The Edit

The edit on the surface was very straight forward too as it was literally two shots joined together. This however, is where the creativity really comes into it's own though. Here is where I played around with colour correction and colour grading along with typography and timings. 

I decided to edit in After Effects which is somewhat unconventional but the project, as I mentioned, was just two shots. This is a very simple edit obviously but the cut itself was to be obscured by my body wiping through the frame. This is accomplished by masking out my body from the second shot and laying over the end of the first shot creating an unnatural transition. This required some quite technical and precise masking and that is something I couldn't really have accomplished in (my editor of choice) Premiere Pro.

I decided to bite the bullet and put up with slightly more clumsy editing capabilities in favour of being able to dive right in with the colour grading and effects as this is what will make the piece (more so than the timing of the cut).

So. I dived into After Effects and assembled the edit in a few minutes. That was the easy part. After that came the creative segment. First I decided to tackle the colouring of the piece. From the beginning I always pictured having a punchy, black & white image with a gritty, over sharpened feel. I imagined it having grit and understated severity/sinisterness. 

However, I decided to explore other avenues first with colour infused in the image and less grit to create a sort of faux happy vibe. I basically brought up the black level with a blue solid in conjunction with a Curves adjustment. This added a subtle wash over the image that enhanced the greens and blues. This gave it a unique and unsettling wash. Green is a colour linked with sickness and envy. Subtly enhancing the green in the image helped to push out those values in the image subconsciously. This is all topped off with a little sharpening to bring out some of the edges. Here's a before and after:

Before:

After:

I think it has a more filmic look and the subtleties work well. I wasn't really feeling it though, especially after I through some more grit on there and made the image black and white:

I just think this worked a lot better. It is gritty, grimy, severe, harsh and unsettling. All of these are themes I wanted to highlight and bring out. It might just be me subconsciously convincing myself of this too but I think it looks very British too. So that's the colour down. It looked great in the second shot too and inspired me to play around with titling. Here is the finished title I created in After Effects:

I really like this. I think it is some of the best typography I have made yet. It is achieved by taking the font Akkurat Pro and applying two passes of the effect roughen edges. This effect is designed to literally roughen the edges of whatever you want to roughen. By default it creates pretty spiky jagged edges to the element it is applied to. After a bit of digging and playing around with it I found you could change the method it uses to roughen from "roughen" to "photocopy". This works by fading sections based on a faded, blobby noise map. This is a really effective effect as it creates a feeling of wear that looks amazing. Especially over the framing I chose. 

I wanted to show the mug obviously along with the kettle but more importantly I wanted to show the scenery. As you can see I framed the mug bottom right. This meant that the majority of the frame is filled with my kitchen which is quite a quaint, British kitchen. This was important to me because I felt it created a real apposing image to the colouring and the text effect. The kitchen is standard and alive whilst the text looks as though it is dying right in front of your eyes. This is backed up by the colour space that seems to mute and kill the space. Again this is all really subtle, but it's there.

One other thing the plugin allowed me to do was animate the effect over time. This really adds to the punch. This creates the feeling of the text being strangled to mirror the themes present in the show. Those themes being undertones of violence and focus on the underworld which wants to remain hidden. Here's how the text evolves over time:

As you can see the text deforms over time which looks really dynamic and interesting. I coupled the "photocopy" effect within the roughen edges plugin with another effect it allows called "rust". Rust is essentially another deformation type this time creating the look of a rusted edge which is quite sharp and dense. These two layers working in conjunction create a really engaging effect.

The deformation overtime also links to the ideas present in the show as the text goes from standard and everyday to seedy and disfigured. That is what the show does essentially. Takes the setting that is familiar and regular to us and shows it in a completely different, unflattering light. No holds barred showing exactly what happens. That is what I wanted the transformation of the text to mirror really.

I also created a way of showing the VICE logo and the phrase "a VICE original series" at the beginning. I think it works quite well. It is more succinct that the first piece I created:

I like this layout. It is clear, concise and aesthetically pleasing. I like the subtle pyramid shape created, it leads the eye through the phrase whilst allowing full impact to be on the VICE logo. It does the job nicely I think and is the best of both worlds.

I also masked myself out to create the cut being hidden by my body. That will be more impactful and easier to show in video form though so I shall comment on that later when I upload the finished project.