Sticker Peel

The image lifts at one corner like a sticker and something else is underneath. The frame stops being a window and becomes a surface with layers.

It admits that the picture is a picture. That is why it suits titles, transitions and anything with a designed rather than a filmed register.

The lifting corner curls rather than folding flat, so there is a rolling highlight along the curve where the light catches the underside.

A shadow sits under the lift and moves with it, as the note says. That shadow is doing all the work of putting the top layer in front of the bottom one.

The peel needs a thickness. A paper-thin edge reads as a graphic wipe. Give the edge a millimetre of body and it becomes an object.

Use it for a transition between two ideas, for a reveal of something hidden behind a surface, and for social and title work where the design is meant to show.

Skip it inside a scene that is meant to be believed. It breaks the frame on purpose.

Collage sticks flat pieces onto the image and leaves them there. A sticker peel takes the whole image as one piece and lifts it, which means the reveal is what the shot is about.

The test is movement. Fragments arranged on a surface is collage. One surface lifting to show another is a sticker peel.

A flat wipe comes back with no thickness and no shadow. Ask for a curling edge, a highlight along the curl and a shadow underneath it.

The second failure is a dissolve between the two images. Say the top image stays opaque and lifts as a physical sheet.