Capturing an Intimate Portrait of Jackie

• Technicolor provided digital dailies and Technicolor Sound oversaw final sound mixing.
• Live-action Super 16mm photography was combined with 1960’s archival footage/video simulations.
• The Technicolor R&I team in Rennes, France, created a special algorithm for the DI finishing.

With Jackie, Chilean director Pablo Larraín has created a stunning portrait of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in the hours and days after the assassination of JFK in November of 1963. Told in flashbacks and flash-forwards, the film was photographed in Super 16mm by cinematographer Stéphane Fontaine, AFC, and color-finished by Isabelle Julien over the course of 18 days.

The Kennedy White House was exactingly recreated at Luc Besson’s Saint Denis studio outside Paris. Along with 10 days of location photography in Baltimore, MD, it was the principal production site for the independently produced period drama. Detailed recreations by the team included Mrs. Kennedy’s famous White House tour in 1962 and the emotional first interview she conducted shortly after her husband’s death, portrayed by Oscar-winner Natalie Portman.

With these well-documented events and their familiar faces, the texture of images became a key challenge for the production, making Technicolor’s approach and experience a perfect fit. The team worked closely with the Technicolor research center in Rennes, France, who went so far as to write a special algorithm to further replicate the look and feel of the Kennedy years.

Speaking about Jackie, Larraín noted, “We looked for the resemblance, the sensation, and her sensibility. But I wanted to have a distinctive look. I didn’t want Jackie to look like anything else.”

Watch the official HD trailer for Jackie here.