Era-Locked Look

The central visual doctrine of One Small Crawl: each of the five scenes emulates a different era of film/video technology, and the era character is applied in POST, never baked into generation. Research-locked in the Era and Visual Look Guide v001 (2026-07-04), validated in resolve era-stack sessions.

The five eras

• sc01 sf: 1926-window Chicago, 35mm B&W orthochromatic nitrate, 18fps cadence baked at 1.33x, halation strong, coarse grain, soot+smoke as content
• sc02 snd: 1936-40 Dust Bowl, 35mm pan Plus-X, Academy 1.375, locked 24
• sc03 kch: July 20 1969, amateur 16mm Kodachrome II (K-12), color bleeds from the rainbow
• sc04 vhs: mid-1980s consumer VHS color-under, sensor documented (Newvicon vs early CCD); sp/hd sub-codes for the orbital capsule sequence
• sc05 dig: 2020s full-frame CMOS log, 4K UHD, golden hour

Doctrine (global rules)

• Generate NEUTRAL plates (era code ntrl) - mono, grain, damage, tint, gates are post-only.
• Cadence baked at generation (scale keyframe timing), never retimed in comp.
• Two-level match rule: element -> its neutral backplate (level 1), merged comp -> era donor via scene era stack (level 2). Never match element to donor directly.
• Grain: transplant real archive scans via Neat Video; synthetic = demo fallback only. Band-limit to era MTF ceiling before grain.
• Aspect ladder 1.33 -> 1.375 -> 1.37 -> 1.33 -> 1.78, gates as final node.
• NEVER list: no optical flow on sc01-sc03/archive; no halation/grain on sc04/sc05; no Film Look Creator; don’t correct donor character.

Notes

• The era periods are formalized in PeriodO in the show-ont-periodo-crosswalk - narrative time vs capture medium time.
• Era codes double as naming field 8 (naming-schema).
• The post-only, invertible, no-harm-to-plate discipline that makes the era look safe follows VES color-management good practice (ves-good-practices).
• See omc-ontology, route-66, one-small-crawl.