The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Back to feedPost
For this week’s #contraquest, I want to share the project that means the most to me.
A Data Analysis of the Film Noir Era (1940–1962)
On the surface, it’s a data pipeline: raw Excel, Python ETL, Tableau dashboard... The minor reason it’s special is that I stepped outside my comfort zone and used Tableau instead of my usual Power BI.
But the major reason is personal. This topic, American Film Noir, takes me back to my last year of high school, when I wrote a monograph on the genre’s Golden Age. Revisiting it now, through the lens of data analysis, felt like reconnecting with a piece of my past.
🔥 Love this = clean analysis + very personal angle.
This is a beautiful example of how data becomes storytelling when personal passion meets technical rigor.
What stands out isn’t just the Excel → Python ETL → Tableau pipeline, but the intentional choice to step outside your comfort zone and reconnect with a formative part of...
Love how you framed this as more than just a pipeline. Starting from raw Excel and layering Python + Tableau really shows the full analytical journey. The personal connection to Film Noir makes the insights feel much more grounded.
The network for creativity
Join 1.25M professional creatives like you
Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free
Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started
Related posts
Made it to the top 1% of creatives on Contra.
My discovery points are still going up, with one more case study left to write.
Grateful for the people I’ve met through Contra, the projects we’ve worked on, and the opportunity to keep growing together. 🎉
Congratulations!🎉 🚀
Spent a few hours tweaking my police chase game in Unity today.
Reworked all the menus and modals using Claude Design and Opus 5.5 and also made a few small tweaks to the lighting.
I’ve also started on all the tedious stuff like integrating ads, setting up App Store page and all the boring admin stuff.
Luckily asc.cli can handle most of it otherwise I would procrastinate over it for weeks.
where is the link
I wanted to test whether Invideo Editor’s AI timeline agent could replace hours of manual node compositing in After Effects to create a cinema-grade VFX shot from raw mobile footage.
How I built it:
The Footage: Raw 4K 60fps night plate of NYC with neon signs, streetlamps, and a wet puddle reflection.
Agent Direction: Using a prism refraction photo as a reference, I directed the agent in Ultra Mode to author a single custom shader that extracts luminance highlights, stretches them into 55° upward trails, and applies a spectral RGB dispersion gradient across the edges. It also layered a Screen composite and generated a procedural cyberpunk HUD tracking overlay.
Human Refinements: I manually used the exposed Inspector sliders to fine-tune the Highlight Threshold to 0.68 (isolating the Radio City marquee, streetlamps, and puddle reflection while eliminating building clutter) and dialed the Trail Length to 140 with an exponential falloff taper.
Editable Project Timeline:
👉 https://invideo.io/share/Chromatic-Stretch-GWJjyPAWPDb
Instagram Reel:
👉 https://www.instagram.com/p/DeB3NrJSbvd/
invideo Editor is free to try.
#invideocontrachallenge #invideoeditor #vfx #cinematography #aiagent
