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This project was presented at the Colorist Meetup held at Arri Inc. in Burbank California, September 2023

The stills are taken from the short film Kepler 138, regraded with a variation of the Aerochrome LUT developed for this project. See the full presentation below.

Thank you to Dado Valentic for the invaluable mentorship, Colour Training for organising this project and event and Ian Vertovec for the inspiration and feedback. 

Kepler 138

Director:     Jacob Schwatz

Dop:           Peter Mosiman

Producer:   Andrew Peterson

Aerochrome Emmulation Project

Aerochrome Film

Kodak Aerochrome film was originally developed for vegetation surveys and camouflage detection. It is referred to as a false-colour infrared sensitive film, because the film foregoes a standard blue sensitive layer and replaces it with an infrared sensitive layer.

In the final photo, infrared light appears as red, green light appears as blue, and red light appears as green.

 

It has around 3-4 stops of dynamic range, meaning that the highlights and shadows fall off abruptly. It is best utilised in bright sunlight. Polarising filters are sometimes used in combination with the film in order to avoid blown out skies. This serves to give the skies a very blue appearence, which is actually the reflection of green light, as the polariser works to block out the bright blue light. Photographers can also control the magenta and red hues by using yellow and orange filters, as well as different film processing methods such as E6 (positive) and C41 (negative).

E6 slide film processing

This type of processing generally gives a more pink/magenta quality

and bakes a color cast throughout the image

C41 negative film processing

This type of processing generally gives a greater dynamic rage (about 4 stops). The colors skew towards the red/orange tones but it doesnt have a color cast like E6, meaning greater flexibility in manipulating the colors in post.

An on-set monitoring LUT was made that could work with any professional camera and also be used as the base for the Aerochrome emulation in the final grade. It works to shift the hues in the direction of Aerochrome, while maintaing a more normal dynamic range. It also creates a pleasing complimentary palette that moves all the different blues closer together in a turquoise direction.

On-set monitoring / base LUT creation

In creating these emulations, the aim was to emmulate the intensely saturated feel of Aerochrome, while maintaining skin tones in a more naturalistic manner. In order for the Showlut to be more functional for digital footage, The dynamic range was kept around 5-6 stops, giving the appearance of that Aerochrome abrupt fall-off in the highlights and shadows, while enabling more of the image to be seen.


For the final looks a little bit of keying in combination with rotoscoping was added, in order to bring back the yellow and green in the wardrobe.

Stills taken from the short film Bingo Night

Director: Jordan Liebowitz
DP: Megan Richardson
Producer: Ryan Heraly

E6 & C41 inspired emmulation

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