Passing Production Trends

When it comes to clothes, some people are really up on what’s in and what’s out. Others don’t even try to keep track. Only educated experts can tell last season’s styles from this season’s, but anyone with any fashion sense at all can tell you that you shouldn’t be caught dead in a mesh half shirt and acid wash jeans. 

In case you hadn’t noticed, let me remind you that video has gone through some pretty awful crazes. There was a time when sepia tones, strobe effects and posterization were all the rage. For a while one of the companies I worked for actually instituted a requirement that every video we produced HAD to include at least one of these vile video effects.

Other video crazes have come and gone too. Color pass filters, where the whole image is black and white except for the red pedals on a rose, for instance, were pretty cool for a while. And bullet time, where the footage is shot with multiple cameras from various angles so the subject freezes and seems to rotate in space (thank you, Keanu) is a more recent example of a trendy effect that had its 15 minutes of fame.

The style of your titles and graphics are key indicators of your productions’ sense of style. I like to compare title and graphic styles to makeup and hairstyles. Certain fonts and fills look current and natural, and others look behind times and out of date. Back in the 80s when heavy blue eye shadow and big Flock-of-Seagulls hair were in style, we were making titles and graphics that were big and bubbly with thick outlines and multi-color gradient fills. We thought it was rad. It was rad. At the time it was cutting edge. Today, however,  it would look ridiculous.

With the wide acceptance of DSLR cameras, the shallow depth of field look has become popular to the point of trendiness. Before DSLRs the soft background look was a lot harder to pull off. Because it required a big lens, it was the mark of professional video. Now anyone can do it. Is the shallow focus phenomenon a trend that will last, or just a passing fad? Personally, I believe it’s more of an innovation than a trend, so I think it is here to stay. But the video production innovations timeline will certainly include a marker separating the days before and after the DSLR look.

One thing I have noticed about fashion is that the 40s, 50, 60s, 70s and 80s had very distinct hair and fashion trends (sideburns and bell bottoms anyone?), but in the last 30 years (the 90s through 2010s) clothes and hair styles haven’t changed a whole lot. Things seem to be stabilizing. Normalizing. I was just beginning to think we as a society had moved past ridiculous fashion crazes… then somebody invented skinny jeans.

So producer, beware! Your videos are just as subject to fashion flubs as you are. The way you dress your videos can make them look ‘with it’, or whacked out. The key is to make sure your productions look current without trying so hard to be trendy that they become cliché.