The Grosse Ile Light

A documentary that I always wanted to do was to film a lighthouse. Just something about them screams "film me". So, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to do a historical video for my Field Production and Editing class. Knowing that I wanted to shoot a lighthouse, I Googled the nearby lighthouses where I lived. I found the closet one, so I e-mailed them and mentioned that I was a student and wanted to do a video about their lighthouse. Luckily, they replied back quickly and said yes!

I drove about 45 minutes East to the island of Grosse Ile. I met up with a couple people from the historical society who let me onto the lighthouse property and into it as well. It unfortunately rained when I was there, so I did my best to film with what I could. After I was done shooting the lighthouse, I drove around the island to shoot b-roll that I wanted to use as the introduction in the video to the city.

WATCH "THE GROSSE ILE LIGHT" ON YOUTUBE

The older gentleman in my video, William, had a lot of old photographs that he let me film, as he told the stories behind the photographs. The historical society also had their own photographs, which I also shot. I strived to do keyframing with each photograph to have that "moving image", which kept the pacing in the video.

Fun fact - the narrator in the video is me. I used Soundtrack Pro and my Lifechat headset to record my voiceover. I was surprised how well, to me at least, how my voice sounds in the video and how it just naturally fit.