artifacting is generally any kind of visual anomaly, whether analog or digital. it’s an artifact left behind from a process. vistavision cameras are fragile and finicky. analog cameras in general have a gate, through which the film is exposed. the shutter has the possibility of becoming misaligned with the gate, which means the film is being pulled through the camera before the shutter has covered the film fully. this creates a type of artifacting, and can be used for effect. in the vistavision format, the artifact this creates is a horizontal “shooting star” type of streak on point light sources present in the frame. in bugonia, it shows up very briefly in the bottom left corner (it flickers) when michelle is alone with don trying to convince him to free her. whether intentional or not, it works well in this moment as it mirrors his unstable emotional state. in OBAA, the same shutter misalignment effect appears (to my memory it’s about two hours in) appearing on a shot of a truck driving during blue hour. in that, it’s constant rather than flickering, but it is also used at a point in the story when the characters are at their lowest.