Feet!

For this project, my assigned genre was independent comedy. Having watched a fair few of these prior to this assignment, I already knew what I had to do to turn Ivan into a quirky indie comedy. Indie films tend to have a sun-bleached, warm tone to their visuals that are reminiscent of old photographs or tacky Instagram filters. I tried to create this appearance in After Effects using various color correction techniques such as hue/saturation and color curves. I also wanted to add moving text as story hooks, which you can see in the trailer for Little Miss Sunshine. I finished it off with a thematically appropriate folk rock song, which is present in all three trailers.

I feel like these elements are widely used visual tropes for the indie comedy genre. They’re a sort of shorthand for interesting, off the wall situations and the interesting, off the wall people who inhabit them. The warm film effects create a dreamy atmosphere that stays well away from surreal, and is just different enough to give a nostalgic air to the movie. I always think of it as the sort of colors one would imagine the perfect summer day in. It was especially important to me that I captured that feeling with my editing.