RED has posted up an almost 1 and a half hour long video from Camerimage 2025 where cinematographer Markus Förderer ASC, BVK discusses “Creating a 70’s Film Aesthetic” for the film September 5.
If you are not familiar with September 5, the film follows a crew broadcasting the 1972 Munich Olympics hostage crisis in real-time.
Förderer used an old Zoomar zoom from the seventies and tuned Apollo anamorphic lenses to replicate the era’s focus fall-off and bokeh. What was interesting is that he disassembled a lens to add fingerprints and artificial grime to the internal elements, to help create unique textures without having to use heavy diffusion filters.
To create a tense, confined atmosphere, he avoided traditional window lighting. Instead, LED tubes were hidden behind curtains to create a pulsating, strobing effect that mimicked the look of old, cheap fluorescent lights.
The production used an 8K RED V-Raptor camera to shoot footage that was then played back on low-res analog TV monitors and re-filmed to create an authentic, gritty, archival look. The production tested 35mm and 16mm and compared results to the RED V-RAPTOR, a camera Förderer had used to shoot the AppleTV+ sci-fi series Constellation.
Rather than relying heavily on expensive CG, Förderer used practical miniatures and prints to simulate complex night scenes, which gave the director and actors the ability to see the final look in real-time.
Förderer used custom LUTs and shot at 1600 ASA to ensure the grain and texture were baked into the image rather than having to be added in post-production.
