on the day of the court hearing, they received a joint letter from hundreds of retired film workers, containing fragments of real film they had secretly preserved back then.

In the darkroom in late autumn, the Sang sisters looked at the newly developed film. This time it was a monocular shot of Zhou Mingchuan: he sat on a sand dune, smoking facing the Milky Way, his shadow overlapping with the boy in their memories. The difference was that the light meter in his hand was measuring the actual brightness of starlight. Sang Jiyue suddenly pointed to the edge of the film: "Look, a firefly." A real firefly landed on his hair, the light from its tail reflecting on the glass of the light meter, forming tiny but resolute starlight.

The entertainment industry is far from over, but some things have already changed. When the Sandra sisters announced that their next film would be shot entirely with 1960s film cameras, long lines of young people signed up to work as film cleaners. They said they wanted to touch the real grain with their own hands and leave their fingerprints on the path the light had traveled.

In an AI lab, programmers watched the gradually blurring virtual actor data on the monitoring screen. Suddenly, one of them unplugged the power and pulled out a film bookmark hidden in his pocket—one he had secretly picked up from the set of "Stars in the Darkroom." Outside the window, real rain was falling. He reached out and caught a droplet, discovering that it reflected a faint, realistic light.

At the Berlin Film Festival awards ceremony, the Sand sisters' film *The Conservation of Light* won the Golden Bear. As they accepted the trophy, the stage backdrop suddenly switched to real-life scenes from around the world: students at Waseda University in Tokyo using film to record the imperfections of falling cherry blossoms, African children using homemade cardboard cameras to photograph the starry sky, and members of an Antarctic research station developing film under the aurora borealis—each scene bearing the watermark "#RealUnedited".

"This award belongs to all souls who refuse to be defined by algorithms." Sang Shuwan's voice was broadcast to the world via live stream. The camera panned across the audience, where Zhou Mingchuan was gently placing his mother's light meter on the base of the trophy, the metal surface reflecting the first real wrinkle at the corner of his eye.

Capital's last line of defense crumbled at the victory celebration. The CEO of a film group, drunk, pushed open the darkroom door, waving a merger agreement in his hand: "You won, but how much money will you actually make?" Sang Jiyue didn't take the contract, but instead handed him a roll of freshly developed film—the image showed his young daughter coloring stars with crayons, accompanied by the child's baby voice: "Daddy said stars have to be perfect, but the stars I draw cry." The CEO stared at the distorted starlight on the film, then suddenly covered his face: "She hasn't spoken to me for three months..."

The mother's 1998 film reels became the final key. The Sang sisters edited them into the post-credits scene of "Darkroom Rebirth," and when the audience saw young Zhou Mingchuan break his left arm in a flood while protecting the film, gasps echoed throughout the theater. Even more moving was the end credits: "This film is dedicated to all those who have guarded the light in the darkroom," credited not only to the Sang sisters but also to "Zhou Chenguang (Zhou Mingchuan's original name)."

A "light meter movement" has swept through the entertainment industry, with actors starting to use the same light meters their mothers use to measure the "true exposure" of their characters. Lin Yu, while filming a mining-themed movie, used a light meter daily to record the dust concentration under the miner's lamp: "This isn't a prop; it's the frequency of the character's breathing." One top star even tattooed a light meter below his collarbone: "A reminder to myself that a real heartbeat is more important than popularity."

Zhou Mingchuan's foundation launched the "Thousand Darkroom Project" to build physical darkrooms in impoverished areas around the world, providing free film and developing equipment. When the first darkroom was completed in Dunhuang, the boy who proposed to her years ago brought his daughter to the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The girl wore a star-shaped necklace made from broken glass around her neck: "I want to photograph fireflies in the desert."

During the global tour of "Darkroom Rebirth," Sang Shuwan met the girl in the wheelchair. She is now a volunteer for the "Star Messenger" organization, pushing a wooden box full of film across the countryside: "Look," she shows a photo in her camera, an old man grinning at the film projector with his gap-toothed smile, "real light is contagious."

Capital is beginning to learn to coexist with authenticity. A streaming platform launched a "dual-track" content system: perfectly produced AI dramas and real footage of ordinary people are shown side by side. Surprisingly, the data shows that the latter has a 70% higher user retention rate. At the launch event, the platform's CEO admitted: "We used to think that viewers needed filters, but what they actually need is to see the people outside the filters."

On the final night of the story, the Sang sisters returned to their original darkroom in Dunhuang. Moonlight streamed through the blinds, casting familiar starlight rays onto the film. Sang Shuwan gently placed her mother's clapperboard beside the developing solution bath, next to Zhou Mingchuan's light meter and the girl's firefly specimen bottle. The three shadows overlapped on the wall, much like the twin starlight rays in her mother's graduation project.

“Do you know?” Zhou Mingchuan suddenly spoke up, “Your mother once said that the darkroom is the womb of time.” Sang Jiyue looked at the light spots floating in the developing solution and recalled the torrential rain on the day filming wrapped up: “Now I understand that light is never created, but caught.”

The sound of camel bells drifted from afar, and a new group of film enthusiasts arrived with flashlights, their beams weaving flowing starlight across the sand dunes. The Sang sisters smiled at each other, simultaneously raising their film reels—a gift they left for the future, containing the winds and sands of Dunhuang, the real sound of rain, and every moment they bent down for the light.

As the first rays of dawn climbed onto the brick wall of the darkroom, Sang Shuwan gently turned the doorknob. Outside, the entire desert was awakening in the dawn, every grain of sand shimmering with unadorned light. And they knew that outside the entertainment industry, in all lives willing to be seen, starlight was forever growing.

Ten years later, the entertainment industry has reached a delicate balance between "realism" and "technological innovation." The Sang sisters' "Starlight Pictures" launched the world's first "dual-media film festival," with its main competition accepting both film and AI-generated images. The jury must consider both the "temperature of the grain" and the "poetic quality of the algorithm." When Lin Xiaoxia's "Electronic Firefly," a film directed by a director born in the 00s, was nominated, controversy swept through the industry—this work, which uses quantum computers to simulate real emotions, precisely calculates the optimal timing for human tear gland secretion in every frame.

“This is cheating,” Sang Jiyue said, tapping the light meter at the judging panel. “Real tears will fall prematurely because of sand in the eyes, or be interrupted by sudden laughter. These uncontrollable things are the sparkle of humanity.” But Lin Xiaoxia’s rebuttal was equally sharp: “The graininess of the film era was a technological limitation. Isn’t today’s algorithm another kind of reality?” She showed audience brainwave data that the empathy evoked by AI films was not significantly different from that of real films.

Zhou Mingchuan's foundation is embroiled in ethical controversy. A tech company has used its open-source darkroom technology to develop "realistic emotion filters"—users simply upload photos to generate "pseudo-realistic" images with "film scratches" and "natural light spots." Even more alarming, the entertainment industry is seeing the emergence of "semi-real actors": their bodies are real, but their expressions are adjusted in real-time by AI based on big data. At an industry summit, Sang Shuwan held up a fake film reel: "When we even have to fake real flaws, that's when we truly go bankrupt."

Unpublished works by their mother suddenly surfaced on the black market. Pirated film reels circulated at underground film festivals, revealing scenes the Sang sisters had never seen before: their mother and young father discussing the "quantum nature of light" in a darkroom, with a cross-disciplinary poster of Einstein and Tarkovsky on the background wall. Zhou Mingchuan discovered his mother's secret message inside the film reel: "When technology can replicate starlight, don't forget to go see the real Milky Way."

A "genetic faction" has quietly emerged in the entertainment industry. A group of bio-hacker actors claim to enhance their emotional perception through gene editing, enabling them to "truly experience the pain of their characters." When an actor actually injected himself with painkillers to portray a cancer patient, the Sang sisters immediately halted filming: "Authenticity is not self-torture; it's about letting the audience see the complexity of humanity, not just the limits of physiology." Ye Xuan launched the "Vulnerable Faction" movement on social media, advocating that actors showcase "imperfect empathy." In her makeup-free live stream, a moment where she suddenly forgot her lines while recalling a character garnered millions of likes.

The new tricks of capital are astonishing. A film group launched a "real blind box" model: when purchasing tickets, viewers don't know the film's genre, actors, or even whether it's a real movie or an AI production. The real reaction upon opening the box is captured by a camera and becomes part of the film. The Sang sisters were invited to participate in the debut, and they secretly mixed their mother's 1998 flood footage into the AI ​​material. When the audience saw the real rainstorm and the baby crying, the room was so silent that you could almost hear the film reel turning.

The younger generation is redefining reality. The daughters of the Sang sisters—Sang Xingwan and Sang Yueji—formed the "Anti-Reality Alliance." Their debut work, *Pixel Stars*, reconstructs the darkroom of Dunhuang using a game engine; players must complete the virtual film processing to unlock the story. "We're not against reality, we're against turning reality into museum specimens," Xingwan said at the press conference, her holographic hair shimmering with pixelated starlight.

Zhou Mingchuan lost his sight in a film restoration accident, but unexpectedly developed "auditory cinema" technology: by analyzing the subtle differences in the chemical substances of film, he converted the images into sound wave frequencies. His first work, "Whispers of the Developer," became a boon to the visually impaired community. When viewers put on headphones, they can hear the sound of mold growing on 1930s film, the sound of mud and sand hitting the 1998 flood, and the lullaby his mother used to hum to her twins.

The ultimate showdown in the entertainment industry unfolded on the awards night of the "Dual-Media Film Festival." The Sang sisters' *Quantum in the Darkroom* and Lin Xiaoxia's *Electronic Firefly* tied for Best Film. As the two trophies rose simultaneously, the stage suddenly lost power, and real moonlight streamed through the dome—a prank by Sang Xingwan and Sang Yueji, who had incorporated a "natural light-sensitive zone" into the architectural design. Under the moonlight, the grain of the film and the pixels of the AI ​​shimmered together, creating starlight that transcended the medium.

At the celebration banquet following the awards ceremony, Sang Shuwan received a mysterious package—her mother's last roll of film, labeled "For the Truth of the Future." In the footage, her mother smiles at the camera, with the unfinished Dunhuang darkroom behind her: "I don't know what the light of the future will look like, but I know that as long as someone is willing to stay for the truth, the light will find them." The film ends with a scene of the Sang sisters learning to speak, reaching out to catch fireflies in front of the lens, but accidentally touching the moonlight thirty years later.

In the end, the Dunhuang darkroom ruins become a "boundary marker between reality and technology." One wall retains traces of the 1998 flood, while the other flashes a real-time stream of global AI image data. Young film enthusiasts hold "hybrid development" parties here, taking pictures of the starry sky with their phones and then using old-fashioned enlargers to convert the pixels into film grain. Watching all this, Sang Jiyue suddenly says to her sister, "What Mother protected in the flood wasn't film, but humanity's obsession with reality."

In every corner of the entertainment industry, the clash between reality and technology continues. Some insist on using matches to light spotlights for retro commercials, others use neural networks to analyze street noise to create scripts, and still others simulate real lives that never existed in quantum computers. But no matter how the medium changes, the old clapperboard always hangs at the entrance of Starlight Pictures, with the latest message written in chalk: "Reality is not the answer, it is the eternal question."

Twenty years later, in the entertainment industry, holographic projection and neural network technology allow audiences to "personally" experience the emotions of movie characters. However, the Sang sisters' "Starlight Pictures" defies this trend, releasing "Darkroom Singularity," a film shot entirely in seclusion—the crew cut off all external communication, and actors could only communicate through real film reels. When Ye Xuan, who plays an AI engineer, receives a roll of yellowed film on set with only her mother's handwriting: "The true soul is not in the code," she improvises her lines in the final scene, yelling at a virtual idol: "You can't even calculate the saltiness of tears!"

Zhou Mingchuan's auditory cinematography sparked a renaissance, igniting a global craze for "sound archaeology." A streaming platform launched a "real voiceprint library," containing the noise of a vegetable market, the shutter sound of an old film camera, and even the sound of a mother's footsteps in the darkroom. But controversy ensued: some people used AI to synthesize the voices of deceased relatives to create films. At a hearing, Sang Shuwan held up her mother's recording tape: "A real voice will be interrupted by a cough, and will tremble with laughter. These 'imperfections' are the fingerprints of love."