Infrared film lookA familiar world turned strange
The infrared film look records light just beyond what the eye sees, so leaves and grass glow white or pink, skies turn dark and skin looks pale and smooth. The audience recognizes the place but not its colors, and the world suddenly feels dreamlike, alien or haunted.
Also calledAerochrome lookFalse-color infraredWood effectIR photography
Optical effects
Why it works on screen
Use it when a familiar landscape needs to become unfamiliar. Infrared can show a character's altered state, a post-disaster world, a war zone seen with new eyes, a paradise that hides something wrong, or a dream of home. It serves estrangement, beauty with menace, political commentary and the supernatural. A sequence earns it when the audience should question what they see, and when landscape and vegetation are central to the image. It is hard to use for long stretches of dialogue, since faces lose their natural tones. Keep it for sequences with a clear reason to see differently.
The shot list line
- Size
- Wide shot or extreme wide shot
- Angle
- Eye level or slightly high
- Movement
- Static or slow pan
- Lens
- 24mm to 35mm with an infrared-pass filter on a converted camera
- Duration
- 5 to 10 s
Shoot in strong sunlight with plenty of vegetation in frame, and test focus and exposure, since infrared behaves differently from visible light.
Screenplay
On the page
Do not write the technique into a spec script. If the world should look strange, say what the character sees in plain story language: the jungle glows pink, the sky is black at noon. That tells the director the image departs from reality without choosing a camera. If you direct, write the look into your visual notes, including whether you will use a converted camera, filters or grading, and test on your actual locations.
EXT. TEA PLANTATION, SRI LANKA - NOON
The hills are covered in bushes that glow a pale, impossible pink.
NIMALI (40s, plantation supervisor, umbrella closed under her arm) walks the terraces after three nights without sleep.
The sky above her is almost black, though the sun is overhead.
The pickers bent over the rows do not look up.
NIMALI
Where is everybody's voice?
Storyboard
In the storyboard
Draw the landscape normally, then mark the zones that will glow, such as leaves, grass and trees, with light shading or pink pencil, and darken the sky heavily. Add a note on the panel: infrared, foliage white or pink, sky near black. Indicate where people appear and how their skin should read. If the sequence switches back to normal color, mark the transition shot clearly.
Pairs well with
Infrared transforms landscapes more than faces. An extreme wide shot fills the frame with vegetation and sky, so the strange colors become a whole world instead of a detail.
Cutting from infrared back to black and white, or using black and white infrared, keeps the strange luminous foliage while stripping away color, giving the world a stark, ghostly look.
Reference
Watch it in
The Enclave (2013)
Richard Mosse shot this gallery installation on a discontinued infrared stock, so the hills and fighters of eastern Congo appear in startling pinks and magentas.
I Am Cuba (1964)
Sergei Urusevsky filmed palms and sugarcane on black and white infrared, making the foliage shine white under dark, heavy skies.
ScreenWeaver
Set it up in ScreenWeaver
Describe the altered landscape in your screenplay, and ScreenWeaver breaks the scene into shots automatically. Open each landscape shot, set a wide or extreme wide framing, an eye-level or slightly high angle, a static or slow pan movement and a duration of five to ten seconds, and note the infrared look in the shot description. Locations and references carry from shot to shot, so the same terraces return consistently. Use the AI previsualization to plan the sequence before testing the look on location.
Start writing for freeThe prompt behind this clip
This is the exact prompt that rendered the clip at the top of the page. Keep the description of the camera and the light, change the subject and the place.
Infrared film look, static wide shot of a vineyard in autumn at midday, rows of grapevines and a line of trees along the horizon. Near-infrared film stock renders every leaf and blade of grass glowing bright white and pale pink instead of green, while the clear sky above turns near-black with high contrast. A lone worker in a wide-brimmed hat walks slowly between the rows, skin rendered pale and waxy under the infrared exposure. Camera does not move, wind lightly stirs the glowing white foliage. No text.
Common mistakes
- 01
No vegetation
Infrared shines on plants. Urban scenes of concrete and glass show little change and look merely odd. Choose locations with trees, grass or fields.
- 02
Ignoring faces
Skin turns pale and waxy, veins can show, eyes look dark. Test on your actors early and decide whether it helps the story or needs grading.
- 03
Focus errors
Infrared focuses at a slightly different point than visible light. Check focus through the filter on a monitor, not by eye, especially on wide apertures.
