At Dirt Time, we are always evolving.  If you take a look at the first episode, and now at our 25th, you can tell we’ve come a long way.  The show just keeps getting better and better.  And as I edit our Willow Creek project, I’m starting to play with the material’s look a lot more than in the past.

A few months ago, I saw a promo for a show called ‘Ax Men‘. For those of you who don’t know, ‘Ax Men’ is a History Channel show that follows the rough n’ tumble lives of loggers. It’s actually not unlike ‘Dirt Time’ in many ways (Camera’s in the middle of the bush, watching things get torn down…).

This Ax Men promo was very cool, very stylized and color graded out the wazoo. It was slick. I made a point to watch the show after, hoping to see more of the same visuals. The show is very neat and really interesting, but unfortunately the commercial visuals don’t carry through to the show.

But it (along with the work of Phillip Bloom) got me thinking about Dirt Time. In the past, we’ve kept color grading pretty minimal, pretty safe. But what if you gave it a highly stylized look the whole way through?

Well, that’s something we’re playing with right now. Here is an untouched rough cut of the first five minutes of our upcoming Willow Creek Episode(s):

Here is that same five minutes with a more severe color treatment:

And just for fun, here’s a side by side:

So far we like it where it’s heading. A few shots need to be tweaked and perhaps went a little far too in one direction. But, we’ll see where it ends up…

Let us know what you think.  Shoot us a comment below…

-james