Dune movie scenes shot in Near Infrared

One of the big cinematic releases at the moment is the second part of Denis Villeneuve‘s interpretation of Frank Herbert's SF Epic Dune.

Cinematographer Greig Fraser decided to use near-infrared (NIR) imaging to show the weird environment of the planet occupied by the film's uber-villains, the Harkonnens. He had used the technique before, on Zero Dark Thirty in 2012 and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in 2016.

While the Australian movie BRINDABELLAS | edge of light in 2016 (see below) had used RED cameras configured for monochrome IR, Dune used an ARI Alexa camera but the basic premise is the same. The usual infrared blocking filter was removed and replaced with a 'black' infrared-pass filter.

The idea with Dune was to show the unreal environment the Harkonnen's inhabited. The first film had only shown interiors but the second part required exterior shots. One significant result of this technique is the surreal look of the characters, since NIR penetrates a few millimetres into skin (and the characters are hairless) and there is the well-known look of people's eyes and the inherent high contrast.

[Photo: Dune: Part Two Infrared Copyright © 2022 Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc.]

I can point you to the following for much more information: Variety, NoFilmSchool, Kolari and ARRI Rental.

This provides an opportunity to review some of the history of near infrared in feature films.

Infrared film was a useful tool in the motion picture industry as far back as the 1920s. Kodak had produced their first infrared ciné film stock in 1925 and by 1937 it was also available from Agfa and DuPont. Agfa's was the first of what was described as the modern infrared film in that it was not a panchromatic emulsion pushed into infrared sensitivity. The new films were only sensitive to UV and blue and then to extreme red and infrared. This simplified the filter needed and a Wratten #29 (deep red) was the most common used. Sometimes infrared film was used in the making of travelling mattes (used to replace backgrounds in shots) but more often it was used in black and white movies to allow night-time scenes to be shot during the day, a technique now known as 'day-for-night'.

Not all the artefacts of infrared images were welcome however, and special makeup (usually lipstick) and set painting often had to be applied. Sometimes foliage was sprayed with green paint to hide the Wood effect and prevent shifts in tone. Paramount even painted an entire back-lot 'Brownstone Street' in special blue-grey paint called infra-red blue so that it would look the same on both infrared and panchromatic stock. The 1941 DuPont film was welcomed by cinematographers because of its lack of Wood effect and the three apparently competing emulsions had actually found slightly different and complementary niches in this specialised application.

By the 1960s the movie industry was moving from black and white to colour and infrared's abilities for day-for-night shooting were obsolete. But occasionally infrared filming was used for artistic effect.

In the early 1960s there was a curious collaboration between the Cuban and Russian film industries resulting in an extraordinary movie called Soy Cuba (I am Cuba). The director was Mikhail Kalatozov, famous most probably for The Cranes Are Flying in 1957, and the director of photography was Sergey Urusevsky. The film is a cinematic tour de force, featuring several long single-take sequences which almost defy attempts to work out just how they were done.

Much of Soy Cuba was shot using infrared film, with characteristic bright foliage and dark skies. The film stock was actually manufactured for use by the Soviet military, so it was quite a coup for the production to access some of it.

More recently, movie-maker Mike Figgis has been experimenting with low light and infrared photography using consumer video cameras with Sony's Night Shot facility. His 2001 film Hotel includes scenes done this way, to such an extent that the actors in the scenes could not actually see each other during filming.

The director of 2006 movie Wristcutters (A Love Story), Goran Dukic, had intended to use Kodak Ektachrome Infrared extensively to provide the look of the film's afterlife for suicides setting. Kodak provided unique super-16 format stock for this purpose, but after shooting some tests Dukic decided to use post-production techniques rather than infrared film. Some of the test sequences were shown on the film web site and on the published DVD. The production eventually sold off their unique stock for $300 per roll.

In 2015 film makers Glen Ryan and James van der Moezel of silver dory productions in Australia released a movie to exploit the monochrome infrared abilities of the RED digital cinema camera, called BRINDABELLAS | edge of light. It was described as “the World’s first near-infrared feature” and was shot in 4k resolution. I wrote it up in a blog post at the time, and the movie is still available on their web site.

Since most NIR-converted stills cameras can now shoot movies as well, the scope for infrared movies has expanded greatly over the past century.

Four Simon Marsden prints for auction at Sotheby's

Prints of four of the late Sir Simon Marsden's infrared photographs are included in Sotheby's 2015 Made in Britain auction. This takes place on the morning of March 25th.

Simon Marsden: Dunnottar Castle, Scotland

The four, in two lots, are his famous shot of Moydrum Castle in Ireland, as shown in the Infrared 100 exhibition in 2010, together with an atmospheric view of Dunnottar Castle in Scotland (above) and shots of Whitby Abbey and a gargoyle at Toddington Manor in Gloucestershire. Estimates for the two lots are both between £1,500 and £2,500.

In the same auction last year there was a lot of four of his prints, which exceeded their top estimate to fetch £4,375.

Like Minor White, Ansel Adams and others, Simon saw the print as (to quote Adams) 'the performance' where the negative is 'the score'. This places a great importance on the printing process, especially when the photographer does the printing (as did Simon). Whether this analogy means that no-one else can legitimately print a photographer's negatives is a difficult point, since following the musical theme it would mean that we should discount Sir John Eliot Gardiner's performances of a Beethoven symphony simply because only Beethoven himself could conduct it (other great conductors are available). But I'm just being devil's advocate ... sadly Simon will print no more and this is a chance to own the authentic manifestation of his vision. There are very few prints of Simon's work around and it's likely that there will be no more prints made. Plus, I am always delighted when people take artistic infrared photography seriously.

Result

Lot 107, Moydrum and Castles, sold for £1750 while, sadly, the other lot didn't sell.

... and now the Marsden calendar

If you fancy a 2013 calendar of infrared photographs ... and sorry but I don't do one .. you should look at a collection of superb infrared photos in the latest edition from Simon Marsden's archive.

Available from the Marsden web site. Even if you don't fancy the calendar you should look at the photos: all taken on Kodak HIE from Simon's private refrigerated stash.

Nikon Owner article on Simon Marsden

The latest issue of Nikon Owner features Simon Marsden and his atmospheric 'ghosthunter' images, often taken using Kodak infrared film. Gray Levett's article The Dark Knight Rises: Sir Simon Marsden is also available as a PDF on the Marsden Archive web site.

Simon's photos are well worth studying if you're into infrared photography. His technique of shooting into the sun with buildings usually silhouetted and haloed as a result is an interesting alternative to the bright foliage we usually strive for. It took me a long time to get what he was doing.

Simon was very helpful with the RPS infrared centenary in 2010 and I am really sorry that we never got the chance to meet.

Infrared Polaroid

A box of Polaroid Land Infrared Film turned up on eBay a few months ago. I wasn't aware that such a thing existed but there it was, and the seller kindly included photographs of the packaging and the data sheet.

The film was reportedly available between 1964 and 1969 (the data sheet shown was dated May 1967) and was designated Type 413. It was a black and white film sensitive between UV and just beyond 900 nm with a peak at 830 and a trough at 510. Equivalent ASA rating was 200 with a Wratten #87 rising to 600 with a red filter and 800 with no filter.

If anyone knows of any examples taken with this film please let me know.

Soviet infrared photography

There is one gap the history of infrared photography of which I have been very conscious: the old Soviet Union. The soviets obviously had infrared film, the movie Soy Cuba made in the early 1960s made extensive use of it, and I found a NASA reference to some colour infrared film being flown on the space station.

Of course, my not reading Russian doesn't help but I have managed to track down an intriguing publication from the American military which is available to buy from the National Technical Information Service. It's a translation of a book by I B Levitin published in 1961, translated in 1967, and titled Photography by Infrared Light (approximately).

The document is described, rather oddly, as a machine translation, which has then been 'tidied up' by a human. Actually it reads quite well. The term used for the film is infrachromatic, though I don't know whether that is a literal translation: but it's a nice term.

According to the book, at that point there were three film types regularly manufactured in the USSR - Infrachrom 760, Infrachrom 840 and Infrachrom 880 - with a 720 version manufactured 'irregularly'. These were made in sheets, 35mm and 'wide film' of 19 and 33 cm width. I did a double-take over that: 33 cm is over a foot! The author notes that the number usually refers to the point of maximum sensitivity.

Agfa in East Germany also made infrared film. Eleven different types are listed, divided into khart (less sensitive more contrast) and rapid (more sensitive less contrast). [The translator notes these names are transliterated from Russian rather than being the German terms.]

The book then goes on to list foreign film types, and this list contains more types than I was aware of so I will list the manufacturers here (as shown in the document):

• Eastman Kodak (USA)
• Ferrania (Italy)
• Gevaert (Belgium)
• Guilminot (France)
• Kodak (Great Britain)
• Kodak-Pate (France)
• Konishiroku (Japan)

Pate is presumably Pathé and Konishiroku Honten was the name for Konica until 1987 (see Wikipedia entry). So the Konica film was older than I realised, by a long way, and it seems Kodak in the UK made film separately from the USA at the time. Of course by the end of its life Kodak's HIE film was only made in Rochester.

Levitin's book is very technical and delves even deeper into the physics and chemistry than Clark. It perhaps deserves a wider distribution but for the moment, if you're interested, you can buy it from NTIS as document number AD663365. NTIS is worth a search anyway, for example it tells us that astronaut Gordon Cooper took infrared photos from orbit on May 16, 1963 during Mercury Spaceflight MA-9 (Faith 7). Of course, now I know about this, a Google search yields several results, explaining that his infrared shots were for meteorological purposes. What I don't know is whether these were the first infrared photographs from space ... I'll have to find out.