ARRI Film Lab brings the texture of analog film to digital workflows, adding authentic grain, halation, color, and gate-weave effects via a flexible OpenFX plugin.
ARRI Film Lab is a license-based OpenFX plugin for post-production tools that adds the look and feel of analog film to digital footage. It supports RGB images from any camera brought into an ARRI workflow, providing creative control of grain, color, halation and gate-weave associated with film stocks and film post-process.
Here's the ARRI Tech Talk that dives into it.
Film grain – Realistic emulation of film grain, adjustable to the equivalent of 50D, 200T, or 500T negative stocks.
Color – Emulates print-stock characteristics, reversal film and bleach bypass.
Halation – Replicates the red/orange halo around bright areas caused by light reflecting through film layers.
Gate weave – Simulates the slight unsteadiness or vertical movement sometimes seen in footage shot on film.
ARRI says that what makes ARRI Film Lab so user-friendly is that any combination of the plugin’s settings, at any intensity level, will result in an "authentic and pleasing" analog feel. Whatever looks have been developed and used on a project—whether LUTs in prep or color grades in post—ARRI Film Lab will respect and complement them. The results will be consistent even if material from different cameras is being mixed.
ARRI Film Lab delivers realtime 4K processing and is compatible with RGB images from any camera brought into a LogC4/C3 or Linear AWG4/AWG3 pipeline. Projects must use ARRI color management through to finishing.
The plugin is currently compatible with several leading color grading environments including Resolve & Fusion Studio, Baselight, Nuke, Autograph, Flame, Natron, Scratch, and Silhouette. Film Lab support for ACES 2.0 is already planned and in the works.
The RE:Vision Effects purchase page also includes grayed out listings for After Effects, Avid, FCP, Premiere Pro, and more, though there is no official confirmation that a port to other platforms is coming. Either way, it runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux.
As well as the ACES 2.0 support, an upcoming software update for the ALEXA 35 Xtreme or ALEXA 35 cameras will enable unique previews of Film Lab settings. This creates an approximation of the desired film look in-camera through a combination of special ARRI Textures and 3D LUTs, allowing filmmakers to see viewfinder and monitor images that give a strong sense of the intended grain and color attributes.
The ARRI Look Library is also bundled with ARRI Film Lab. This includes 87 predefined looks developed by ARRI for various environments and production types, each offered at three intensity levels.
ARRI Film Lab is available now via RE:Vision Effects. Licensing options include monthly ($25), annual ($250), or permanent ($500). Floating licenses add roughly 20%. For companies, pricing is according to number of users. Educational rates are available and there is also a week-long free trial.