“The Bourne Ultimatum” Lighting Streaks During Bourne’s Revelation Scene

[tiagob]

Hi Mr. Deakins,

I’m working on a short film for a class, replicating a scene from a film shot by shot. It needs to be as close to the released picture as possible. The scene I chose is from “The Bourne Ultimatum” (2007) when Jason Bourne finds his backstory.

The cinematographer and filmmakers in this film did an interesting effect with lighting streaks during the intercut flashback sequences.

 

Would you have any pointers as to what resources I can use to accomplish an effect like this light streak effect?

 

Some ideas I came up with and talked about with my friends in filmmaking are: lens filters with streaks running vertically, putting saran wrap on the front of the lens with Vaseline spread over the wrap, or using VFX in post to create the same effect.

The VFX in post is interesting, but I want to try accomplishing this effect practically because it seems like the most creative, requires the most thinking, and would be an interesting feature to pull off and challenge myself.

Here is the link to the scene with the lighting effect for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hQ0ILw1P7o&t=143s

Thank you for your time and consideration!

Best,

Tiago

Topic

[dmullenasc]

That’s the effect of a mistimed shutter in a movie camera, though they might have used VFX to simulate it. You can see it in parts of the D-Day battle in “Saving Private Ryan”. When the shutter is mistimed, the film starts to get pulled-down to the next frame before the shutter is closed or while it is opening so a percentage of the exposure is streaked (the highlights, since they register first on film). I’m sure there are some post plug-ins for “shutter timing error VFX” or something.

[Author]

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