Variation: Gobo aberration

LED gobo chromatic aberration was something I first learned about in a cinematography class in college. You can see an example in the multi-colored ghost star edges in the image below. It’s an aesthetic choice and I haven’t seen used often.

This study will focus on work shot by dp Shelly Johnson, starting with The House Bunny. In his interior shots, he uses the rainbow chromatic aberration of the gobo to add color textured variation to the scene:

This is an example of Shelly’s lighten in Sky High - I made a color-corrected version to show what the shot would look like without colored-light variation:

Two examples from The House Bunny show how the effect can be conspicuous or subtle depending on the lightness/darkness of the surface:

This was a fun study! I enjoyed looking through Shelly’s work and see a little more I’d love to delve into. And interestingly, the light aberration conception was also used in Shelly Johnson’s work on Jurassic Park III (screen left )