I think with this video project I have developed the style enough to the point where i can make a small short using the style. That being said I believe there will never be a point where the aesthetic I am chasing will ever be achieved. I am forever in pursuit of greater plateaus.

I decided to return to one of the original clips I used when in this styles infancy about a year ago roughly. The unmasking scene from the Phantom of the Opera. When I originally used it I only made use of a small clip of the phantom slowed down. I added various threshold like effects and had a pulsation running through it. It was decent, but i think my latest video is far superior. With this one I wanted a simplicity. By simplicity I mean I didn’t want the scene to be viewable, but through the lens of what I’ve been developing. With every one of these videos I have actually been building off of the last video, or at least incorporating the last video into the newer video. I used a hard light exclusion as a way to shine the newer video through a slowed down version of the old one. My intention was to create a distortion, but not directly onto the newer experiment, but using one video as a filter. I think it turned out wonderfully, it reminds me of looking through a car window on a rainy day, or even a fog of sorts. I’ve been using ‘VR Immersion’ effects on all these projects, and did so again on the base opera clip, they’re mainly how I achieve that glitch visual. I used time displacement as well, to give a delay in pixel and motion synchronicity. I did this because i wanted to try and emulate Data Moshing. I am not entirely sure how to data Mosh, but am researching more into it.

https://vimeo.com/448436439

From all these experiments I have come to some conclusions on what make the videos effective in my eyes. High contrast is an essential, it makes the footage pop out of the screen more, grays make the image look extremely flat like log footage. It makes me feel the same way when seeing poorly graded Blackmagic RAW clips; something I’ve already seen far too much of in my last degree. I think that’s why I always enjoy Robert Richardson’s cinematography. Richardson uses an intense back light, which usually sits higher than the subject, to separate characters and objects from the foreground. I’m using a similar technique, but eliminating blacks using the exclusion effect. This does remove grain, but it focuses the footage on the content i want to use. Grain is another thing I have discovered is essential. The older the footage is, the easier it is to manipulate. I have experimented with adding artificial grain, but is nowhere near the same is authentic film. Digitally shot footage is harder to distort because it is either too clean, or the compression it uses actually blocks the footage. By blocking I mean it makes the image chunky, colour banding is a result of this. I have been exporting mainly in MOV and HEVC formats so I can reuse past creations if need be. H.264 destroys the details of my experiments I’ve noticed. This is a problem because it means I have to work with larger file formats, which is difficult to edit and upload with. Though these newer experiments have taught me to be more patient when creating videos, so it is only the upload times that are a hassle.

After I finished this experiment i tried to incorporate it into digital footage of a shore line, and it turned out terribly. Lot’s of grays, low contrast. and the beach footage was digitally acquired so it was harder to distort. and I tested exporting in a higher compression format, which destroyed it too much. They only confirmed what I had suspected above. From here onward I need to keep a minimalism in what i display in the foreground. And keep the attention more focused.

https://vimeo.com/448424953