Arcane:
Fan-Edit
This page is dedicated to our Arcane fan-edit: the video highlights and follows the TV show’s characters, world, and its various thematic and emotional through-lines, while showing off its exciting action.
1. Design Rationale​​
I aimed to create an edit that would satisfy fans of the show and summarise the key themes of the show – within this, I focus on the aspects that resonate with me the most, which resulted in focusing on Jinx, and the ideas of trauma linked to past vs present.
Having created many edits for my YouTube channel in the past, I made this edit following the same ideas and processes in my previous edits: a heavy focus on visual and music transitions in an action-oriented space, with dialogue (that I felt was key) hanging over the action. It follows a longer period than a typical edit – fitting the YouTube edit format, and my own audiovisual style and preferences.
2. Documentation
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The software I used includes Adobe Premiere Pro (for editing), Adobe After Effects (for visual transitions), Ableton Live (for music production), DaVinci Resolve (for colour-grading).
The first thing I did was search for a song – a starting foundation which I could build off, whether it would be featured in the final product or not (since a lot of the time I change my mind on the song I want to use). A lot of the time, I never know where the edit is going to go, I just continue to build until it feels right. In this case, the foundation song did go into the final product: I began the edit by creating a remix for Fall Back Titty Fat by Viktor Vaughn (aka MF DOOM) – I went on to alter this remix during my viewing experience. The song ends with the word “jinx” so it seemed perfect for this to fit with Jinx’s character. Knowing the character Jinx already, I had decided on this song before I’d even seen the show.
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Here is the final version of the remix on the timeline (minimised) – software: Ableton Live:
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Here I had slightly reworked the opening of the song, before it drops into Fall Back Titty Fat, unchanged:
The remix that follows, where the song drops into breakcore drums from Crystalline by Bjork, before the original melody of the song is dropped, replaced by chopped vocals from You Know What You Are? by Nine Inch Nails:
Remix continued, showcasing the trailer hits I added to create further excitement and chaos during this change:
As I hadn’t previously seen the show but knew going into the viewing that I was using the footage for an edit, I developed the edit beside my viewing experience – watching an episode and then taking footage that stuck out to me and putting onto the timeline. If I had an idea of where to put them in the song, I would do that, otherwise I would put it to the side. Taking footage that was fresh on my mind allowed me to move further along the editing process – for example, I could easily grab and note down paralleling footage instantly as I’d seen it (such as Jinx unholstering her gun), rather than having to skim back through the episodes during the actual editing process. I would ultimately go back through the episodes to significantly fill in remaining parts of the edit, due to the long runtime of the edit, but this part of the process was reduced because of this approach.
As I watched and edited, the remix had evolved alongside it into a more chaotic reflection of Jinx and her emotional journey, which led to using the lyrics from You Know What You Are? by Nine Inch Nails, trailer-style drums, and an additional bassy-siren sound to cement the dark, chaotic aesthetic.
As I had developed the edit, I knew I’d wanted a large focus on Jinx, since her story was my favourite aspect of the show, but I had begun to feel I needed to tie into the greater show and highlight its themes and ensemble. I knew then that I needed the edit to contain a beat-switch – which I also do in a lot of my other edits – to help pivot to this: I experimented with the music, using Ramble On by Led Zeppelin (which provided and helped shape the more hopeful narrative), before landing on The Mark Has Been Made by Nine Inch Nails. The dialogue during the final version of this section is somewhat optimistic, while the track is basically pessimistic; I used this juxtaposition to create a nuance where, even though the characters can change on a human-level and become better, the mistakes made can’t be undone, and the trauma is always there.
To further this notion, I inserted moments focusing on time and the greater universe, to create a hanging time-travel motif – a past vs present. I made sure the intro connected to the other characters in the ensemble, before becoming centrally about Jinx and her familiars, then Jinx (as the remix kicks in), and then back to the ensemble cast after the beat-switch. By introducing the ensemble straight away, the pivot in focus from Jinx towards the whole show (during the beat-switch) is much smoother.
I created a multitude of visual transitions scattered across the edit using After Effects, using masking and the rotoscope pen tool. Since After Effects is an Adobe product, as is Premiere Pro, the workflow is very simple for importing transitions: I don’t have to manually import media, when creating a transition I start by hitting “replace clip with After Effects composition,” which prompts the opening of After Effects, where I then go on to create the transition.
The final process involved going through the audio, cleaning up each audio clip using keyframing and additional tools to make sure sound effects and dialogue was clear and sounded professional, as well as adding finishing SFX (usually trailer impact hits to create better elevate the action in certain moments).
Final timeline (video clips top, audio clips below [enlargened]) – software: Adobe Premiere Pro:
After everything was in place, I took the project to DaVinci Resolve to create a colour-grade (note: I am not a pro colourist). DaVinci uses nodes to apply steps to the colour-grading process:
Nodes:
WHEELS = Applies contrast to the image, and a slight colour shift, using the Wheels tools (Lift, Gamma, Gain).
REDS = Selectively and carefully applies saturation to reds and occasionally skin tones.
CURVES = Used to adjust the saturation of colours in the whole image – for removing colours I don’t want as much of (e.g. greens and yellows, thought it usually depends – usually to keep red the highlight of the image).
SHADOWS = Applies a reddish / brownish shadow to the entire image (acts kind of like a wash to the image). I’ve been doing this to my edits for a long time as inspired by an editor, “Voordeel,” who uses purple shadows to wash over the visuals of her edits.
The style of my other videos usually involves more distinctly saturated reds and skin tones, adjustment in contrast where it seems necessary, brownish shadows, and reduction in yellows and greens where they become too saturated.