Unfortunately, my direction to feature the overhead light led to lessthan-ideal
lighting for the primary performance video. In hindsight, I
would have directed Christian to just be concerned about lighting the
scene well, rather than going for that look in my head. The conversion
of the video to black and white and the addition of the swinging light
bulb faintly swinging in a background layer helps to mask the subpar
lighting a bit (and, yes, you can see it’s an LED bulb, which is kind of
anachronistic in relation to the video’s imagery; I tried to crop the footage
close enough so it wasn’t as noticeable). At the very least, it attempts
to make the footage appear a little more ghostly than poorly lit.
Because iMovie only allows for the use of two photos/videos at one
time, I created two full-length videos with different layers of elements
and then placed them on top of each other in a completely new project
to complete the final cut of the video. Granted, this added even
more compression into the visual mix (as did the video transfers via
YouTube), but it was necessary to achieve the desired effect in iMovie.
You can see the finished video on the next page.
All challenges considered, I think the video came out rather nicely.
But I’m still haunted by the subpar lighting. Always make sure your
priority is proper lighting when it comes to photography and
videography.
Photo credits required for the use of the public domain images are
included at the very end of the video.
NJ STAGE - ISSUE 71
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