Sonder City
A record of the vision and the technique behind it, for Aural Vision's own portfolio.
The pipeline, in motion
Real renders out of the memory_reveal pipeline — not concept art,
not a mockup. The Fuji 3513DI grade below is the current best look; the gallery underneath
covers the range of tests behind it.
2D compositing test
3D topology-aware compositing test
Fuji 3513DI grade — no AgX
Warmth grade test
Memory reveal — full output
Storyboard blend test
2D base grade — scope test
How the memory effect actually works
Built as a custom Blender add-on (memory_reveal) — not a plugin off
a marketplace, not an AI filter. A real, per-frame computer-vision-driven compositing pipeline.
1. Face tracking
MediaPipe tracks the actor's face every frame — including depth (Z) per landmark, not just X/Y position.
2. Two compositing modes
2D: the memory video is warped and blended onto a tracked flat region. 3D: a real fitted mesh is built from the tracked landmarks each frame, the memory video is UV-projected onto it, and rendered with a Fresnel light-wrap edge — so the memory appears to emerge from the actual contour of the face, not a flat card floating over it.
3. Protection & realism
Eye and mouth regions are protected from the overlay so the performance stays legible. Skin texture is recovered via frequency separation so the blend doesn't flatten the actor's real face into a smooth mask.
4. Analog film pipeline
Eight compositor-level filters — diffusion, halation, gate weave, film flicker, lens breathing, vignette, local desaturation, chromatic aberration — combine into named presets (Super 8, Trauma, Hope) that give each memory a distinct emotional register purely through image texture.
Color language
Base footage carried through a full DaVinci Resolve pipeline, referencing Bergman's Persona for the portrait-driven black-and-white-adjacent intimacy of the look, built out in color via print-stock emulation.
Editorial-Glamour blend
CDL-only creative grade, no film LUT — the clean baseline direction.
Kodak 2383
Print-stock LUT over a shadow-lifted CDL — punchier, more contrast.
Fuji 3513DI, softened
Custom-blended LUT (60% stock / 40% neutral) — current best: gentlest, zero clipping.
Sonder City
An intimate psychological drama built around a single formal idea: memory doesn't interrupt the present as a cutaway — it surfaces directly on the face of the person remembering.