Extend Archive Footage

Cropping and scaling footage in the edit have become commonplace. The opposite, extending the frame, is much more difficult but not impossible.  Add that extra bit of sky or plain background and you get another option to reframe your shot in post.

The movie “First Man” gave the idea for this tutorial. There, the VFX team worked hard to stay close to the look and feel of the original Apollo 11 footage that we are so familiar with. For some scenes, they rescanned and refurbished historical archive footage and even extended the frame to bring it up to Imax format.

In this tutorial, we also work with a shot from the Apollo 11 launch. First, we clean it up from film artifacts and then extend the frame by copying parts of the sky outwards. Paint, copy or clone techniques are the main focus. We can combine elements from different frames with the time speed tool and extract clouds with the luma keyer.

Polish archive footage and extend the frame for full resolution. Inspired by the VFX from “First Man”, I create an enhanced shot from the Apollo 11 launch. Artifact removal and set-extension with paint and clone techniques help build the shot.

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